Dogs and infants may not be able to tell us what they’re thinking, but we are developing the tools that will help us find out.
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Articles on Consciousness
Displaying 1 - 20 of 79 articles
The psychotropic allure of the ayahuasca plant for hundreds of thousands of non-Indigenous consciousness seekers is raising many concerns.
Brain scanners and AI can turn brainwaves into streams of text – but language only captures a tiny fraction of our mental experience.
What if there’s no experiment to work out which theory of consciousness is correct?
Mind wandering is often confused with daydreaming, but they are not the same thing.
The feasibility of mind uploading rests on three core assumptions. How plausible is each one, really?
There’s a battle over consciousness research – and whether it can be understood purely through science.
Big names in consciousness research have signed an open letter attacking ‘integrated information theory’ as pseudoscience, sparking uproar.
The science of human consciousness offers new ways of gauging machine minds – and suggests there’s no obvious reason computers can’t develop awareness.
We still don’t know a lot about how the networks of cells in the brain enable conscious experience.
if a machine can ascribe intent to the events and experiences befalling it, this raises the question of identity and what it means to be aware of oneself and others
Our motives for classifying animals may be more about guilt than curiosity.
The key to understanding why life is not explainable in current physics may be to reconsider our notions of time and information.
New research shows that post-coma patients who appear to be in a minimally conscious state can still mentally react to language. This finding could help improve their diagnosis and treatment.
Recent studies suggest that the mind of a bee is far more sophisticated than once believed.
Irony is linked to the ability to say one thing while thinking another – which means it’s also intrinsic to being human. What does new research into artificial intelligence and irony reveal?
Fluent expression is not always evidence of a mind at work, but the human brain is primed to believe so. A pair of cognitive linguistics experts explain why language is not a good test of sentience.
A Google engineer claims one of the company’s chatbots has become sentient. Experts disagree, but the debate raises old questions about the nature of consciousness.
Researchers used a test designed for babies to show that rhesus monkeys can sense their own heartbeats. The finding opens up important paths of research into consciousness and mental health issues.
Plus, how a team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony using AI. Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.
Top contributors
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Professor of Philosophy, Durham University
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Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University
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Hon Professor of Neuropsychology, Cardiff University
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Emeritus Professor of Psychology, UCL
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Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham
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Lead, Cognition and Consciousness Imaging Group, Division of Anaesthesia, University of Cambridge
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Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, University of Cambridge
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Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Oklahoma State University
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Affiliate Guest in Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara
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Professor, School of Philosophy, Australian National University
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Professor of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, The University of Melbourne
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Honorary Fellow, Australian Catholic University
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Associate professor, The University of Melbourne
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Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Education; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland
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PhD in machine ethics, University of Canterbury
