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Consciousness
"Nobody expects a computer simulation of a hurricane to generate real wind and real rain," writes neuroscientist Anil Seth.
Many, from neuroscientists to philosophers to anesthesiologists, have claimed to understand consciousness. Do physicists? Does anyone?
Locked inside their minds, thousands await a cure. Neuroscientist Daniel Toker is racing to find it.
A look inside Mindstate Design Labs' effort to design drugs that reliably produce specific states of mind.
What can drugs teach us about consciousness?
Delirium is one of the most perplexing deathbed phenomena, exposing the gap between our cultural ideals of dying words and the reality of a disoriented mind.
Could AI develop true intelligence without sentience? Philosopher Jonathan Birch explores the boundaries of artificial and evolved minds.
"The amount of interest is enormous," says anesthesiologist Boris Heifets. "People are dropping in and coming out of the woodwork, trying to understand how to do this."
The biases that shape our understanding of the mind.
The Malling-Hansen writing ball, with its potential and limitations, redefined Nietzsche’s philosophical and creative expression.
MAPS founder Rick Doblin speaks to Big Think about the FDA’s rejection of MDMA therapy and the future of psychedelic treatments.
You're a moody person. You have to be — because understanding moods philosophically can be crucial to your work-life.
"Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions."
"We do not experience primarily because we have brains; we experience because we are alive."
Plato's cave metaphor illustrates the cognitive trap of ignorance, where we may be unaware of the limitations of our understanding.
While we’re busy wondering whether machines will ever become conscious, we rarely stop to ask: What happens to us?
Hospice nurse Julie McFadden shares three examples where people hold off death, just for a bit.
“The brain is never the same from one moment to the next throughout life. Never ever.”
"Upon emergence, these patients are sincerely unsure what was reality and what was a ‘dream.'"
Our “embodied minds” suggest an eventual escape from mortality via computer is unlikely.
33 years ago, the theoretical biologist Robert Rosen offered an answer to the question "Is life computable?"
At a fundamental level, only a few particles and forces govern all of reality. How do their combinations create human consciousness?
Even with the best technology imaginable, you'd probably never be able to exist as a consciously aware brain in a vat.
The truth may be out there — but it’s not in these close encounters of the third kind.
Here's the case for why science can't keep ignoring human experience.
Cognitive psychologist and poet Keith Holyoak explores whether artificial intelligence could ever achieve poetic authenticity.
Big Think recently spoke with sleep psychologist Dr. Jade Wu about the surprising consequences of forgoing sleep.
High-frequency oscillations that ripple through our brains may generate memory and conscious experience.
I also can’t conjure sounds, smells, or any other kind of sensory stimulation inside my head. This is called “aphantasia.”
The heart's rhythms may play a larger role in shaping psychedelic experiences than previously thought.