Mysteries of the Mental and Material

Consciousness is a central feature of our humanity, yet consciousness is a mystery. Conscious experience comprises every aspect of our waking lives, yet we have a hard time explaining its nature. We know that our brains and bodies are made up of energy and matter. We also know that if we get a big bonk on the head, we can disturb the energy and matter in such a way as to LOSE consciousness. So what is the nature of the relationship between mental properties (such as itchy feeling) and physical properties (such as firing neurons)? For millennia, humans have been trying to bridge this ‘explanatory gap.’ And as we enter the age of AI, questions about the nature of consciousness will become more relevant as we create artificial beings who will think and feel like us. 

Artificial Intelligence
Sentience
Bishop Berkeley (Idealism)
The Technological Singularity
Phenomenal Consciousness
Qualia
Animal Consciousness
Reductionism
Physicalism
Subjective/Objective Distinction
Epistemology
Mental Properties
Grits
Causal completeness/closure
The Explanatory Gap
“What it is Like to be a Bat?"” 
Cartesian Theater
Nanotechnology
Penrose Microtubules
Cartesian Dualism 
Eliminativism 
Paul and Patricia Churchland
Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennet
Conscious by Annaka Harris
The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers
Folk Psychology
Causal Overdetermination
Emergentism
Panpsychism
I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
What is it like to be a Thermostat?
Multiple Drafts Theory
Recursion
Fractals
fMRIs
Complexity and Consciousness
Substrate Independence
Emulation
Ems (Emulation) - The Age of Em by Robin Hanson
Agnosticism
Conscious Universe
Panpsychism Redux (Porcelli’s Page!)
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
Wilber’s Quantum Questions
Dancing Wu Li Masters
Interdependent Co-arising (Pratītyasamutpāda)
Indra’s Net
Vedanta
Mythopoetic Thought
Phenomenology
Meditation
Edmund Husserl
Naturalism
Psychonautics
Physicalism
Paradigm Shift and Thomas Kuhn
Ineffability
Epistemic Status of Unobservable Entities