Second, and probably of the utmost importance(to me, at least), is the automaton-like rejection(even by Jaynes himself) of any suggestion from any quarter that the source of the command voices that bicameral men heard and obeyed, the utter denial that the ideas that are truly novel(not based on ...

The light's on, but is anybody home?

An extraordinary brain study concludes that a woman in a vegetative state is aware of herself. It's a dangerous claim that could throw families and physicians into turmoil.

By Robert Burton

Sept. 25, 2007 | In a recent article in the Archives of Neurology, a ...

Rats Capable Of Reflecting On Mental Processes

Science Daily -- Let's say a college student enters a classroom to take a test. She probably already has an idea how she will do on the test, before she even takes out a pencil. But do animals possess the same ability to think about what they know or ...

Z, by your very nature you would be looking for a black/white answer to the question of consciousness.

I don't think Alex is conscious or self-aware. But I think he is an amazingly intelligent bird. I have never met him, but I have met his trainer Dr. Irene Pepperberg several times. Considering ...

Parrots do similar things, and can talk about it as well. The best example would probably be Alex, the African Grey Parrot:

http://www.alexfoundation.org/

Alex can count, knows colors, numbers, can do alike and different, and even understands the concept of "none," which I find to be his most ...

It was many years ago, but I do recall I felt that his discussion of Ecclesiastes overlooked the fact that many people feel it was written by Solomon.

If you will review this quote carefully, you will note that *I* personally do not claim that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, nor that I think that ...

As noted elsewhere, my copy of the new Jaynes book arrived yesterday. and this gave me the energy to go looking for the letter Jaynes sent me many years ago.

I read "The Origin of Consciousness" repeatedly in 1979-80, and it was electrifying for me. My father, Stanley B. Kimball, was a professor of ...

Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t

By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: January 2, 2007


I was a free man until they brought the dessert menu around. There was one of those molten chocolate cakes, and I was suddenly being dragged into a vortex, swirling helplessly toward caloric doom, sucked ...