A framing problem rather than a single theory: the apparent tension between a universe that seems to run on cause-and-effect (or, per quantum mechanics, chance) and the near-universal human sense of authoring one’s own choices and being responsible for them. Used as the stress-test underlying every other theory in this domain.
A body of experimental work using EEG and fMRI to look for the brain’s decision-making process before a person becomes consciously aware of “deciding” — used as an empirical stress-test for the whole free will debate rather than a philosophical position in itself.
Proposes that a mind could in principle be preserved and continued outside its original brain by scanning its full computational structure and running an equally detailed simulation on a different substrate.
Proposes a theoretical future point where self-improving artificial intelligence rapidly and repeatedly makes itself smarter, producing a runaway “intelligence explosion” and a resulting superintelligence whose consequences are difficult or impossible for present-day humans to predict.
A framing problem rather than a single theory: as AI systems act on increasingly complex real-world objectives, it becomes correspondingly harder for their designers to fully specify what they actually want — so a system optimizing an imperfectly specified proxy goal can satisfy the letter of its instructions while badly violating the intent behind them. Used as the stress-test underlying every other theory in this domain.
A decades-long research program, based mainly at the University of Virginia, documenting young children who spontaneously report detailed memories of a specific deceased person’s life — in the strongest cases, memories investigators found to match a real, verifiable individual the child had no ordinary way of knowing about.
A body of clinical research studying vivid, structured experiences — a sense of leaving the body, moving through darkness toward light, profound peace, a life review — reported by a meaningful minority of people who survive cardiac arrest or come close to death.
A speculative thought experiment built on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, suggesting a conscious observer could never actually experience their own death — because in every random quantum branching event some branch always exists in which they continue, and an observer can only ever find themselves continuing to observe in a branch where they’re still alive to do so.
A neuroscience framework proposing that the quality and richness of a conscious state tracks the entropy, or disorder, of brain activity — with ordinary adult waking consciousness a relatively low-entropy, tightly regulated state, and psychedelic and other altered states a shift toward a less constrained, higher-entropy “primary” state, correlating with reduced activity in the brain’s default mode network and the subjective experience often described as “ego dissolution.”
Proposes that extraterrestrial civilizations exist and are aware of humanity, but deliberately avoid contact, treating Earth and its life as a protected, unperturbed reserve.