Philosophy
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Philosophy of mind
Philosophy’s blindspot
Education has long been ignored by contemporary philosophers. That is a myopic view that must change
David Bakhurst
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Consciousness and altered states
Seeing and somethingness
An evolutionary approach to consciousness can resolve the ‘hard problem’ – with radical implications for animal sentience
Nicholas Humphrey
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Neuroscience
The turbulent brain
Energy flow between brain and environment drives the non-equilibrium that sustains life. Could turbulence help us thrive?
Morten L Kringelbach & Gustavo Deco
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Philosophy of mind
The philosopher’s zombie
The infamous thought experiment, flawed as it is, does demonstrate one thing: physics alone can’t explain consciousness
Dan Falk
video
Philosophy of mind
Embodied cognition seems intuitive, but philosophy can push it to some strange places
14 minutes
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Knowledge
How do you know?
Correct information doesn’t always come with its own bright halo of truth. What makes something worth believing?
Nate Sheff
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Human evolution
Homo imaginatus
Imagination isn’t just a spillover from our problem-solving prowess. It might be the core of what human brains evolved to do
Philip Ball
video
Philosophy of mind
Forget babbling and toddling – mindreading is babies’ most incredible skill
7 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A theory of my own mind
Knowing the content of one’s own mind might seem straightforward but in fact it’s much more like mindreading other people
Stephen M Fleming
video
Philosophy of mind
Caring for the vulnerable opens gateways to our richest, deepest brain states
7 minutes
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Evolution
What animals think of death
Having a concept of death, far from being a uniquely human feat, is a fairly common trait in the animal kingdom
Susana Monsó
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Philosophy of mind
The mind does not exist
The terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are messy, harmful and distracting. We should get rid of them
Joe Gough
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Philosophy of mind
You are a network
You cannot be reduced to a body, a mind or a particular social role. An emerging theory of selfhood gets this complexity
Kathleen Wallace
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Animals and humans
The joy of being animal
Human exceptionalism is dead: for the sake of our own happiness and the planet we should embrace our true animal nature
Melanie Challenger
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Neuroscience
Myth and the mind
Saturated with rites and symbols, psychology feeds a deep human need once nourished by mythology
Rami Gabriel
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Philosophy of mind
The problem of now
The injunction to immerse yourself in the present might be psychologically potent, but is it metaphysically meaningful?
John Martin Fischer
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Thinkers and theories
The body as mediator
The phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty entwines us, via our own beating, pulsing, living bodies, in the lives of others
Dan Nixon
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Neuroscience
How close is too close?
The neuroscience of peripersonal space explores how you create, defend or relax the buffer zone between you and the world
Frédérique de Vignemont & Colin Klein
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Cognition and intelligence
On the same wavelength
The urge to align our minds and emotions with those we care for, whether they are near or far, makes our species unique
Hayden Kee
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Philosophy of mind
The value of uncertainty
In fiction, it grips us. In life, it can unravel us. How can brains hooked on certainty put its opposite to good use?
Mark Miller, Kathryn Nave, George Deane & Andy Clark
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Biology
The face of the fish
They’re not cuddly, they don’t behave at all like us – yet they are sentient. Why fish belong in the moral community
Michael Woodruff
video
Philosophy of mind
Anil Seth on why our senses are fine-tuned for utility, not for ‘reality’
10 minutes
video
Personality
How scars continue to shape the mind long after the tissue has settled
19 minutes
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Neuroscience
Frames of consciousness
Can electrical impulses in the brain explain the stuff that dreams are made on? What a new consciousness-detector reveals
Joel Frohlich