WHAT is consciousness? It is a question that has exercised the minds of neuroscientists and neuro-philosophers for decades – and plain old philosophers for centuries. And it continues to do so. For many – mostly philosophers – consciousness and the related question of the mind is immaterial. In some sense it is not of the …
Category Archives: consciousness
The evolution of altruism
THE idea of altruism is attractive. The very possibility that at least some of the time humans are able to act with the intention of benefiting others either at some cost to oneself or at least without expectation of a reward is important to secular ethics. For religions it is problematical because every act is …
Do trees have brains?
“THUS, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.” So wrote Charles Darwin in the last paragraph of On the Origin of Species. The sense one gets is that all species below the ‘higher animals’ …
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