新单位茶话会第25期：技术与良知

Dr. Gino Yu gave an interesting and inspiring talk on his research which aims to use technology in order to understand consciousness. He began by speaking about how what used to be philosophical questions, such as free will, are now becoming technological ones. He showed a video of an experiment where a person is given a group of buttons and is told to press one whenever he registers the urge to do so. Wires attached to the person’s brain show that there is actually significant brain activity before the person knows that he has consciously chosen which button to press, implying that our decisions may be made before we’re even aware of them.

He also talked about how fear, as we all know, can induce physiological responses such as a quickening heart beat and an adrenaline rush, but that thoughts and ideas can do that too. He gave the examples of watching a movie, or of hearing news of one of your friends dying. These are mental stimuli which induce chemical reactions through ideas. This is opposed to physical stimuli, such as being attacked or robbed by someone. In both cases, though, it is merely the brain releasing chemicals that makes us experience the emotion. This raises questions not only of what emotions actually are, but also of the differences between the physical and mental worlds and how we experience them.

This then gave raise to the topic of religion and the question of how we communicate inner experiences. There are three ways in which we can do this: mythology, art, and ritual. If you take all three of those away from a religion, Gino argued, then there is nothing left. This is because all religions attempt to convey an inner experience, and, according to Gino, they all attempt to convey the very same experience: that right here, right now, it’s good to be alive.

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