Questions about the nature of consciousness remain among the most perplexing areas of modern scientific research, with ...

The origins of consciousness date back about 540 million years ago, when animal bodies became more complex. Feelings like ...

Walk into consciousness labs, and you will mostly find studies on humans relying on verbal reports. This evidence is then ...

Consciousness research in 2025 has shifted from abstract philosophy to concrete lab results, with competing theories now ...

The brain in a jar is a different inquiry than traditional questions about artificial intelligence. The brain in a jar asks whether thinking requires a thinker. The possibility of artificial ...

When René Descartes watched a mechanical figure move with lifelike precision in the 17th century, the scene unsettled him.

The only reasonable stance on conscious AI is “agnosticism”: that we won’t, and may never, be able to tell, says a philosophy-of-consciousness expert. This gulf in our knowledge could be exploited by ...

Can a species become too self-aware to survive? Philosopher Peter Zapffe thought so. His dark vision argues consciousness is ...

Many researchers now agree that animal consciousness is more common than once believed. One of the leading animal sentience researchers is LSE Philosophy Professor Jonathan Birch. His research is ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Andréa Morris reports on emergent intelligence in diverse systems. Last year, scientists inferentially detected the existence of ...