The Power of Prediction
May 11, 2025
You’re standing at the top of a mountain, surveying the vast landscape below. The information…
Spinoza
November 24, 2024
Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch philosopher who laid the foundations for the Enlightenment.…
Hacking the Brain: Beyond the Five Senses
January 23, 2022
Humans evolved to have a variety of senses—smell, sight, touch, etc.—that provide information about the…
Summer Reading (and Misreading)
September 1, 2019
What should you be reading this summer—and how should you be reading it? We’re often…
This Is Your Brain on Art
May 19, 2019
Humans actively seek to create and consume art. Its compelling nature has been discussed in…
Neuroscience and Free Will
May 20, 2018
We like to think of ourselves as rational agents who exercise conscious control over most…
The Phenomenology of Lived Experience
April 23, 2017
Phenomenology is the philosophical study of experience and consciousness, performed by philosophers ranging from Sartre…
Has Science Replaced Philosophy?
September 6, 2015
Modern science has made astounding progress in our understanding of ourselves and the universe. Physics,…
Morality in a Godless World
March 29, 2015
Belief in God is thought by many to be the only possible source of morality,…
The Examined Year – 2014
January 4, 2015
The unexamined year is not worth reviewing. But what ideas and events that took shape…
Neuroscience and the Law
September 7, 2014
Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed that certain neurological disorders, like a brain tumor, can…
Creativity
October 17, 2010
What makes an idea or work of art creative? Can creativity be measured? Can a…
Mental Illness and Culture
May 9, 2010
Paranoia, depression, schizophrenia, bipolarity, and all the other ways Americans have discovered to be crazy…
Can Science Explain Consciousness?
April 19, 2009
Humans are conscious, billiard balls are not, and computers aren’t either. But all three are…
Philosophy and Neuroscience
September 21, 2008
Philosophers have always been concerned with the mind. What is consciousness? Representation? Emotion? Now that…
The Indispensable Emotions
November 26, 2006
Where would we be without emotions? Many philosophers throughout history have thought the emotions serve…
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