cheapesthostings2

On the day the iPad was launched, Apple sold over 300,000 of the tablet computers. Since then, over 3 million iPads have been sold. Our society is infatuated with technology, and this affects us in ways both obvious and subtle. Here I want to examine how our adoration of technology influences the way we think about science, and in turn how we see our whole world. I should note that I write this as a scientist, and someone with a long-time interest in, and fascination with technology. Because the words science and technology are often paired, their meanings tend to be conflated. But science can be pursued with few technological spin-offs (as is the case with astrophysics, for example) and technology can be developed without the use of science (as was the case with the early technologies developed by trial and error in prehistory). Certainly scientific discoveries can often be used to develop new technologies, and existing technologies can be evaluated scientifically. But science itself...

I first wrote about the mysteries of consciousness on this blog back in February 2006 . This prompted me to do some reading on the philosophy of mind, and in March 2006 I wrote more about consciousness. Though I didn't mention it directly in that post, a very compelling argument concerns what are called philosophical zombies . I would put the argument like this. First, ask yourself: Is it conceivable that there could be a thing that appears to be human but in fact has no conscious experience? In other words, a biological machine, identical to a human in every way, except that it has no free will, feels nothing, experiences nothing. To put it bluntly, a zombie . If your answer is no, then I would ask this: How can you know that some of the "humans" around you are not in fact zombies? Is there a device available that will measure consciousness? Granted we have tools that can measure aspects of the complex electrical and chemical activity in the brain. But complex electric...

In my continuing effort to eff the ineffable (consciousness), I today stumbled on an article by Jaron Lanier with the intriguing title " Death: The skeleton key of consciousness studies? " It's written in an entertaining manner with little in the way of technical jargon. Lanier makes some interesting points, but what struck me was the following piece near the beginning: There is a popular story about a princess who complains that she cannot sleep comfortably because of a single pea buried under layers of mattresses. That pea is consciousness in the sciences. To consider consciousness by itself is entirely undemanding. It is a pea. There is nothing to describe. An attempt to account for it in context, however, forces the construction of ever shifting, elaborate adventures of thought. What a temptation it is to dispose of this erratic data point. That is what any first year student of statistics would be taught to do. Excuse me? I was enjoying the metaphor until that last b...

Two years ago I started thinking about consciousness (my earlier posts are here and here ), and ever since, what's in my mind has been on my mind. First, some of what I've been reading lately. About a year ago, Time magazine published an article by cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker titled " The mystery of consciousness ". Pinker refers to a distinction made by philosopher David Chalmers , between the Easy Problem of consciousness (what are the neural correlates of consciousness?) and the Hard Problem (why do is there such a thing as subjective conscious experience?). Chalmers' ideas are intriguing; see for example his Scientific American piece, " The puzzle of conscious experience ". There's also a fascinating video interview with Chalmers. Now, on to some of my thoughts ... First person very singular I know that I'm conscious (in fact for René Descartes , this was the one thing that could be known with certainty). But there's no way...