NEWS

My Talk: Is Consciousness Fundamental?

I gave a talk on September 8, 2023 in NY at a conference organized by Philip Goff and Andrei Buckareff on the topic of “treating consciousness as fundamental.” It was a fascinating and exciting gathering, and I was honored to present alongside so many brilliant scientists and philosophers—Lee Smolin, Don Hoffman, Luke Roelofs, and Hedda Hassel Morch were among them, along with a fun public debate the first evening between Philip Goff and Sean Carroll.

Click here to watch the video of my talk, “Is Consciousness Fundamental?”

IAI Article: Consciousness May Not Require a Brain

Our intuitions have been shaped by natural selection to quickly provide life-saving information, and these evolved intuitions can still serve us in modern life… But our guts can deceive us as well, and “false intuitions” can arise in any number of ways, especially in domains of understanding — like science and philosophy — that evolution could never have foreseen.

Click here to continue reading my article in IAI Magazine, “Consciousness May Not Require a Brain”

Nautilus Article: Reflections On Impermanence

The more closely we observe the present moment, the more amorphous it becomes. It vanishes as we reach out to touch it, transforming into the next moment, and the next… When we look out at the ocean, we naturally perceive the waves while understanding (both intellectually and intuitively) that there is no real “thing” that is a wave. The concept is useful shorthand for a dynamic phenomenon that occurs in nature. So too with the human brain, which is an ever-changing symphony of electrical firing among billions of neurons…

Click here to continue reading my article in Nautilus Magazine, “What is Time?”