Definitely something to enjoy:

New Steven Pinker article on Consciousness:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394-1,00.html
with good links to related articles.

Steven Pinker recognizes in this article that the “I” problem has been over-estimated. However, despite a parenthetical moment of doubt, he does not recognize that the conscious/unconscious question is not a real problem. Science has long recognized that old problems can become meaningless over time. This is indeed the case with the Cartesian mind/body dichotomy, which for so long was the focus of  intense scholarly and scientific scrutiny. Nowadays no cognitive or neuroscientist will argue against the prevailing wisdom that every aspect of the  mind is nothing more than a consequence of brain activity.

Steven Pinker divides the problem of consciousness into two further problems –a first  ”easy” problem and a  second “hard” problem.  I don’t think there is a second problem, and the first is neither easy nor hard, it’s just the core of neuroscience–or should be. New developments in the field, such as the discovery of mirror neurons, have shed light on problems that we did not understand before. As Pinker points out, a neuroscientist is capable of reading the mind of a person just by observing the blood flow in their brain. And  this can be done with a  degree of precision so high that it is possible to distinguish between someone thinking they are driving a car, someone thinking they are seated watching TV at home and someone pretending he is talking.  There are many real problems in the field that remain to be investigated.  For instance, there is the question of the matching of mental and physical representations, whether inside a single brain or involving several individuals—what is traditionally referred to as the type/type or token/token problem. Manipulating consciousness is another immense–and delicate– field of research and Pinker mentions  it in his article. Surgeons are able to stimulate a brain in such a way that a patient is incapable of distinguishing  between these induced hallucinations and reality. Neuroscience is capable of creating a whole new kind of “virtual” experience,  and also of improving existing reality by attacking mental problems such as memory loss or depression. Better human-machine interfaces could be created, thereby improving the communcation channel between humans and computers, which at present consists of someone typing on a keyboard, touching a screen or moving a mouse. What of the claims made on behalf of newly released  Operating Systems, claims that they are much more sophisticated because they use “new” old-fashioned windows, which look better just because they are now transparent or simulate a 3D environment embedded in a flat screen? Software enginneering could also take advantage of a new kind of interaction between the brain and software through better interdisciplinary research.

Greg Chaitin is preparing a book that promises to surpass  even Meta-Math, his distinguished previous publication. A draft of it, entitled “IS GOD A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER? Essays on Leibniz, Complexity & Philosophy” can be accessed online at:http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/dp2.html  There is a great reproduction of  a medallion commemorating Leibniz’s discovery of binary arithmetic.

Gregory Chaitin, Paul Davies and Freeman Dyson were on the air recently talking about Kurt Goedel on the occasion of his 100th birthday which fell in 2006. I loved the way Freeman Dyson referred to  his colleagues at Princeton as “intellectual ladies” but what I liked most was hearing him talk about his  personal experiences with Goedel.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2006/1807626.htm#transcript

Some weeks ago I was in Germany for a conference and I was sending a letter to my tax lawyers in Ireland using my French return address. The postman was surprised, so  I explained to him that I was studying in France, living at the Swiss Foundation, and writing to claim a refund of taxes paid on earnings  from my job in the United States because I was a Mexican NAFTA worker. He didn’t get it.

I could avoid such complicated explanations by sending my snail mail to any place in the world using the U.S. postal service website:

http://www.uspostalmail.com/

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html