Mind

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What? Brain surgeons are NOT smarter than the rest of us?

We are told, “Data from 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons suggests they are not necessarily cleverer than general population”: Researchers examined data from an international cohort of 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons who completed 12 tasks online using the Great British Intelligence Test (GBIT) from the Cognitron platform, as well as answering questions Read More…

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At Mind Matters News: Why neuroscientist Mark Solms is no materialist

Mark Solms: Information, in neuroscience, is a crucial concept, and it’s very hard to think about quantum physics and the big questions that are unsolved that flow from it without the concept of information — which, I hasten to draw your attention to the fact, is not matter. I’m not a materialist for exactly that reason.

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At Mind Matters News: Nautilus offers a primer on panpsychism

“What’s really interesting about [Massimo Pigliucci’s anti-panpsychism] comments is that even a decade or so ago, his was an utterly conventional view. Now he feels he must qualify it by saying “But that’s just one perspective and one way to look at it.” It seems that fewer researchers today expect the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” to suddenly yield to a new research finding — a situation that leaves many looking with interest and sympathy at a non-naturalist approach like panpsychism.”

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At Mind Matters News: Why panpsychism is starting to push out naturalism

Panpsychism eliminates the crudities of Darwinism. For example, if consciousness is assumed to be a natural development in the most complex life forms, human consciousness would have happened, whether it improved survival or not. Darwinian controversies on the topic become pointless or anyway, much less significant. Perhaps that’s why a classical Darwinian, who needs to see human consciousness as a simple but controversial accident, views panpsychism with hostility.

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At Mind Matters News: Why physicalism is failing as the accepted approach to science

Essentially, panpsychism offers a way for scientists to address human consciousness, as currently understood, without explaining it away as an illusion. It would allow us to say that if Zombie-Jane existed, she would be missing something critical that Jane has (and so does everything else, to some extent). Whether that makes panpsychism a better explanation of reality than idealism or dualism is a separate question. Like all points of view, they have their own issues but the Zombie isn’t one of them.