Category: Mind
Arguing that humans are not unique, researcher trips over his own data
| May 27, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From ScienceDaily: Agustin Fuentes explores the common ancestry between humans and apes by examining characteristics that the two share. Conversely, Fuentes draws upon anthropological evidence to examine the ways in which the hominin lineage underwent changes during the Pleistocene that led to the emergence of a distinct human niche. Fuentes concludes that these divergent traits […]
Researcher asks, if ecology caused the human brain to grow so large, what about the role of language?
| May 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Further to the claim that ecology, not social challenges drove the huge increase in human brain size, Ashley Yeager offers some alternative views at The Scientist: “González-Forero and Gardner are on the right track,” David Geary of the University of Missouri in Columbia tells New Scientist. But he questions whether the model accurately calculated just how […]
Human evolution researchers: Social challenges decreased brain size
| May 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From evolutionary biologist Mauricio Gonzalez Forero at The Conversation: Most animals have brains in proportion to their body size – species with larger bodies often have larger brains. But the human brain is almost six times bigger than expected for our bodies. This is puzzling, as the brain is very costly – burning 20% of […]
Assisting others at birth not unique to humans, trumpets newspaper. Bonobos do it too.
| May 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From Mollie Cahillane at the Daily Mail: Chimps have midwives too: Incredible footage shows female bonobos protecting mothers during labor and assisting in the delivery – Scientists saw three captive bonobos give birth in France and the Netherlands – The mother did not isolate herself from the group and other females helped her – Bonobos […]
Pigeons much smarter than monkeys in some tests
| May 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Discussing the current push to give animals human-like rights, Maggie Koerth-Baker tells us at Five Thirty Eight: Animals don’t stack up the way you’d expect. “[Pigeons have] knocked our socks off in our own lab and other people’s labs in terms of what they can do,” said Edward Wasserman, a professor of experimental psychology at […]
Neuroskeptic serves up some skepticism about a recent memory transfer claim
| May 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
For sea slugs, via RNA transfer. At Discover: There’s a couple of reasons why I don’t think this is evidence of “memory transfer”. Firstly, what was transferred here was hardly a memory in the usual sense of the word. It is simply an increase in the sensitivity of a set of neurons, a single reflex […]
Neuroscience: RNA can transfer memory in sea slugs
| May 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Genomics, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From Laurel Hamers at ScienceNews: EmailPrintTwitterFacebookRedditGoogle+ Sluggish memories might be captured via RNA. The molecule, when taken from one sea slug and injected into another, appeared to transfer a rudimentary memory between the two, a new study suggests. Most neuroscientists believe long-term memories are stored by strengthening connections between nerve cells in the brain (SN: […]
Henry Kissinger: The End of the Enlightenment dawns, due to artificial intelligence
| May 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Information, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Readers may remember Henry Kissinger, a 70s-era American diplomat (“U.S. secretary of state under Richard Nixon, winning the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for the Vietnam War accords”). From Kissinger at The Atlantic: How the Enlightenment Ends: Philosophically, intellectually—in every way—human society is unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence. As the internet and increased computing […]
Homo naledi’s small but sophisticated brain challenges belief in “an inevitable march towards bigger, more complex brains.”
| May 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Human evolution, Mind, Naturalism |
From ScienceDaily: The recently-discovered species Homo naledi may have had a pint-sized brain, but that brain packed a big punch. New research by Ralph Holloway and colleagues — that include researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa — published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines the imprints of […]
A cautious defense of panpsychism (everything is conscious) as an alternative to despair of the whole field of consciousness
| May 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
From complexity theorist Adam Barrett at The Conversation: Recently, “Integrated Information Theory” has been gaining attention – and the backing of some eminent neuroscientists. It says that absolutely every physical object has some (even if extremely low) level of consciousness. Some backers of the theory claim to have a mathematical formula that can measure the […]
Inspiring Philosophy on quantum mechanics and the death of materialism
| May 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Physics |
Inspiring Philosophy Philip Cunningham kindly forwarded this, noting that “Quantum mechanics has repeatedly confirmed the startling conclusion that (material) reality cannot exist without consciousness.” True, but defenders of a rational approach to science tend to forget that many people today are educated to think that reason and evidence are tools of oppression, that only […]
Surprise!: Chimpanzee sounds not much help in understanding human language
| May 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Intelligent Design, language, Mind, Naturalism |
From ScienceDaily: It’s very difficult to determine when, how and why human language began. While fossil primates provide important clues about human evolution, the sounds they made and the soft tissue involved in making those sounds weren’t preserved. But chimpanzees — one of our closest living relatives — provide important points of comparison for inferring […]
Carry that teapot carefully. There is consciousness in tableware.
| May 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
From John Ellis at PJ Media: The belief that inanimate objects, like rocks and tableware, contain consciousness is quickly picking up steam among respected philosophers and scientists. … The problem for these “credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists” who take panpsychist seriously is, as Goldhill points out, “The materialist viewpoint states that consciousness is derived entirely […]
Physicist: Do the defects of real numbers open the door to free will in physics?
| May 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Mind |
From Emily Conover at ScienceNews, describing the work of physicist Nicholas Gisin: Gisin — known for his work on the foundations and applications of quantum mechanics — takes issue with real numbers that consist of a never-ending string of digits with no discernable pattern and that can’t be calculated by a computer. Such numbers (for […]
Cognitive scientist: We are more than our brains but don’t get any high ideas on that account!
| May 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
From cognitive scientist Alan Jasanoff, author of The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are, at Aeon: But lost in the public’s romance with the brain is the most fundamental lesson neuroscience has to teach us: that the organ of our minds is a purely physical entity, conceptually […]
At Science: Is artificial intelligence alchemy?
| May 8, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Mind |
From Matthew Hutson at Science: Ali Rahimi, a researcher in artificial intelligence (AI) at Google in San Francisco, California, has charged that machine learning algorithms, in which computers learn through trial and error, have become a form of “alchemy.” Researchers, he says, do not know why some algorithms work and others don’t, nor do they […]
Researcher: Claimed special features that explain human evolution are also present in primate apes
| May 8, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Human evolution, Mind |
Anatomy category: From Rui Diogo at Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution: Just-so stories are prominent in human evolution literature because of our tendency to create simple progressionist narratives about our “special” place in nature, despite the fact that these stories are almost exclusively based on hard tissue data. How can we be so certain about […]
AI takes over the world: A parable
| May 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From professor of electrical engineering Karl J. Stephan at MercatorNet: “For one low price,” the magician said, “I can give you the power to change your servants into perfectly obedient machines. They’ll look just like they do now, but you won’t have to feed them or let them sleep or rest. And they will do […]
Understanding the psychology of pure hate
| May 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Mind, Psychology |
From Alex Berezow at ACSH: Randa Jarrar, an English professor at Fresno State, is rightfully in hot water. In a Twitter tirade, she called the recently deceased Barbara Bush an “amazing racist” and said she was “happy the witch is dead.” For good measure, she wished death upon the rest of the Bush Family. Let’s […]
Researcher: Neanderthal engravings made “with symbolic or communicative intent”
| May 5, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Thirty-five thousand kya. From ScienceDaily: A flint flake from the Middle Paleolithic of Crimea was likely engraved symbolically by a skilled Neanderthal hand, according to a study published May 2, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ana Majkic from the University of Bordeaux, France and colleagues. The authors developed a detailed framework for […]
