What is consciousness? This question has occupied philosophers for millennia and remains a major mystery of science today. Aristotle believed that consciousness exists as a continuum. So plants have a ...

I recently attended a panel discussion titled Being Human in the Age of Intelligent Machines. At one point during the evening, a philosophy professor from Yale said that if a machine ever became ...

Where in the brain does consciousness originate? Theories abound, but neuroscientists still haven’t coalesced around one explanation, largely because it’s such a hard question to probe with the ...

"I know it when I see it.” How do we define or quantify what we recognize instantly and viscerally, yet struggle to name or ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. It’s difficult to agree on one definition of consciousness, so it ...

An image generated by prompts to Google Gemini. (Courtesy of Joe Nalven) This column was composed in part by incorporating responses from a large-language model, a type of artificial intelligence ...

This question originally appeared on Quora, the knowledge-sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google ...

The only reason humans know about the existence of consciousness — the phenomenon of having subjective feelings and experiences — is because we have feelings and experiences. But despite centuries of ...