Browsed by
Category: consciousness

From intersubjectivity to interbeing

From intersubjectivity to interbeing

Comments 1 comment

I was reminded today of this seminal paper by Evan Thompson with the above title. The premise: “Human consciousness is not located in the head, but is immanent in the living body and the interpersonal social world. One’s consciousness of oneself as an embodied individual embedded in the world emerges through empathic cognition of others. Consciousness is not some peculiar qualitative aspect of private mental states, nor a property of the brain inside the skull; it is a relational mode…

Read More Read More

‘Entangled’ consciousness app approaching release

‘Entangled’ consciousness app approaching release

Comments 0 Comment

The Global Consciousness Project, Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS, for which I was once Hawaii state coordinator) and Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) are collaborating to release a smart phone app, Entangled, that aims to Monitor your mind’s influence on your physical environment Let you take part in large-scale consciousness experiments Support ongoing development of a”consciousness technology” platform for developers and artists Monitor global consciousness data in real-time Before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, let me explain that I…

Read More Read More

Giant neuron found encircling and intraconnecting mouse brain

Giant neuron found encircling and intraconnecting mouse brain

Comments 0 Comment

A neuron that encircles the mouse brain emanates from the claustrum (an on/off switch for awareness) and has dense links with both brain hemispheres. Scientists including Francis Crick and Christoph Koch have speculated that the claustrum may play a role in enabling conscious thought. https://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-neuron-has-been-found-wrapped-around-the-entire-circumference-of-the-brain  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569501/ (Crick and Koch academic article) We’ve frequently discussed how self-aware consciousness likely arises not from any single brain structure or signal, but from complex, recursive (reentrant), synchronized signaling among many structures organized into functional regions. (Did I get…

Read More Read More

Embodied consciousness and the Flow Genome Project

Embodied consciousness and the Flow Genome Project

Comments 0 Comment

In line with our July joint meeting with the NM Tech Council, I’m reading a fascinating book (Stealing Fire) on the variety of ways humans can experience states of flow (optimal states of consciousness and performance). The authors, Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal, explain the significance of flow and introduce their Flow Dojo concept in the videos linked below. Applying methods for achieving flow is often categorized in the consciousness hacking movement, also called brain hacking. What is Flow (6+ minutes) The Flow Dojo (4+ minutes)…

Read More Read More

Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development

Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development

Comments 0 Comment

In a few previous posts I posted articles on new scientific research questioning some of Piaget’s original premises. This Wikipedia article discusses those neo-Piagetians who have taken into account the more recent science. Also see this article that discusses some of the neo-Piagetians but then focuses on Kurt Fischer’s work.

Evan Thompson: Buddhism and the brain

Evan Thompson: Buddhism and the brain

Comments 14 comments

Here is an interview with Thompson on Buddhism and the Brain. It starts with defining consciousness as awareness, its changing contents and how both then identify as a self in changing contexts. “Consciousness is something we live, not something we have.” I also like using the metaphor of dance for the process of self. Both are in the enaction of the process, not a thing apart from that process. He also goes into how mindfulness in our culture has turned…

Read More Read More

Consciousness is not a thing

Consciousness is not a thing

Comments 2 comments

Interesting article by Karl Friston, the Wellcome principal research fellow and scientific director at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging and professor of neurology at University College London. “I’m compelled to treat consciousness as a process to be understood, not as a thing to be defined. Simply put, my argument is that consciousness is nothing more and nothing less than a natural process such as evolution or the weather. My favourite trick to illustrate the notion of consciousness as a…

Read More Read More

Collective Enlightenment Through Postmetaphysical Eyes

Collective Enlightenment Through Postmetaphysical Eyes

Comments 1 comment

The paper can be found here. The abstract follows: Enlightenment has had broadly different definitions is the East and West. In the East it is seen as an individual accessing meditative states that transcend the world of form in a metaphysical reality. In the West it is more about individual development to abstract reasoning, which can accurately represent empirical reality but is itself an a priori, metaphysical capacity. Enlightenment in either case is based on metaphysical individual achievements. However the…

Read More Read More

Closing in on seat of consciousness in the human brain

Closing in on seat of consciousness in the human brain

Comments 2 comments

“Once the trained CNN [convolutional neural network] showed solid performance in the simulator, we loaded it onto DRIVE PX [vehicle control computer] and took it out for a road test in the car. The vehicle drove along paved and unpaved roads with and without lane markings, and handled a wide range of weather conditions. As more training data was gathered, performance continually improved. The car even flawlessly cruised the Garden State Parkway.”