When Life Gives You a Brain
Episodes
Is Seeing Really Believing?
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We move through the world assuming our senses are in sync. Sight, sound, touch—they usually agree. But flip just one of them, and the whole system s...
Looking for Meaning
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about meaning all the time — what things mean, what people mean, what life means. It feels obvious that meaning is something we have. Probab...
Does the Mind Need a Body?
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us take it for granted that our thoughts have meaning. You can think about a dog, a holiday, or the square root of 144 — and somehow, your b...
What Gives Brain Activity Meaning?
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We might mistake a garden hose for a snake. There’s no snake — just a brain responding to the wrong thing in the wrong way. But somehow, we still ...
Does your Brain Represent the Outside World?
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When you see a dog, something happens in your brain. A pattern of activity fires, and somehow, that pattern feels like it means something. Cognitive s...
Could a Language Model Know What a Dog Is?
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We tend to think words get their meaning from the world.You see a dog, you learn the word “dog,” and now the word points to the thing.But large la...
How to Talk to Aliens
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Think about a sign. Or a symbol, an idea, a thought, a concept, or a representation. What kind of thing are you really thinking about?In 1972, NASA pi...
Hello? Is There Anybody in There?
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all been chatting with machines lately — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude — and they sound impressively human.It’s easy to wonder: do they just s...
If It Predicts, Is It Intelligent?
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Brains predict. LLMs predict. But does that mean they’re doing the same thing? A short essay on functions, intelligence, and the trouble with words....
How to Build a Brain
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We know how to build things — houses, bridges, and bookshelves. And when we build, we follow instructions: blueprints and manuals.But living things ...
Does Consciousness Come Along for the Ride?
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We like to think that if a system gets complex enough, consciousness just kicks in -- the lights turn on. It’s a neat idea — and it shows up every...
Why is Complexity So Complex?
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Complexity is all around us — in life, brains, weather, cities, economies... We know a brain is more complex than a rock, but good luck explaining w...
Could Entropy Explain Consciousness?
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if your conscious experience depends on the direction of time? This week I get speculative. Entropy is why cream swirls into coffee and eggs brea...
Information Isn't Free. Even Demons Must Pay
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Information isn't just an abstract concept—it has real, physical consequences. Physicists and engineers have long treated information in different w...
A Short History of the Mind (and some of the Weird Things We've Thought About It)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The mind has puzzled thinkers for centuries—Descartes saw it as something separate from the body, while today, we tend to think of it as an informat...
Consciousness: Does the Matter Matter?
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, I explore the puzzle of why we need special sciences when physics theoretically explains everything. I ask how different scientific discipl...
Coffee With a Shot of Qualia?
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Two coffee tasters at Maxwell House suddenly hate the coffee they once loved. One says he's just become more sophisticated, while the other insists hi...
False Memories are Exactly What You Need
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
False memories are incredibly common, even for everyday experiences like driving. Scientists have found that not only can memories be easily manipulat...
Yes, We Can Delete Memories. But...
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Memories aren't stored like files on a computer - they're constantly being rebuilt every time we remember them. Scientists have discovered ways to man...
Memory Is Your Brain Making Things Up
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our brains don't store memories like computers store files -- they recreate them every time we remember. When we recall something, different brain reg...
Mary's Room: Has the Answer Been in Her Textbook All Along?
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mary's Room, a famous thought experiment, imagines a scientist who learns everything about colour while living in a black-and-white room but has never...
How the Blind Use Echolocation to See
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Some blind people can see using sound. They echolocate. When they do this, their visual cortex responds to sounds like it normally would for sight. Th...
Sure, Nagel's Bat Paper is a Classic, But...
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For 50 years, Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" has been a key paper in discussions of consciousness. But have we misunderstood its centra...
What Is It Like to Be a Bat? 50 Years On
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we’re discussing one of the most famous papers in philosophy: Thomas Nagel’s 1974 classic, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?Given how influe...
The Phantom Pain Puzzle
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Late one evening in July of 1797, a musket ball was fired through the air.Europe was ablaze with the French Revolutionary Wars, and the British Royal ...
Why Do You Hurt?
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Pain is a strange sensation unlike any other we experience.While most of our senses have a clear, specific stimulus they’re responding to, pain does...
Disembodied Pain and the Limits of Armchair Philosophy
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Go on… pinch yourself.Not too hard, but hard enough to make it hurt — a little.Philosopher Brie Gertler proposed a new thought experiment that ask...
Ain't Got No Body: What 'Her' Reveals About Being Human
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Remember the movie Her?The film follows Theodore, a regular guy, as he falls for Samantha, an incredibly human-like (or superhuman-like) AI who exists...
Can We Have a Mind Without a Body?
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, we had some fun with philosophical zombies—hypothetical creatures that are physically identical to you but lack conscious experience. Ess...
The P-Zombie Argument
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a zombie.Not a flesh-eating monster that you might find in a Hollywood blockbuster (or the feature image of this article), but a philosophical...
The Mind of a Crow
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Crows are surprisingly brainy birds. This week, I got curious about the fascinating world of crow intelligence. I wanted to explore just how smart the...
Is Everything We Imagine Possible?
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Thought Experiments [Part 1]We humans love thinking about what is possible. We wonder about all sorts of things — is it possible to travel at the sp...
Ex Machina: What Would AI Think of Us?
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ex Machina raises fascinating philosophical questions about consciousness, humanity, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. At its core, the film ...
The Science of Out-of-Body Experiences
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Normally, we don't question whether our body belongs to us. Normally, we see ourselves as unified with our body, occupying the same space. But our sen...
Non-Reductive Materialism: Can Physicalists Have Their Cake and Choose to Have It Too?
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Physicalism [Part 7]. As a theory of consciousness, non-reductive materialism tries to give us everything -- our intuitive ideas about consciousness a...
How Science Thinks about Consciousness
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Defining consciousness can be challenging. Attempts to pin it down often ignite heated debates that frequently end in stalemates. This week, I explore...
Does the Mind Exist? Understanding Eliminative Materialism
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Physicalism [Part 6]. What if everything you think you know about your own mind is an illusion? Eliminative materialism makes this radical claim. They...
The Unity of Consciousness and The Binding Problem
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We perceive the world as a seemingly coherent unified stream of awareness. This apparent unity is so fundamental to our experience that we rarely ques...
Will AI Ever Be Conscious?
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The brain is a computer… or so they say. During my undergraduate studies, I often heard the mind explained as the “software” that runs on the “...
Functionalism: Why the Most Popular Consciousness Theory Might be Wrong
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Physicalism [Part 5]. Functionalism is currently the most popular theory of consciousness. It's the idea that consciousness — all our thoughts, feel...
Functionalism: The Mind is What the Brain Does.
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Physicalism [Part 4]. This week, we’re exploring functionalism — currently the most popular theory in the philosophy of mind and in scientific fie...
The Mind of an Octopus
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How intelligent are octopuses? And how many brains do they actually have? This week we are exploring the wonderful mind of the octopus. This is a publ...
Identity Theory: the Mind is the Brain
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Physicalism [Part 3]. This week, let’s examine reductive materialism (often called the identity theory). This is a public episode. If you would like...
The Woman Who Was Hung, Survived, and Sparked the Birth of Cognitive Neuroscience
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On a cold winter morning, the bustling courtyard in Oxford filled with townspeople. They had come for one reason — to watch a young woman be hanged ...
The Code that Cures Blindness
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week we explore how scientists are using computer code and optogenetics to restore sight to the blind and improve computer vision. This is a publ...
What Exists and What is Imagined?
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Physicalism [Part 2]. Ready for a mind-bending trip into the levels of reality? Where does reality begin and end? ‘…would understanding all the at...
Brain Computer Interface: A Primer
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Merging brains with machines! Will the 2020s see a boom in developing and using neurotechnologies like BCIs? New technologies, materials, computationa...
Physicalism: Are You Just a Brain?
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Physicalism [Part 1]. Regular newsletter readers will be aware of my series on The Five Most Controversial Ideas in the Study of Consciousness. This a...
Do Animals Dream? Even Flies?
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Do all animals dream? Why do we dream? What would it mean if files could dream? This week, we tackle some of the big questions about sleep and dreamin...
What is Information? The Ins and the Outs [Part 2]
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this article, we will explore information according to Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) — a popular yet controversial theory...
What is Information? The Ins and the Outs [Part 1]
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Information is one of those words we feel we understand, but when we stop to ponder its meaning, it turns out to be a tricky concept to pin down. We s...
Panpsychism: Is Everything Conscious?
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Five Controversial Ideas in Consciousness [Part 5]. This week, we continue our series on The Five Most Controversial Ideas in the Study of Consciousne...
Are Fish More Self Aware than Dogs?
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Do you think your dog is self-aware? Surprising research shows some fish species recognise themselves in a mirror, but dogs don’t. What does this te...
AI Will Not Kill Science
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Are we headed for “a phase of scientific enquiry in which we produce more but understand less”? Concerns about AI’s effect on culture seem to be...
Epiphenomenalism: Is Consciousness a By-Product?
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Five Controversial Ideas in Consciousness [Part 4]. This week, we continue our series on The Five Most Controversial Ideas in the Study of Consciousne...
Can AI Generate New Ideas?
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, I’ve been thinking about new ideas. Are novel ideas achievable? or are new ideas simply clever remixes of existing ideas? And can AI gene...
What Musk's Neuralink Will Actually Do
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Elon Musk says Neuralink will merge human brains with artificial intelligence. How realistic are these ideas? Is this our future, or are Musk’s idea...
Solipsism -- It's Just You
05 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Five Controversial Ideas in Consciousness [Part 3]. This week, we continue our series on the five most controversial ideas in the study of consciousne...
Do Neural Networks See the World Like Us?
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Asking whether artificial neural networks are like brains is an interesting question, but, to me, the more interesting question is whether the differe...
Substance Dualism and the Interaction Problem
20 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Five Controversial Ideas in Consciousness [Part 2]. This week in When Life Gives You a Brain, we’re continuing our series on The Five Most Controver...
The Homunculus Fallacy and the Infinite Regress
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Five Controversial Ideas in Consciousness [Part 1]. This week in When Life Gives You a Brain, we begin a short series dedicated to The Five Most Contr...