Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagEvolutionary consciousness research

conceptual-image-to-be-used-as-background-facade-of-buildings-representing-architecture-or-offices-of-the-business-world-stockpack-adobe-stock
Conceptual image to be used as background. Facade of buildings, representing architecture or offices of the business world.

Neuroscientist vows post-wager: We’ll nail consciousness yet!

Anil Seth, proponent of the “hallucination” theory of consciousness, vows that researchers will find that consciousness spot or circuit in the brain
Curiously, Seth used to criticize those who see consciousness as a “mystery” but he describes it that way himself when discussing the famous wager. Read More ›
black-hole-eye-of-consciousness-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpg

Is Consciousness the Sort of Thing That Could Have Evolved?

Researchers Simona Ginsberg and Eva Jablonka have written a book attempting to trace the evolution of consciousness

Evolutionary biology is a veritable geyser of story-telling. “Just-so stories” is the term evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould used to describe the many fables that biologists concoct to account for the astonishing specified complexity of living things. Of these Darwinian fables that plague evolutionary science, neuroscientist and developmental biologist Emily Casanova has noted, While modern [evolutionary] hypotheses may seem a little less far-fetched [than children’s fairy tales], they are no less fanciful—in part because modern scientists are sometimes so focused on “What adaptive advantage could this trait possible give?” rather than determining how said trait could have arisen and been passed down by other means. In addition, so often these hypotheses are untestable, so in actuality they’re not even “hypotheses”. Read More ›