Learn more about psychology with this collection
The differences between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0
The future of the internet
Understanding the potential of Web 3.0
One outcome in science today is the rise of panpsychism, the view that all life forms participate in consciousness to at least some minimal. Panpsychism attracts many because it allows consciousness to be real rather than illusory (as per physicalism) but it remains in the same general thought world as, say, Hoffman — though not that of Richard Dawkins. Wallace himself, as Hoffman notes, came to embrace a sort of natural theology. He contributed to a number of streams of early twentieth-century thought, as Michael Flannery’s book Nature’s Prophet details.
27
265 reads
MORE IDEAS ON THIS
Neil Thomas, Reader Emeritus in the University of Durham, England and a longtime member of the British Rationalist Association notes the key role neuroscience has played in undermining a purely materialist account of the mind — an unexpected role for neuroscience, perhaps, but that’s what...
28
443 reads
Hoffman develops the point further: “At the most microcosmic level the brain consists of subatomic particles which have qualities like mass, spin and charge. There is nothing about these qualities that relates to the qualities associated with consciousness such as thought, taste, pain or ...
27
319 reads
The brusque and decidedly no-nonsense Crick was in the event fated to meet his Waterloo when it came to the subject of consciousness, explains Hoffman. Crick had at first attempted to explain it somewhat airily as nothing but an “emergent” property which “naturally” arose when matter reac...
28
368 reads
Scientists haven’t solved this still called “Hard Problem of Consciousness,” and a materialist solution is nowhere in sight. Not for lack of trying. Some, improving on Darwin, insist that chimpanzees really do think like people if you study them enough (no, they don’t). Others cl...
33
726 reads
Both Hoffman and Crick were finally forced to conclude that all purely physicalist theories of consciousness had failed to provide illumination and that the state of consciousness could not be explained in neurological terms, a conclusion powerfully endorsed for more than three d...
27
296 reads
The bottom line seems to be that we are not only ignorant but, alas, prostrate in our ignorance of the brain’s arcana. Theoretically, of course, there may yet emerge an as yet undiscovered materialist explanation for the brain and human consciousness. But to date we must ...
27
242 reads
AI capable of thinking like a human would be a philosophical problem, to be sure, because it would mean both that intelligence can create itself and that it can be instantiated in a non-biological form.
However, such a development would not demonstrate tha...
28
558 reads
CURATED FROM
IDEAS CURATED BY
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) share the credit, technically, for the theory of evolution by natural selection but Darwin became the icon. One reason they parted ways was that Wallace did not agree with Darwin that the human mind was simply an organ that evolved naturally, like any other. There had to be something more to it.
“
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Personalized microlearning
—
100+ Learning Journeys
—
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates