In this article, Lee Billings riffs on Stanislaw Lem’s relatively unknown book of philosophical essays, Summa Technologiae (Electronic Mediations), written in 1964 but not fully translated into English until 2013. Lem is known primarily for his science fiction writing, especially the 1961 novel Solaris, adapted into a meditative film by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972. In … Read more
Recently, I shared an article from George Dvorsky called “You Might Never Upload Your Brain Into a Computer,” in which he outlined a series of reasons for his position: 1. Brain functions are not computable2. We’ll never solve the hard problem of consciousness 3. We’ll never solve the binding problem 4. Panpsychism is true 5. … Read more
I think we need to drop the “might” from that headline and replace it with “will.” Still, George Dvorsky gets a big AMEN from me on this piece from io9 (even if it is a year old). For the record, however, I feel compelled to lodge my disagreement with point #5, that “mind-body dualism” is … Read more