In my second book, World Wide Mind, I used the word “cyborg” only once. Yet World Wide Mind is even more about human-machine fusions than Rebuilt. It’s about the possibility of communicating directly from one brain to another using implanted devices. I wrote at length about exotic emerging technologies like optogenetics, which reveals and controls neural activity in unprecedented detail. Optogenetics has already transformed how neuroscientists study the brain.

So why did I use the word “cyborg” only once? The simple answer is that I needed the word for my first book. When I got to my second, I didn’t need it anymore.

A few weeks after I went deaf, my audiologist handed me a cochlear implant that had been opened up so that the circuitry was visible. It was shocking. This thing, this circuit board, this maze of chips and wires and resistors, was going to go inside my head. Permanently. That was scary enough, but what was even more intimidating was knowing that it would forever change the way I perceived the world. It wouldn’t give me normal hearing. It wouldn’t even give me back the poor and partial hearing I’d had since birth. Things would sound completely different in a way that no one could describe to me. Read on...

But I think nonbelievers can do better. Much, much better, in fact. There is a way for nonbelievers to see transcendent meaning and purpose in the cosmos, and in human life.

To get there, nonbelievers have to show that that meaning emerges inevitably, inexorably, out of the basic physical processes of the universe, and that it is not optional or accidental. They have to show that it provides a guide for action here on Earth, that is, it has to help us make moral choices. They have to show that it offers a coherent explanation for suffering. Finally, they have to show that that meaning is good enough, interesting enough, and rewarding enough to be worth teaching and celebrating. That it provides occasion for reverence and – just possibly – prayer…Read more.

Dear Michael,

Do you think consciousness can be maintained in individuals who, hypothetically, have parts of their brainreplaced by computer chips? I ask because I took a cognitive science course during the fall semester in which we discussed the hypothetical “Zombie Problem” proposed by Searle in 1992. The long and short of it is that he proposed that if parts of a brain were replaced by silicon computer chips (albeit ones that perfectly replicate the functions of the natural neuronal make up) the mind (ie consciousness) would still eventually be lost, even if external function appeared to remain normal. Essentially the question is: is consciousness a result of morphology or matter? Can a brain with consciousness be made of inorganic matter, or different organic matter than it is made of?

Silas Busch, Bard College

Dear Silas,

I’ve thought a lot about that question. Certainly a great many people assume that the brain is fundamentally a giant collection of switches, and therefore it (and any part of it) could in principle be replaced with any other set of switches, regardless of their physical nature. From that perspective, the answer to your question is simple: yes.

But I think the assumption that the brain is just a giant collection of switches overlooks several important points. For one thing, it assumes that a neuron is fundamentally just a simple switching machine, one that can easily be reverse-engineered. It just counts up the number of incoming signals and decides whether to fire or not based on those signals. But there is in fact a great deal of computation going on within individual neurons. The molecular reactions in the cytoplasm and membranes are fantastically complex. I once heard a professor at the University of Pennsylvania characterize the neuron as “a supercomputer in its own right.” If that is true, then the output of a neuron, while simple in itself –  0 or 1 — is the outcome of a complex process about which we know very little. And if we know very little about it, it’s going to be hard for us to replace it with an equivalent switch.

You also have to consider the fact…Read more.

I wanted to play Half-Life 2 without killing anybody…Read more.

I always like having my perspective completely upended. So I keep a weather eye on such things, hoping someday for better evidence.

I’ve just read Eben Alexander’s recently published book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Into The Afterlife. Dr. Alexander tells a vivid story of nearly dying of meningitis, during which, he says, he experienced a full-blown near-death experience (NDE) in which he visited a divine realm filled with love and knowledge.

I have no doubt that Alexander sincerely believes that he had the experience; a neurosurgeon who worked at Harvard Medical School isn’t going to be a charlatan. He offers what is, within the story, evidence that it really happened: he met a woman whom he later found was his birth sister, now deceased.

The problem with such claims is that there’s no way to verify them externally. We have only Alexander’s word to go on. Here’s what would do it for me: a person having an NDE coming back with an equation, and an explanation of it, that could not possibly be known by science at the time. If, for example, an NDE in 1900 returned speaking of an equation where energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, that would be impressive. Or if one returned today with an equation unifying quantum mechanics with relativity, or explaining why the fine-structure constants of the universe are they are, or why the universe has only three large-scale spatial dimensions, that would impress me.

Let’s look at this idea a little more closely…Read more.

That said, some of the worst Tea Party fanatics have been voted out, including Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, and Joe Walsh. Allan West appears to have lost, and Bachmann held on by only 1%, whereas she won by 13% in 2010. And some strong progressive Democrats have won, including Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, Tammy Duckworth, and Elizabeth Warren. At least we now have a somewhat better Congress, and we no longer have to fear that the Supreme Court will become even more stacked with right-wing judicial activists. Yesterday was a good day for progressive hopes. Read more…