Since the very first behaviorally modern humans walked the Earth some 50,000 years ago, there has been an enhanced sophistication in their cognitive talents and an expansion of brainpower brought about by a gradually increased utilization of the human brain’s extraordinary architecture. Fossil evidence of significantly more creative activities, like making tools out of bones, … Continue reading Our Most Important Task
“Solitude seems to me to wear the best favor in such as have already employed their most active and flourishing age in the world’s service…We have lived enough for others; let us at least live out the small remnant of life for ourselves; let us now call in our thoughts and intentions to ourselves, and … Continue reading Awareness and Consciousness
In the Review section of the WSJ this weekend in an article by Frank Wilczek, he casually suggested that it shouldn't be so difficult to accept, intuitively, that life and mind emerge from matter, as if we were all just somehow mistaken or deluded about the source of life and mind. Wilczek shared the Nobel … Continue reading Emergent Realities
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, William Faulkner addressed important elements surrounding the "poet's, the writer's duty:" "I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work – a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of … Continue reading A Universal Spiritual Perspective
"The working hypothesis of this book is that consciousness emerges from neuronal features of the brain. Understanding the material basis of consciousness is unlikely to require any exotic new physics, but rather a much deeper appreciation of how highly interconnected networks of a large number of heterogeneous neurons work. The abilities of coalitions of neurons … Continue reading Quest for Consciousness
[image credit: St. Jude Medical; North East Vision Magazine] I recently reviewed a publication I received a while back from Scientific American entitled, "Mind and Brain," written by Gerald D. Fischbach, who served as Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School from 1990 - 2000. The complexity of the human brain as … Continue reading Human Brain, Human Mind, Human Consciousness, Human Spirit
John's Consciousness 