I attempted another bite-sized post, this time on the twin illusions of self / conscious will:
Decision-making is a process in nature. And a beautiful one at that, in which the ever-changing dance of electrical firing in the brain is in constant dialog with the outside world and other beings…
This post is a brief response to the claim that “we have evidence consciousness is brain-based.” The full case requires more text, but I made an attempt at a bite-sized version here:
Until we attain a significantly more advanced understanding of the brain, and of many other systems in nature for that matter, we’re forced to begin with one of two assumptions: either consciousness arises at some point in the physical world, or it is a fundamental part of the physical world (some, or all)…
The conclusion we draw about life, once we understand the reductionist story is: There’s nothing fundamentally new going on—all the ingredients were always there. “Life” is just molecules behaving like molecules under certain conditions (beginning with the ability to self-replicate). No injection of a magical tonic is required to breathe life into those atoms….
Click here to continue reading my post on the life / consciousness analogy
If we want to explain consciousness as an emergent phenomenon, we have to think carefully about what this means…
If the fundamental nature of reality is timeless (spacetime is not fundamental), everything simply IS. Without a past or a future in the way we typically think of it, any glimpse of “something” is evidence that there is, and therefore always “has been,” something…