Archive for the 'Consciousness' Category

Free will revisited in the face of quantum physics

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

Lately I have been reading this book: The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind. The book deals, quite obviously, with philosophy of mind and all the matters that touch this subject, including free will. The author is Ben Goertzel who happens to be a very interesting person. He holds a PhD in mathematics, but [...]

Free Will - plain and simple

Friday, September 19th, 2008

A quick guide to Free Will
I found this article the other day on BPS Research Digest. Do you remember Dr. Read Montague we spoke about at How a single neurotransmitter can provide the basis for the explanation of all social phenomena? This post provided a link to his homepage where he has an article he [...]

Near-Death experiences, the meaning of life, life after death etc…

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Near-Death Experiences: What Really Happens?
I stumbled upon this link the other day. It’s about one of the most exciting experiments I’ve ever seen in my life. Scientists will try to study what really happens with near-death experiences.

Many reports of near-death experiences sound the same: a welcoming white light and a replay of memories. But now [...]

Introducing Scholarpedia and the Neural Correlates of Consciousness

Friday, September 12th, 2008

I don’t know if you have noticed it, but there’s a site called Scholarpedia. It seems it was created in 2006, but I hadn’t found the site until recently. What is most interesting is that it’s a lot like Knol, since the articles are written by respectful authors with a scientific style. It seems that [...]

Does Tweety have a secondary consciousness? Self-awareness in birds, mirror neurons, evolution and the mystery of consciousness

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

Is he self-aware?
Today we’re dealing with some revolutionary research concerning the subject of self-awareness in birds.
 
Mirror-Induced Behavior in the Magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of Self-Recognition Prior H, Schwarz A, Güntürkün O PLoS Biology Vol. 6, No. 8, e202 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060202
The above research was published a few days ago in PLoS Biology. It is the research that I believe will [...]

Split Brains, Consciousness and Michael Gazzaniga

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Spheres of Influence: Scientific American.
The above was article was published in Scientific American Mind
Its author is Michael Gazzaniga one of the most respected figures in neuropsychology.

Michael Gazzaniga
If you don’t know him, he’s the guy who made the most important work in the lateralization of the two hemispheres. You’ve probably heard before that the left hemisphere [...]