Lifeboat Foundation

Daniel Dennett discusses the nature of consciousness, if consciousness is an illusion, artificial intelligence and virtual immortality, and how he covers all of this in his book, Just Deserts: Debating Free Will, co-authored with Gregg D. Caruso.

Just Deserts: Debating Free Will https://www.amazon.com/Just-Deserts-Debating-Free-Will/dp/15…atfound-20
Read an excerpt https://www.closertotruth.com/articles/book-excerpt-just-deserts.

Continue reading “Daniel Dennett on Consciousness, Virtual Immortality, and Panpsychism | Closer To Truth Chats” »

TED Talks

Cognitive scientist and philosopher, Professor Daniel Dennett, from Tufts University, takes us on a tour of the mind explaining why consciousness itself is a…

August 6, 2021

Daniel Dennett on Consciousness, Virtual Immortality, and Panpsychism | Closer To Truth Chats.

Are quantum events required for consciousness in a very special sense, far beyond the general sense that quantum events are part of all physical systems? What would it take for quantum events, on such a micro-scale, to be relevant for brain function, which operates at the much higher level of neurons and brain circuits? What would it mean?

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Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and philosopher. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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TRANSCRIPT:
https://lexfridman.com/joscha-bach-3-transcript.

Continue reading “Joscha Bach: Life, Intelligence, Consciousness, AI & the Future of Humans | Lex Fridman Podcast #392” »

The best detailed description of how consciousness develops and works that I’m aware of.

Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8qJsk1j2zE
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Continue reading “When does a human child gain consciousness? | Joscha Bach and Lex Fridman” »

Global Workspace Theory (GWT) can be compared to a theater of mind, in which conscious contents resemble a bright spot on the stage of immediate memory, selected by a spotlight of attention under executive guidance. Only the bright spot is conscious; the rest of the theater is dark and unconscious. GWT has been implemented in a number of explicit and testable global workspace models (GWM’s). These specific GW models suggest that conscious experiences recruit widely distributed brain functions that are mostly unconscious (unreportable). A large body of new findings support that view. For example, brain experiments show that while unconscious visual stimuli evoke high activity in visual cortex, identical conscious stimuli reveal an additional spread of high brain activity to frontal and parietal lobes (Dehaene, 2001). Similar results have been found for hearing, touch, pain, and sensorimotor skills (Baars, 2002). The conscious waking state supports such fast, flexible, and widespread brain interactions, while unconscious states do not (Baars et al, 2004). These findings illustrate the ability of the GW framework to suggest novel and falsifiable hypotheses.

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How can consciousness be addressed scientifically? The Tucson conference, founded in 1994 and celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2014, exemplifies the quest. What are the range of theories? Where do participants position themselves? Meet the founders, early visionaries, new scientists and thinkers. Progress is being made, but what does this really mean?

Continue reading “Ned Block — Toward a Science of Consciousness” »