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First Person Plural - The Atlantic (November 2008)
psychology and multiple selves, self-identity
OnTheCommons.org » No Time to Think
Digital media are overwhelming our consciousness and eclipsing our capacity for reflection.
Macmillan: Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness Alva Noë: Books
In this inventive work, Noë suggests that rather than being something that happens inside us, consciousness is something we do.
Alva Noe, You are not your brain | Salon
I don't reject the idea that the brain is necessary for consciousness; but I do reject the argument that it is sufficient. That's just a fancy, contemporary version of the old philosophical idea that our true selves are interior, cut off from the outside world, only accidentally situated in the world. The view I'm attacking claims that neural activity is enough to explain consciousness, that you could have consciousness in a petri dish. It supposes that consciousness happens inside the brain the way digestion occurs inside the GI tract. But consciousness is not like digestion; it doesn't happen inside of us. It is something we do, something we achieve. It's more like dance than it is like digestion.
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Imagine that we find the Holy Grail of neurobiology, the patterns of neural activation that correlate perfectly with different events in our mental lives. We would still never understand or make sense of why those correlations exist. There is no intrinsic relationship between the experience and the neural substrates of the experience. We always need to look at what factors bring the two together. The environment, other people, our needs and desires -- all these things exist outside the brain and have to be seen as essential parts of our selves and consciousness. So we aren't just our brains, we're not locked inside our craniums; we extend beyond our skulls, beyond our skin, into the world we occupy.
Gilbert Ryle (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Through this work, Ryle is thought to have accomplished two major tasks. First, he was seen to have put the final nail in the coffin of Cartesian dualism. Second, as he himself anticipated, he is thought to have argued on behalf of, and suggested as dualism's replacement, the doctrine known as philosophical (and sometimes analytical) behaviourism. Sometimes known as an “ordinary language”, sometimes as an “analytic” philosopher, Ryle—even when mentioned in the same breath as Wittgenstein and his followers—is considered to be on a different, somewhat idiosyncratic (and difficult to characterise), philosophical track.
Overcoming Bias: In Praise of Boredom
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I have a small unreasonable fear, somewhere in the back of my mind, that if I ever do fully understand the algorithms of intelligence, it will destroy all remaining novelty - no matter what new situation I encounter, I'll know I can solve it just by being intelligent, the same damn thing over and over. All novelty will be used up, all existence will become boring, the remaining differences no more important than shades of pixels in a video game. Other beings will go about in blissful unawareness, having been steered away from studying this forbidden cognitive science. But I, having already thrown myself on the grenade of AI, will face a choice between eternal boredom, or excision of my forbidden knowledge and all the memories leading up to it (thereby destroying my existence as Eliezer, more or less).
Experimental Philosophy: Experimental Philosophy of Consciousness
One of the most exciting developments in experimental philosophy these days is the explosion of new work on intuitions about consciousness. How do people determine whether an entity is capable of having phenomenal states like feeling pain or experiencing happiness? And how do the criteria for these phenomenal states differ from those for other states like belief and desire?
MindPapers: Contents
This is a bibliography of work in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of cognitive science, and the science of consciousness.
Developing Intelligence : Learning The Language of Thought: 4 Candidate Neural Codes
The fact is that we still don't have a clear picture of the ways in which neurons transmit information. Here's a quick guide to current theories, beginning with well-established theories and moving into ideas that are considered more theoretical.
Notes From The Geek Show: The Art of Life
Like any art form, sentience works by creating patterns, points of tension and moments of release. Every sentient being is a composition of affects, its elements in conflict or balance, a fragmented unity.
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