A Brief History of Consciousness: From Stone Tools to Artificial Intelligence

Описание: What is consciousness, and how did our understanding of it evolve through time? In this Radical Moderate episode, Dr. Ali Nasseh traces the extraordinary history of consciousness—from early human ancestors wielding hand axes, to the invention of language and writing, to modern debates in neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

This video explores ancient spiritual views, Greek philosophy, Descartes’ mind-body dualism, Locke’s identity theory, Hume’s skepticism, Freud’s unconscious, and today’s leading theories like Integrated Information Theory and Global Workspace Theory. By examining the cultural, philosophical, and scientific shifts in how we’ve understood consciousness, we reveal both how far we’ve come—and how much we still don’t know.

In the end, we make the case for epistemological humility: until we understand how consciousness works, every theory about reality must be questioned.

Chapters:
0:35 – Intro & Why Consciousness Matters
0:43 – Prehistoric Minds: Language and Fire
1:30 – Writing and the Birth of Cultural Memory
2:08 – Ancient Views: Soul, Self, and Dualism
2:51 – Printing Press, Descartes, and the Modern Mind
3:39 – Locke, Hume, and the Fragmented Self
4:00 – Psychology, Neuroscience, and the Stream of Thought
4:41 – AI and the New Frontier of Consciousness
5:19 – Process Philosophy and Experience as a Fundamental
5:39 - Panexperientialism as a possible alternative
6:23 – Emergent Truth, A Call for Epistemological Humility
7:35 - Conclusion


history of consciousness, what is consciousness, consciousness explained, origins of consciousness, neuroscience and consciousness, AI consciousness, Julian Jaynes, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, William James, Radical Moderate, theories of mind, dualism, panpsychism, emergentism, epistemological humility, integrated information theory, global workspace theory, philosophical history of mind, AI philosophy, consciousness evolution, cognitive science, panexperientialism