IS there some feature, or set of features, that set humans apart from all other animals? And if there is, does that make us different in kind or degree? Until relatively recently it was thought that humans were unique. It is an idea promoted throughout the millennia by various religions but also by secular thinkers …
Category Archives: Philosophy of the mind
A matter of consciousness
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 …
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’ …
The dark theatre of the mind
WE intuitively believe that what we see is what there is. Despite philosophers like Kant and Schopenhauer telling us that it is actually the brain that determines how we experience the phenomenal world, it has never felt right; it still doesn’t. But how does the brain find out about the world, trapped as it is …
Levels of consciousness
IT often feels that we are either conscious or unconscious. But are there, as this blog investigates, more levels of consciousness? The idea that there are varying degrees of consciousness has a long and distinguished history ranging from Plotinus to to Jung and Freud in the 20th century. Jung, for example, identified the mineral world, …
Judgement versus Reckoning
DEPENDING on what you read Artificial Intelligence (AI) is either the ultimate threat to humanity – always supposing we survive the climate crisis of course – or it’s our great saviour. Some argue that AI is developing so fast that it will take over the jobs currently done by humans, leaving humanity without meaning or …
Ultimate reality – what if anything is the truth?
“Whether you’re a scientist of not, consciousness is a mystery that matters. For each of us, our conscious experience is all there is. Without it there is nothing at all, no self, no interior and no exterior.” So writes Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex in his book …
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Narrowing Ultimate Reality
IN the last blog we investigated the somewhat bewildering range of positions on ultimate reality. So, it is now time to narrow things down. And to do that we will be eschewing dualism, or at least remaining agnostic about its truth, simply because of the seemingly unsurmountable problems it has with how two different substances …
The labyrinths of Ultimate Reality
THE first move here following on from the last blog is to is to give a brief definition of Ultimate Reality – and are there are two possibilities. The first is that it is whatever the universe is in itself regardless of our position within it. Secondly, it is what ever presents itself to our …
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