"Consciousness is under siege," says author Michael Pollan. His new book, A World Appears, explores consciousness on both a personal and technological level.

Fruit of the Loom's logo never had a cornucopia and you didn't have pizza for dinner last Friday. By RJ Mackenzie Published Jan 27, 2026 9:01 AM EST Image: DepositPhotos Get the Popular Science daily ...

The familiar fight between “mind as software” and “mind as biology” may be a false choice. This work proposes biological computationalism: the idea that brains compute, but not in the abstract, symbol ...

Consciousness evolved in stages, starting with basic survival responses like pain and alarm, then expanding into focused awareness and self-reflection. These layers help organisms avoid danger, learn ...

A pair of recent studies examined why sophisticated levels of consciousness evolved in some animals, but not in others. In the first study, philosophers outlined the ALARM theory that shows how three ...

In a recent IEA Insider piece, our Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz examined and critiqued the Marxist concept of ‘false consciousness’. In short ‘false consciousness’ is a term given to an ...

Consciousness is fundamental; only thereafter do time, space and matter arise. This is the starting point for a new theoretical model of the nature of reality, presented by Maria Strømme, Professor of ...

Re “What Is It Like to Be a Computer?,” by Barbara Gail Montero (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 10): Dr. Montero’s essay argues that artificial intelligence may one day become conscious. But I wonder if ...

Head of Microsoft’s AI division Mustafa Suleyman thinks that AI developers and researchers should stop trying to build conscious AI. “I don’t think that is work that people should be doing,” Suleyman ...

Majorities in 24 of the 25 countries surveyed see the spread of false information online as a major threat. Only in Israel do fewer than half of adults (43%) hold this view. An additional 27% of ...