{"id":199466,"date":"2026-03-26T15:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/what-is-consciousness-michael-pollan-spent-4-years-looking-for-the-answer\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T15:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:55:13","slug":"what-is-consciousness-michael-pollan-spent-4-years-looking-for-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/what-is-consciousness-michael-pollan-spent-4-years-looking-for-the-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"What is consciousness? Michael Pollan spent 4 years looking for the answer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/what-is-consciousness-michael-pollan-spent-4-years-looking-for-the-answer-278888\">What is consciousness? Michael Pollan spent 4 years looking for the answer<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/what-is-consciousness-michael-pollan-spent-4-years-looking-for-the-answer-278888\">https:\/\/theconversation.com\/what-is-consciousness-michael-pollan-spent-4-years-looking-for-the-answer-278888<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-26 15:07:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"theconversation.com\">theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The article highlights the evolution of psychology\u2019s focus from introspection to observable behaviour to cognitive processes, noting the recent resurgence in the study of consciousness.<\/li>\n<li>Despite significant intellectual effort, consensus on the nature of consciousness and its underlying mechanisms remains elusive.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Pollan\u2019s book, <em>A World Appears<\/em>, investigates consciousness through the lenses of sentience, feeling, thinking, and the self. It delves into controversial areas like plant sentience and the consciousness of plants.<\/li>\n<li>Pollan challenges prevailing assumptions about consciousness, questioning whether it can be fully understood or simulated by machines.<\/li>\n<li>The book juxtaposes scientific efforts with philosophical and literary explorations, suggesting that first-person experiences may offer deeper insights into consciousness than third-person research.<\/li>\n<li>Pollan expresses skepticism about the academic study of consciousness, advocating for a balance between scientific investigation and humanistic approaches.<\/li>\n<li>The book ultimately suggests that perhaps consciousness cannot be reduced to a singular theory and that multiple, competing perspectives together may illuminate various dimensions of human and non-human experience.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is consciousness? Michael Pollan spent 4 years looking for the answer https:\/\/theconversation.com\/what-is-consciousness-michael-pollan-spent-4-years-looking-for-the-answer-278888 Publish Date:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":199467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/726343\/original\/file-20260325-71-2q40ps.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C579%2C5220%2C2610&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199468,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199466\/revisions\/199468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}