Good news: You are not your brain

Good news: You are not your brain
- March 27, 2012
- Research by Donald D. Hoffman, cognitive sciences professor, is featured in the Huffington Post March 27, 2012
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From the Huffington Post:
Like a personal computer, science needs a recycle bin for ideas that didn't work
out as planned. In this bin would go commuter trains riding on frictionless rails
using superconductivity, along with interferon, the last AIDS vaccine, and most genetic
therapies. These failed promises have two things in common: They looked like the wave
of the future but then reality proved too complex to fit the simple model that was
being offered.... We've become excited by a flawless 2008 article published by Donald
D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California Irvine.
It's called "Conscious Realism and the Mind-Body Problem," and its aim is to show,
using logic, philosophy, and neuroscience, that we are not our brains. We are "conscious
agents" -- Hoffman's term for minds that shape reality, including the reality of the
brain. Hoffman is optimistic that the thorny problem of consciousness can be solved,
and science can find a testable model for the mind. But future progress depends on
researchers abandoning their current premise, that the brain is the mind. We urge
you to read the article in its entirety, but for us, the good news is that Hoffman's
ideas show that the tide may be turning.
For the full story, please visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/mind-brain_b_1379446.html?re....
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