
Published: 10 months ago
Size: 6.9MB
It starts as a simple illusion: place a rubber arm next to your own on a table, hide your arm, and stroke the fake one with a paintbrush. You'll be amazed! You'll be transfixed! You'll be in the mood to question just how easily your awareness can me misplaced!
The trick is a simple one, but the implications are profound. If stimulating a simulated limb can send your mind into a tizzy... isn't consciousness itself all about location, location, location?
Where is the mind, really? Can it be above and behind the body, as in a third-person-shooter? What about floating up and away, as in an out-of-body-experience? Can your mind be in your heart, as some Native peoples believe? Where did Helen Keller - blind and deaf from birth - feel her mind was? How did Wayne Gretzky "see the ice from above?"
These and many other questions are asked intriguingly, if not answered resoundingly, in the latest episode of JITOTM, The Rubber Arm. We stimulate - you respond!

Published: 11 months ago
Size: 7.7MB
Humans have wondered if animals can think for ages. But here's a new twist on the old question: How do you think you're influenced by speed of movement, and or kind of movement, when it comes to deciding whether an animal has a mind?
That curious question, from Jay to you, is inspired by research that indicated people seem likelier to attribute the quality of "mind" to animals that move at near-human speed.
Anthropomorphism? Egotistical bias? Or just an odd anomaly of data? It's not clear why, for example, turtles might be judged to have "mind" while cows and squirrels make the cut.
Sometimes studying consciousness is more about questions, than answers. Give the questions a listen and then send your responses to this week's episode of JITOTM, Butterfly Mind.