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”
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?”
The great mystery of consciousness is why matter lights up with felt experience. After all, we are composed of particles indistinguishable from those swirling around in the sun; the atoms that compose your body were once the ingredients of countless stars in our universe’s past. They traveled for billions of years to land here—in this particular configuration that is you—and are now reading these words…
Click here to continue reading my article in Nautilus Magazine, “Is Consciousness Everywhere?”
My commentary on Philip Goff’s Galileo’s Error for the Journal of Consciousness Studies, along with papers by Carlo Rovelli, Sean Carroll, Anil Seth, Galen Strawson, and others will be published in a special issue of JoCS in October 2021. In the meantime, my piece is available now on my website.
I wrote an introduction for Judith Stenneken’s new photography book A Mountain is Only a Slow Wave. Judith undertakes parallel investigations into time and consciousness through her photographic work, and I hope my piece on impermanence serves to enhance the power of her images. Click the link below to read a preview of the essay and learn more about Judith’s beautiful and interesting project.