Science and Free Will. The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. The Stone is featuring occasional posts by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, that apply critical thinking to information and events that have appeared in the news. Could science prove that we don’t have free will? An article in Nature reports on recent experiments suggesting that our choices are not free. “We feel that we choose,” says the neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes, “but we don’t.” The experiments show that, prior to the moment of conscious choice, there are correlated brain events that allow scientists to predict, with 60 to 80 percent probability, what the choice will be.
But my wife might be 100 percent certain that, given a choice between chicken livers and strip steak for dinner, I will choose steak. This is not necessarily because freedom is some mysterious immaterial quality that is beyond the ken of science. Could a Computer Ever be Conscious. The Analysis of mind, by Bertrand Russell. Prominent scientists sign declaration that animals have conscious awareness, just like us.
The content of your mind is not your choice. Sadhguru. How consciousness works – Michael Graziano. Scientific talks can get a little dry, so I try to mix it up. I take out my giant hairy orangutan puppet, do some ventriloquism and quickly become entangled in an argument. I’ll be explaining my theory about how the brain — a biological machine — generates consciousness.
Kevin, the orangutan, starts heckling me. ‘Yeah, well, I don’t have a brain. But I’m still conscious. What does that do to your theory?’ Kevin is the perfect introduction. Many thinkers have approached consciousness from a first-person vantage point, the kind of philosophical perspective according to which other people’s minds seem essentially unknowable. Lately, the problem of consciousness has begun to catch on in neuroscience. I believe that the easy and the hard problems have gotten switched around. In a period of rapid evolutionary expansion called the Cambrian Explosion, animal nervous systems acquired the ability to boost the most urgent incoming signals. Attention requires control. And then what? 21 August 2013. Enlightenment’s Evil Twin. Exploring the Shadow Side of Meditation In 1974 Hans Burgschmidt was sixteen years old, living in the Canadian Prairies, working in a photography studio darkroom, elbow-deep in chemicals all day long.
“Is this what life is about?” He asked a high school friend. “You need to meditate,” was the reply. Not long after, Hans attended a lecture at the local library, where a man in a suit spoke about the scientific benefits of relaxation. He pressed Play on the industrial-sized U-Matic video player and there was Maharishi Mahesh, the Indian yogi who initiated the Beatles into the mysteries of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and launched the meditation careers of thousands of Western devotees. “An infinite ocean of peace and love and happiness awaits you,” said the radiant Maharishi, with his flowing hair and his garland of flowers. Hans was hooked. But somewhere along the line Hans became disenchanted.
Thus began Hans’ long career as an itinerant spiritual seeker. Hans is not alone. A Higher Conscious Conversation.