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

Another consistent finding is a slight increase in the complexity of EEG and MEG signals during the psychedelic experience. It is not clear whether this is a consequence of enhanced causal interactions within the neocortex or more chaotic activity.

It is known that the likelihood of long-term therapeutic gains increases with the likelihood of the subject having a mystical experience, prima facie evidence favoring a critical role for subjectivity. It is precisely the high emotional impact of the memories of the vivid and highly unusual psychedelic experience that serves as the primary source o

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

Consciousness is not a clever algorithm. Its beating heart is intrinsic causal power, not computation. Causal power is not something intangible, ethereal, but something physical—the extent to which the system's recent past specifies its present state (cause power) and the extent to which this current state specifies its immediate future (effect pow

if you believe in computational functionalism, then a sufficiently accurate simulation of your connectome will be conscious (whether it will be your mind, let alone a sane rather than a mad mind, is a different matter). If you believe that consciousness is a structure of causal relationships, an essential aspect of reality tied to its physical subs

From the point of view of an external observer, a silent cortex and a silenced cortex resemble each other, as neither lights up with electrical activity. Yet, while a silent cortex retains its full causal power but chooses not to speak, a silenced cortex has lost its voice and is unconscious.

One common observation is that psychedelics destabilize longrange cortical communication patterns and reduce activity in the posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus in the posterior regions of the neocortex. This is the compatible with our knowledge of the brains of people trained in mindfulness. It appears that the less these midline structures a

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

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