Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It

We are speaking apes, linguistic creatures through and through. So when GPT-5 or -6 will write the literary equivalent of War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings, it will be difficult to deny it sentience, particularly because of our inborn urge to attribute mind to other creatures. But we should, because it is all imitation. Its consciousness is as

Melanie Boly, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is painstakingly collecting EEG data from long-term Buddhist meditators during a state known as pure presence, an experience with no self, no discursive thoughts, and no perceptual content except for a luminous expanse, an empty mirror. Att

When I dream, I exist for myself, although without any insight into my condition, as the "self" is muted during dreaming. When transitioning into a deep, dreamless sleep, I cross the Great Divide of Being. My consciousness ceases to exist. Likewise when I become comatose following a stroke or accident. I am still alive, albeit on life sup

Experiences that fundamentally change the way we see the world provide clues about consciousness. I learned that the experience of self is optional. Even the feeling of having a body is not necessary for subjectivity. Transformative experiences are deeply personal and can profoundly impact lives. They are living proof that nervous tissue, under spe

It comes down to your metaphysical assumptions. If you are a computational functionalist, if you assume that computations, carried out on digital computers, are sufficient for consciousness, then sooner or later, computers will imitate all human functions, including consciousness. If not today, then soon. If, on the other hand, you assume that cons

Dreams feel as real as life—the primary distinction between dreaming and waking consciousness is an absence of a sense of self, insight, self-reflection. You aren't surprised that you can fly, walk through walls, or meet long-dead animal companions, lovers, parents, or siblings. You are along for the ride, watching a movie that someone else is dire

All quality is a structure, not a function, a process, or a computation. One implication is that consciousness is nonalgorithmic; it is not (Turing) computable.

A large region in the back of the neocortex, including temporal, parietal, and occipital neighborhoods, is closely linked to subjective experiences of sight, hearing, touch, and sensing of the body and the self. Because of its close association with consciousness, this region, the current best NCC candidate, is termed the posterior hot zone.

Common to many transformative experiences is the dissolution of the self, including loss of ego and the body it is chained to.