Lifeboat Foundation

Abstract: I do not share the feeling that consciousness (whatever this means) cannot be understood in the context of the known physical laws. So far we do not understand it well, but neither do we fully understand thunderstorms, for that matter. I offer three small contributions in the direction of a direct naturalistic account of consciousness: (i) a purely physical account of agency and the openness of the future, which traces the source of information to past low entropy; (ii) a purely physical basis for a simple notion of “meaning”; and (iii) a suggestion that current understanding of quantum matter (without need of panpsychism) weakens the apparent hiatus between the mental and the physical.

There’s a meditative state described in ancient Buddhist scriptures that is hard to imagine because it is not something – but nothing. Referred to as nirodha-samāpatti, it roughly translates as ‘the cessation of thought and feeling’, and it is the highest meditative state possible in Theravada Buddhism, following eight others called jhānas. Each jhāna requires deepening levels of concentration, and a retreat into the mind, away from typical consciousness.

According to David Vago, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and director of the Contemplative Neuroscience and Mind-Body Research Laboratory, nirodha-samāpatti refers to a ‘state of profound concentration or absorption in which all mental activity is temporarily suspended’. It’s said that the state leads to a total absence of sensation and awareness, which would help explain the stories of monks who stayed in this deep trance while fires burned around them.

Continue reading “What happens to the brain during consciousness-ending meditation?” »

Human cerebral organoids are three-dimensional biological cultures grown in the laboratory to mimic as closely as possible the cellular composition, structure, and function of the corresponding organ, the brain. For now, cerebral organoids lack blood vessels and other characteristics of the human brain, but are also capable of having coordinated electrical activity. They have been usefully employed for the study of several diseases and the development of the nervous system in unprecedented ways. Research on human cerebral organoids is proceeding at a very fast pace and their complexity is bound to improve. This raises the question of whether cerebral organoids will also be able to develop the unique feature of the human brain, consciousness. If this is the case, some ethical issues would arise. In this article, we discuss the necessary neural correlates and constraints for the emergence of consciousness according to some of the most debated neuroscientific theories. Based on this, we consider what the moral status of a potentially conscious brain organoid might be, in light of ethical and ontological arguments. We conclude by proposing a precautionary principle and some leads for further investigation. In particular, we consider the outcomes of some very recent experiments as entities of a potential new kind.

Is this hat conscious?
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Panpsychism is the idea that there is an element of consciousness in everything in the universe. The theory goes like this: You’re conscious. Ben Goertzel is conscious. And his hat is conscious too. What if consciousness isn’t about the brain at all, but it’s as inherent to our universe as space-time?“Now, panpsychism, to me, is not even that interesting, it’s almost obvious — it’s just the foundation, the beginning for thinking about consciousness… ” says Goertzel. It’s what comes after that excites him, like the emerging technology that will let us connect our minds to bricks, hats, earthworms, other humans, and super AGIs like Sophia, and perhaps glimpse at the fabric of consciousness. Goertzel believes brain-brain interfacing and brain-computer interfacing will unfold in the coming decades, and it’s by that means that we may finally crack the nut of consciousness to discover whether panpsychism makes any sense, and to learn why humans are so differently conscious than, for example, his hat.

Continue reading “Is this hat conscious? | Ben Goertzel on consciousness, panpsychism, and AGI | Big Think” »

The researchers suggest that they may have located the brain region where images are held during the moments we consciously perceive them.

A new way to understand where consciousness comes from and novel insights into subjective thought show that the hard problem of consciousness is worth persevering with.

Abstract: A scientific theory of consciousness could be merely descriptive, nothing more than a kind of empirical, statistical phenomenology. We already have a lot of data which fit into this kind of modest theorizing. Better would be a theory which reveals the nature of consciousness. Here a famous gap looms between any such theory of consciousness and a theory of the conscious brain, neither of which are actually in our possession. The gap is so serious and so immense that it has led to remarkable responses, such as the illusionist view that consciousness does not exist. I think the gap suggests there are lurking assumptions about the nature of both consciousness and matter which are fundamentally at odds with one another. A ‘neutral monist’ view may be able to avoid these assumptions to find a place in nature for consciousness and scientific theorizing about it.

More than a quarter of all stroke victims develop a bizarre disorder -; they lose conscious awareness of half of all that their eyes perceive.

After a stroke in the brain’s right half, for example, a person might eat only what’s on the right side of the plate because they’re unaware of the other half. The person may see only the right half of a photo and ignore a person on their left side.

Surprisingly, though, such stroke victims can emotionally react to the entire photo or scene. Their brains seem to be taking it all in, but these people are consciously aware of only half the world.

The problem of psychology is more important than the problem of consciousness.