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The 52:52:52 project, launching both on this site and on social media in early 2024 will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

This site addresses what's changing, in our own lives, in our organisations, and in wider society. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 areas, ranging from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and very much else inbetween.

Halcyon's aim is to help you reflect on how you can better deal with related change in your own life.

What's Changing? - Consciousness

Consciousness

 

Please see below selected recent consciousness-related change.

 

See also:

 

March 2024

 

November 2023

  • The nature of consciousness and the existence of the self has been a long-standing debate in science and philosophy, with two main opposing views: the belief in a real, intrinsic self and the idea that the self is an illusion. Modern neuroscience suggests that the self is an informational entity that emerges from cognitive processes within the brain. This self is not material in the traditional sense but is nevertheless real and detectable. The acknowledgment of the self has profound implications for human experience, mental health, moral reasoning, and our overall comprehension of reality.
  • The science of consciousness is beset with philosophical difficulties and a scarcity of experimental data, so in 2023, when the results of a head-to-head experimental contest between two rival theories were announced, they were met with some fanfare. The results were inconclusive, with some favouring “integrated information theory” and others lending weight to the “global workspace theory”. The outcome was covered in both Science and Nature, as well as larger outlets including the New York Times and The Economist. A group of 124 consciousness scientists and philosophers – many of them leading figures in the field – then published an open letter attacking integrated information theory as “pseudoscience”; the letter generated an uproar

 

October 2023

  • Researchers created the largest atlas of human brain cells so far, revealing more than 3,000 cell types - many of which are new to science. The work, published in a package of 21 papers in ScienceScience Advances and Science Translational Medicine, will aid the study of diseases, cognition and what makes us human, among other things, according to the authors. Researchers have previously mapped the human brain using techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging, but this is the first atlas of the whole human brain at the single-cell level, showing its intricate molecular interactions.

 

June 2023

 

May 2023

  • There is little consensus about when consciousness begins. Some endorse a "late onset" (well after birth), while others endorse an "early onset" (at or prior to birth). One line of research suggests that 35-week-old foetuses possess some level of consciousness. Whenever consciousness first emerges, it may do so in a form that is radically unlike that with which adults are familiar, leading Big Think to note that the bigger question might be: when does distinctively human consciousness begin?
  • Research suggested tat just a tiny part of the brain plays a key role in enabling consciousness. The findings might someday be used to bring people out of comas, treat consciousness disorders or ensure patients stay anesthetised during intensive procedures.

 

December 2022

 

June 2022

 

May 2022

  • The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul argued that the mind constructs our thought processes from the resources available outside the brain. These resources include the feelings and movements of our bodies; the physical spaces in which we learn and work; and the other minds with which we interact - our classmates, colleagues, teachers, supervisors, friends, while scientists, artists, authors; leaders, inventors, entrepreneurs all use the world as raw material for their trains of thought. 

 

January 2022

  • In recent years, a body of experiments have shown that fungi operate as individuals, engage in decision-making, are capable of learning, and possess short-term memory. These findings highlight the spectacular sensitivity of such ‘simple’ organisms, and situate the human version of the mind within a spectrum of consciousness that might well span the entire natural world.

 

December 2020

 

July 2020

  • The problem of consciousness is one of the hardest facing science and philosophy today, noted IAI, adding that, in order to inquire fruitfully into this great problem, we first need to make sure we are asking the same question, and have an adequate initial clarification of what we are talking about. IAI adds that there are perhaps five leading ideas in the existing philosophy and science of consciousness: qualia; what it is like for something to be that thing; subjectivity; intentionality; and phenomenality. Each of these five ideas has advanced inquiry in different directions, but they have all failed to provide an initial clarification of the subject. They demonstrate the unfortunate fact that minds are not meeting - we seem concerned with different subjects.
  • A study from psychologists at Queen's University in Canada reported observations of the transition from one thought to another in fMRI brain scans. Though the researchers didn't detect the content of our thoughts, their method allowed them to count each one. Referred to as "thought worms," the team said that the average human has 6,200 thoughts per day. While we average 6,200 thought worms a day, the team anticipates further research tracking the manner in which the number of daily thoughts an individual has may change over the course of a lifetime and in investigating potential associations between how quickly a person jumps from one thought to another and other mental and personality traits.

 

May 2020

 

August 2019

 

April 2019

 

January 2019

 

October 2018

  • We seem to make constant progress in understanding the world and yet the biggest questions from the nature of consciousness to the nature of matter remain unsolved. An IAI debate asked therefore: can we ever have a complete description of reality? Are we mistaken to assume that such questions can be answered? Might the solutions be beyond us or is the world itself beyond description? Or round the corner are the world's secrets to be found?

 

July 2018

 

June 2018

 

Pre 2018

  • Will the technology of mind uploading will eventually become universally adopted by all who can afford it, similar to the adoption of modern agriculture, hygiene, or living in houses?
  • In 2011, philosopher Raymond Tallis and RSA CEO Matthew Taylor debated competing claims about the ability of neuroscience to explain behaviour, culture and society. Tallis argued that recent "mania" for putting neuro-  in front of concepts as diverse as aesthetics and law is based on a reductionist overestimation of our current understanding of the brain. Tallis also argued that e.g. fMRI scans are a necessary, but not a sufficient explanation of everything we feel, from anger to love, and made the intriguing, if rather scientifically problemetic claim that such feelings actually stem from a collective "community of minds" - i.e. more from nurture than from nature.
  • The ability to read others' thoughts may have taken a step closer to reality with the news that a group of neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, reported they may have come up with a scientific way to read people’s minds.

 

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