Calling consciousness an "entropic engine" points to something psychologically obvious: selfhood costs energy. Maintaining a stable "me" model across time, contexts, and internal contradictions ...

For most of human history, consciousness has been something that scientists have talked around. It hasn’t really been ...

"One Hand Clapping" draws from neuroscience, evolution, philosophy and a rich tapestry of cultural references to examine how ...

Consciousness should not be deemed as an ‘all-or-nothing’ cognitive function but rather as a graded and multi-dimensional process.” ...

Scientists have spent decades trying to understand whether the layered sheet of tissue that covers your brain follows one common pattern for handling information. Each region of the cortex contains ...

An image generated by prompts to Google Gemini. (Courtesy of Joe Nalven) This column was composed in part by incorporating responses from a large-language model, a type of artificial intelligence ...

Consciousness is primarily experienced internally, but the phenomenon of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) challenges this assumption. Although scientists have developed biological-based explanations for ...

Is the “stoned ape theory” of human consciousness valid? This is the hypothesis that consuming psychedelic mushrooms played a major role in the evolution of human consciousness. It was put forth by ...

What gives rise to human consciousness? Are some parts of the brain more important than others? Scientists began tackling these questions in more depth about 35 years ago. Researchers have made ...

Any self-knowing individual, taking total responsibility for the darkness of human consciousness in microcosm within them, can leave the stream of history – the stultifying collective and personal ...