consciousness

Your EEG is an ocean. Separating this signal out into different waveforms can tell us a bunch about what you’re experiencing. We might look at your beta waves, from 15-30 Hz, which are associated with your experience of active conscious processing. Or theta, from 4-7 Hz, which you make lots of in REM sleep, as well as flow, hypnagogic, and creative... See more

What happens when what we’re thinking becomes increasingly transparent to technology and therefore to the rest of the world?

“ Consciousness is what is like to be you. It is the set of experiences, emotions, sensations, and thoughts that occupy your day, at the center of which is always you, the experiencer. You lose consciousness when you go under anesthesia and when in a dreamless sleep, and you gain consciousness when you wake up in the morning or come up from anesthe... See more

In ordinary language, we frequently speak of machinery or ideas ‘doing’ things in our lives. But they do nothing. People – human persons – produce, operate and apply their creations. The problem with assigning agency, even informally, to the nonhuman is that this disguises the strength of human control, limited though it is in other respects. It le... See more