The Sum or The Pieces or The Product
Well, here’s the pandering, patronizing sentence where,
like a good journalist, I state the screaming obvious:
AI & NBI researchers, transhumanists, philosophers, and of course neurologists have grappled with questions of the nature of the soul, consciousness, and their representative patterns in human brain activity and whether or not they can be reverse engineered, and what the hell are we, and why are we here, and does it even mean anything?
See – despite my bizarre sentence structure, I did use the word “grappled!” And I’ve never even studied journalism!
Connectome
There’s a book coming out in February: Connectome, by Sebastian Seung. It’s asking the classic questions, but more so as an overview of contemporary biological/neurological science that, more so than philosophy or religion, pushes forward our understanding of the sloppy grey thinking organ in our skulls. SciAm has pre-review up, and ANTHROBOTIC recommends – have a look – add to wish list!
And who knows, man… Are we monumentally arrogant to even wonder if we are anything other than an inevitability of chemistry and physics? [author shrugs] We’ve been asking ourselves this stuff for like, you know, ever. Probably because it’s the best question like, you know, ever.
[REVIEW VIA SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN]
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS POST:
“Connectome”
by Sebastian Seung
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