Consciousness

Is it possible for an artificial intelligence to be sentient?

Eventually, the most ethical option might be to divert all resources toward building very happy machines

Neuroscientists may have discovered the brain regions that give rise to our identity

Fear of mortality might underlie physicists’ fondness for the anthropic principle, multiverses, superdeterminism and other shaky ideas

Theories that try to explain these big metaphysical mysteries fall short, making agnosticism the only sensible stance

Video produced in partnership with The Great Courses. All Great Courses video content is available only to subscribers with the password sent via email.

Suggestibility may explain why people “feel” vicarious pain or sensation in a fake hand

Both of two essential brain networks that switch roles—one is on when the other is off—shut down in unresponsive individuals

Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about “panpsychism”

Reality is constructed by the brain, and no two brains are exactly alike

Philosopher Peter Carruthers insists that conscious thought, judgment and volition are illusions. They arise from processes of which we are forever unaware

Freud’s notion of a dark, libidinous unconscious is obsolete. A new theory holds that the brain produces a continuous stream of unconscious predictions