Consciousness

Consciousness is what many neuroscientists regard as one of the major unsolved riddles of life as it’s known. Is it biological? Is mentation comparable to ingestion or defecation? What does cogito ergo sum mean? Or should it be sum ergo cogito? Or hic cum?  For one, it designates self-rellexive consciousness as the trait separating man from animal. One might say Descartes was an early exponent of speciation while others like Steven J. Gouid see it developing as a result of bipedalism. Prehensile ancestors, the Australopithecus afahrensis of "Lucy" fame, existing 3.8 million years ago, are considered precursors to conscious, thinking beings. The mind/body problem has yet to be solved. In an article in The New Yorker entitled "Why the Godfather of A.I. Fears What He's Built" (11/13/23) Joshua Rothman says, “You have some eighty billion neurons sharing a hundred trillion connections or more. Your skull contains a galaxy worth of constellations, always shifting.” AI is getting closer creating the "neural nets" that produce thinking computers. If it's possible to understand what goes on in a computer, then the riddle of the mind won't be far behind.

read Hallie Cohen interview on collaboration

and listen to "Ain't That Peculiar" by Marvin Gaye