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Mar 8, 2009
"Man's ethics must not end with man, but should extend to the universe. He must regain the consciousness of the great Chain of Life from which he cannot be separated." --Albert Schweitzer
The Great Mystery of Consciousness
"To make scientific headway in a topic as tangled as consciousness, it helps to clear away some red herrings. Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots; they have reactions like ours that indicate that someone's home. Nor can consciousness be equated with self-awareness. At times we have all lost ourselves in music, exercise or sensual pleasure, but that is different from being knocked out cold. What remains is not one problem about consciousness but two, which the philosopher David Chalmers has dubbed the Easy Problem and the Hard Problem." In this Time Magazine article, Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker presents an intriguing explanation of the neural basis for consciousness.
BE THE CHANGE
Explore your consciousness in some way today. For further reading, Harvard professors Daniel Gilbert and Randy Buckner share what happens in your brain when you aren't doing anything at all. More ...
