These are good times to be a thinking, conscious creature, despite events in the world that might make us doubt that. These are even better times to be a creature who thinks about consciousness: the ...

What does it mean to be conscious? People have been thinking and writing about this question for millennia. Yet many things about the conscious mind remain a mystery, including how to measure and ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: It used to be thought that without the cerebral cortex, consciousness could not exist. New research, however, has found that humans and animals ...

A RECENT GROUNDBREAKING EXPERIMENT in which anesthesia was administered to rats has convinced scientists that tiny structures in the rodents’ brains are responsible for the experience of consciousness ...

“I think, therefore I am,” René Descartes, the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician, famously wrote in 1637. His idea was straightforward: even if your senses, the world, or your body ...

Unraveling how consciousness arises out of particular configurations of organic matter is a quest that has absorbed scientists and philosophers for ages. Now, with AI systems behaving in strikingly ...

For centuries, the question of what consciousness is—where it comes from, and what it does—was left to philosophers and mystics. But now, scientists across biology, neuroscience, and physics are ...

The origins of consciousness have been debated by philosophers for centuries. Each conscious person has a sense of "being me," which invariably gives rise to the question of where that sense ...

The science of consciousness has not lived up to expectations. Over the summer, the neuroscientist Christof Koch conceded defeat on his 25-year bet with the philosopher David Chalmers, a lost wager ...

A new essay explores which conditions must be met for consciousness to exist. At least one of them can't be found in a computer. Would it be desirable for artificial intelligence to develop ...

Some researchers believe consciousness is a byproduct of the constantly firing web of neurons in our heads. However, others believe something more theoretical must be involved to explain our complex ...

A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience ...