Search results

I don't really follow how consciousness in a child could be the result of applying 'mentalist schemes'? Even I have never applied a mentalist scheme as far as I know! I think I know what you mean but why deny that of owls? The owl that tore out the eye of the great naturalist photography Eric...

It is not intended to explain anything. It just does away with the need to explain why human subjects should have experiences and rock subjects might not. Experience is the one thing we know exists. I cannot see what it would mean to 'explain' its presence, although I think it is interesting to...

So this is where it matters which event in the brain is a conscious X of a sort that is connected up to our discussions in a way that its content is discussed. This all gets very complicated but then neurobiology is complicated. Put another way, consciousness is absolutely the exception rather...

OK, so there are lots of layers to this that need teasing out for a detailed analysis. Chalmers's definition of consciousness says nothing about the richness or qualities or self-reference of 'there being something that it is like'. Descartes required more than that but Descartes's view on this...

Actually Minsky does not attribute any consciousness or point of view to any of the members of his 'society'. The title is 'Society of Mind' singular. Minsky seemed to think that experience somehow emerges singly from the totality but never says anything about why or how. We certainly have...

I agree that a high proportion of metaphysics is bullshit. Although Leibniz was 'critiqued' by Kant as too fond of 'pure reason' he was in fact a practical engineer and the Russell even chides him for being 'unduly practical' in his philosophy. The idea of a world entirely consisting of...

Yes, that is exactly what modern field theory says. A diamond is a composite of a wide range of types of Planck's quanta of action.

But we understand brains without reference to their consciousness. The whole point about science and philosophy is that they consist in discovering that our intuitions tend to be muddled and unworkable when analysed in detail. Positing consciousness of a sort everywhere is not designed to...

My definition of consciousness is the biomedical one and the one used by most philosophers - in line with Chalmers's famous definition: X is conscious if there is something that the world 'is like' to X. I appreciate that 'self-awareness' is a popular definition of consciousness for some people...

Biocentrism looks like a mish mash of old popular ideas. Even Berkeley did not hold that nothing was there without us - because it would exist in the mind of God even without us. But some of what Lanza seems to say is just ordinary physics. Nothing is absolute in physics because physics can only...

I fear we may get into deep water here and nothing much to do with ethics but at least Diane is familiar with my published writings on consciousness and seems to approve. What Descartes argues in the Meditations is that the one thing we can be sure of is something here that senses patterns...

I fear we may get into deep water here and nothing much to do with ethics but at least Diane is familiar with my published writings on consciousness and seems to approve. What Descartes argues in the Meditations is that the one thing we can be sure of is something here that senses patterns...

I don't think I have any particular take on that. Sorry.

I am not convinced and don't really see why this is likely. If I go on an exercise bike and get a tachycardia and short of breath I am no more likely to feel any emotions as far as I am aware. I thin I would be more likely not to have a sudden emotional response to some other stimulus because i...

I think it is just window dressing to counter accusations of bullying and exploitation. It is a manifestation of the 'job-using' of science. Everything is now seen in terms of career prospects and employment rights. The actual science has been forgotten about.

I don't think that is the question that all the fuss is about. The brain creates an illusory redness when objects that reflect or transmit or emit low visible range wavelength light preferentially and it does that because it is useful for survival. Emotions are not really even illusions. They...

That's correct. The standards by which PACE was designed were not the accepted standards of the time by any stretch of the imagination. They were simply the accepted standards within MRC. Which of course is very embarrassing for the MRC.

In view of the current reproducibility crisis in psychology I am not sure how reliable any of these reports are, but it seems likely that injecting adrenaline might alter interpretation. But then surely so might a couple of glasses of wine or a warm sunny afternoon or some nice music. And I...

Indeed. It is an indication of what airheads run science these days.

They get away with it because it is considered to be the right way to think by the grand masters of the field - people like Damasio (sorry spellcheck caught me last time). Cognitive neuroscience is run by people who do not understand the illusory nature of our percepts of the world. Damasio...