Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup takes the “hard problem of consciousness” and completely turns it inside out. Kastrup’s PhD dissertation titled Analytic Idealism: A consciousness-only ontology, argues that consciousness is fundamental. Everything supposedly “material” (including our bodies and brains) are appearances in consciousness. Kastrup uses the concept of alter-egos to describe how we all appear to have our own individual consciousnesses. It is not that we are separate individuals with...

In his article, On the Nature of Time, Stephen Wolfram describes the computational model he has for the universe and how that results in a new way to look at time. Wolfram is a physicist, computer scientist, author, inventor of Mathematica (software used by scientists and engineers) and Wolfram Alpha (the brains behind Siri) so he knows a thing or two about computation and physics. He has been spearheading a project called The Wolfram Physics Project where they have been building a model...

You know how in cartoons sometimes they show a dotted line from a person’s eyes to show what the person is looking at? It turns out, that we actually do something like that in our own heads to track what another person is looking at. This paying attention to how we and others around us are paying attention is a part of what Michael Graziano talks about in his theory of consciousness called Attention Schema Theory (AST). In his paper, called A Conceptual Framework of Consciousness,...

Do things have properties in and of themselves, or is a thing only what it seems to be to its observer and the interactions it has with other things? Is there a universal notion of time, or is time just a local experience that is different for each observer? These are some of the questions being tackled by Carlo Rovelli in his theory of Relational Quantum Mechanics which was analyzed by Mauro Dorato in his paper Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics, Anti-Monism, and Quantum Becoming. My...

The physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (for whom the unit of velocity as compared to the speed of sound was named), brings us today’s episode, based on his book: The Analysis of Sensations. In this book, March argues that our understanding of the world is based on our sensations and that physical objects are merely thought-symbols for complex combinations of these sensations. Mach rejects the distinction between mind and matter, and emphasizes the economical nature of science, suggesting...

Thanks to the recommendation of a friend at book club, I bring you today’s episode which instead of being based on an article, is based on a YouTube video of a presentation by researcher Chris Fields entitled What Are Our Bodies? Have you been feeling old lately? Well, guess what? You are a lot older than you think. According to Fields, our bodies are part of one single body that is 4,000,000,000 years old. Not only that, it means that we share that body with every other living thing on...

The Three Dialogues, written in 1713 by George Berkeley lays out his philosophy of “indeterminism” via a series of dialogues between two characters: Hylas (representing common sense) and Philonous (representing Berkeley as the philosopher). This writing style may have been an inspiration for the approach Douglas Harding takes in parts of the Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth as a device to argue against conventional ways of thinking. Berkeley argues that there are nothing but “sensible” objects...

The NotebookLM tool that I use to generate these podcasts just got an upgrade which allows me to provide input to the “hosts” as to how they approach their discussion. This allows me to now indicated that this podcast is called the Headless Deep Dive and is targeted to those interested in the Headless Way. I’m thrilled with the outcome and I hope you are too. Today’s episode is based on the Essays in Radical Empiricism by the psychologist and philosopher William James. James focuses on...

If the sense of being a “me” is an illusion, where does it come from? That’s a topic that Professor Jay Garfield covers in today’s article called: Second Persons and the Constitution of the First Person. In the article, Garfield cites the work of developmental psychologist Vasudevi Reddy, who emphasizes the role of dyadic (two-way) interactions in infants and the way these interactions contribute to the development of self-understanding. Apparently, even before language develops, the...

Today’s article is called HOW AND WHY CONSCIOUSNESS ARISES: SOME CONSIDERATIONS FROM PHYSICS AND PHYSIOLOGY by Mark Solms and Karl Friston. What I find fascinating about this paper is the detailed description of the active inference process used by us humans, and other intelligences, to model the world, predict what it is we should be sensing and then either adjust those predictions based on prediction errors that come back from the next set of sensations or take action to gather more...

Today’s article, Predicting green: really radical (plant) predictive processing by Paco Calvo and Karl Friston reveals that plants, like animals, engage in predictive processing - a fundamental aspect of intelligence involving predictions and evidence-gathering to minimize surprise and uncertainty. Despite lacking a central nervous system, plants demonstrate intelligence through adaptive behaviors, predicting future conditions and adjusting their growth patterns accordingly. I found this...

Michael Levin is one of my favorite scientists. He and his collaborators are working in the area of biology and cognition with a framework he calls the Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere (TAME), which I find to be very much compatible with eastern philosophy and the Headless Way. One of the most mind blowing papers is Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence. This paper struck a chord with me as both someone who is interested in Buddhist-type philosophy and...

Our first episode of Headless Deep Dive of course has to be based on the writings of Douglas Harding. Douglas’s book, On Having No Head, is one of his best known and most influential books. It clearly points us to the direct experience of what it is like to be open awareness. I was flabbergasted to hear the AI generate hosts truly grasp the concepts laid out in this seminal work by Douglas Harding. I hope you enjoy it as well. For other writings by Douglas Harding and information on the...