Tagged: consciousness

The ‘hard problem’ of consciousness

Consciousness. What is it? The Core cannot say. However, an article by Michael Graziano for Aeon Magazine makes some interesting claims. Here is an extract: Many thinkers have approached consciousness from a first-person vantage point, the kind of philosophical perspective according to which other people’s minds seem essentially unknowable. And yet… we spend a lot of […]

One Of Us: Discussing Descartes & Animal Consciousness

Relating to CC201’s study of The Renaissance is the essay ‘One Of Us’ by John Jeremiah Sullivan on animal consciousness, in which he discusses Descartes’ views on the topic. Here is an extract: Descartes’ term for them [animals] was automata—windup toys, like the Renaissance protorobots he’d seen as a boy in the gardens at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, “hydraulic statues” that […]