A year ago, for the third time in his life, cognitive scientist Anil Seth ceased to exist. He was having an operation, his brain filling with anesthetic, and he was feeling a sense of detachment, falling apart and coldness. And then he was back — drowsy and disoriented, but definitely there. “Anaesthesia is a modern […]
“Right now you have a movie playing inside your head,” says philosopher David Chalmers. It’s an amazing movie, with 3D, smell, taste, touch, a sense of body, pain, hunger, emotions, memories, and a constant voice-over narrative. “At the heart of this movie is you, experiencing this, directly. This movie is your stream of consciousness, experience […]
John Searle studies consciousness — which, as he points out in today’s talk, is a “curiously neglected subject in our scientific and philosophical culture.” Curiously — because it is, after all, a pre-condition for anything else we think about. And yet neglected — because consciousness is a subject that makes scientists huffy (they see it […]