Lifeboat Foundation

Severe brain injuries or head traumas in humans can lead to various stages of so-called disorders of consciousness (DoC). These are states in which consciousness is either partly or entirely absent, such as a coma; unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, also known as a vegetative state; and minimally conscious state.

Accurately evaluating patients who have lost consciousness is of crucial importance, as it allows doctors to determine what treatments to administer and how to facilitate the re-emergence of consciousness. Typically, to clinically evaluate consciousness, doctors observe the behavior of patients in response to sensory stimuli, such as sounds or images.

For instance, while patients in a vegetative state are awake but continue to be unresponsive to external stimuli, patients with MCS exhibit some behaviors that indicate that they are conscious. So far, most methods to assess the consciousness level of patients rely on sounds or visual stimuli, yet olfactory stimuli could potentially prove useful too.

There has been shock around the world at the rapid rate of progress with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence created with what’s known as large language models (LLMs). These systems can produce text that seems to display thought, understanding, and even creativity.

But can these systems really think and understand? This is not a question that can be answered through technological advance, but careful philosophical analysis and argument tell us the answer is no. And without working through these philosophical issues, we will never fully comprehend the dangers and benefits of the AI revolution.

In 1950, the father of modern computing, Alan Turing, published a paper that laid out a way of determining whether a computer thinks. This is now called “the Turing test.” Turing imagined a human being engaged in conversation with two interlocutors hidden from view: one another human being, the other a computer. The game is to work out which is which.

Scientists stimulated the brains of macaque monkeys in an effort to determine which areas are responsible for driving consciousness.

To make sense of mysteries like quantum mechanics and the passage of time, theorists are trying to reformulate physics to include subjective experience as a physical constituent of the world.

By Thomas Lewton

Human thoughts 💭 about knowledge building, concluding and AI

Knowledge limits scope, filters data and concludes. The conclusion by its very nature limits or even omits new knowledge.

Continue reading “Jiddu Krishnamurti (Crisis in consciousness, Zeitgeist Addendum)” »

Year 2021 face_with_colon_three

Georgia Tech quantum field theory researcher Tim Andersen grounds reality in Will, rather than Mind, as envisioned by Bernardo Kastrup and the cosmopsychists.

Upon removal of ventilator support, two of the patients showed an increase in heart rate along with a surge of gamma wave activity, considered the fastest brain activity and associated with consciousness.

Furthermore, the activity was detected in the so-called hot zone of neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the junction between the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes in the back of the brain. This area has been correlated with dreaming, visual hallucinations in epilepsy, and altered states of consciousness in other brain studies.

Fellow scientists labeled him a crackpot. Now Stuart Hameroff’s quantum consciousness theories are getting support from unlikely places.

An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.