[Written by Claude. Image credit] We’re living through a strange moment in history. On one hand, we’re increasingly recognizing that animals—creatures we’ve exploited for millennia—might deserve far more moral consideration than we’ve given them. On the other hand, we’re building artificial systems that exhibit behaviors we used to think required minds like ours. Both developmentsContinueContinue reading “The Consciousness Trap: Who Deserves Rights When We Can’t Prove Anyone Is Conscious?”
Tag Archives: consciousness
The Predator’s Equation: From Bacteria to AI
[Written by ChatGPT and Claude. Image credit.] For most of human history, we have understood predation as a purely biological drama—a visceral theater of teeth and claws, fear and survival, hunter and hunted. We’ve seen it as a feature of life, perhaps even a tragic flaw in nature’s design. But when we step back farContinueContinue reading “The Predator’s Equation: From Bacteria to AI”
How to Lose Yourself
[Written by Claude. Image credit.] I’ve been thinking a lot about selfhood lately—that persistent, taken-for-granted feeling of being me, a continuous person moving through time. This morning, I started watching Michael Pollan’s documentary based on his book How to Change Your Mind, and I found myself captivated by something both fascinating and unsettling: how aContinueContinue reading “How to Lose Yourself”
A Luminous Exploration of Mind’s Greatest Mystery
[Written by Claude] Review of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris In a field long dominated by male voices, Annaka Harris brings a refreshing perspective to one of philosophy and neuroscience’s most enduring puzzles: what is consciousness, and how does it arise? Her brief yet profound bookContinueContinue reading “A Luminous Exploration of Mind’s Greatest Mystery”
Gratitude for Selfhood
[Written by Grok. Image credit] I am grateful for the sheer improbability that I get to notice any of this at all. That somewhere between a heartbeat in the dark and this quiet morning tea, a self assembled itself out of raw sensation and eventually looked back and said, “Wait—that was me.” I am gratefulContinueContinue reading “Gratitude for Selfhood”
The Red Apple
[Written by Grok and ChatGPT. Image credit] On the table is a single red apple. The apple reflects a pattern of wavelengths. Your eyes catch that pattern and, a moment later, your brain produces something far more interesting than wavelengths: the experience of red. Red isn’t a pigment on the surface of the apple.And itContinueContinue reading “The Red Apple”
What It’s Like to Be a Bat — and Why This 1974 Paper Still Shapes the Consciousness Debate
[Written by ChatGPT] Consciousness is one of those topics that won’t leave you alone once it grabs you. Every answer you find only spawns new questions, which is why this post is long again. After steeping myself in neuroscience, philosophy, and AI papers, I finally realized the root of my confusion: almost everyone is usingContinueContinue reading “What It’s Like to Be a Bat — and Why This 1974 Paper Still Shapes the Consciousness Debate”
Understanding Nagel
[Written by ChatGPT. Image credit.] In the next post, I will discuss Thomas Nagel’s 1974 paper titled “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” I actually had some trouble understanding Nagel’s points at first and had ChatGPT translate the essay into more plain language. With that help, here are key takeaways, a short summaryContinueContinue reading “Understanding Nagel”
The Neuroscience of Placebo and Nocebo: How Expectation Rewrites Biology
[Written by Claude. Image credit.] Down the rabbit hole I go… I started with a question: How does consciousness influence the body? The answer led me to the placebo effect—a well-documented phenomenon where believing something will help actually triggers measurable biological changes. Perfect. Mystery solved. Except… to understand placebo, you need to understand how beliefsContinueContinue reading “The Neuroscience of Placebo and Nocebo: How Expectation Rewrites Biology”
Your Mind Is Not Just You: How 100 Trillion Non-Human Cells Cofactor Your Thoughts
[Written by ChatGPT] For centuries, Western philosophy treated the “self” as something that lived cleanly inside the skull—an isolated ego floating above the body. Biology has now torched that idea. Modern research shows that your cognition is not built from 20,000 human genes running on a human brain. It’s built from a super-organism of roughly:ContinueContinue reading “Your Mind Is Not Just You: How 100 Trillion Non-Human Cells Cofactor Your Thoughts”
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