Well, if the mind is an illusion and the computer simulations were wildly wrong, how would Hoffman even know? But does it matter, as long as he keeps the Darwinian faith? No wonder the scoffing grows—and increasingly, the thought police are always somewhere else.
Mind
A short sermon on Einstein’s God
Einstein’s concept of God ruled out free will. At that point, the wheels come off.
Neuroscientists: We are not our brains and our souls are not machines
A reviewer notes that Sharon Dirckx makes her case in a way that is easy for the attentive non-specialist reader to understand
Is a merger with machines nearer—or impossible?
As Robert J. Marks put it, Non-algorithmic things (things that cannot be calculated), “cannot be uploaded.” Human consciousness, little as we understand it, appears to be one of those non-algorithmic things.
The “rise of the greedy-brained ape”?
It’s helpful to be reminded that the science cognoscenti see the rest of us that way. They may see themselves that way, though vanity more likely gets in the way at the last, critical moment. No wonder so many people these days are “anti-science.”
At Psychology Today: There are TWO hard problems of consciousness, not one
Psychology prof Gregg Henriques argues, consciousness “plays by a different set of rules than the language game of science.”
Is there no self without a soul?
Materialist neuroscience creates big problems. And it is not as if materialists have a big solution that others are stubbornly refusing to acknowledge.
ID-themed science fiction explores mind-matter collision
ID-friendly philosopher Eric Holloway wrote ID As A Bridge Between Francis Bacon And Thomas Aquinas here, which garnered a lot of attention. But in science fiction, he turns his attention to the consequences of a materialist vs. a non-materialist interpretation of the human mind.
Would a simulated universe have an identity crisis?
Would life, as a natural consequence, seem as disjointed and lacking in resolution as the events in the film?
Animal studies tend to show that the human experience is unique
Many people assume that human consciousness arose accidentally many eons ago from animal consciousness and that therefore we can find glimmers of the same sort of consciousness in the minds of animals. But that approach isn’t producing the expected results.
Researchers: Human neurons mature more slowly than those of chimpanzees and macaques
Interesting but not really a surprise because humans mature more slowly generally and live longer. No big news here that accounts for human uniqueness.
Templeton is sponsoring a historic type of contest in the quest to understand consciousness
We are sure that, in reality, anyone really attached to the losing theory will find wiggle room. But never mind. The point is, there is something to test. This sure beats: Consciousness is an evolved illusion; your coffee mug is conscious; consciousness is a material thing; electrons are conscious No wonder consciousness studies have been described in Chronicle of Higher Education as “bizarre.” Maybe not so much now.
Our enterprising ancestors’ version of canned soup, 400 kya
“We show for the first time in our study that 420,000 to 200,000 years ago, prehistoric humans at Qesem Cave were sophisticated enough, intelligent enough and talented enough to know that it was possible to preserve particular bones of animals under specific conditions, and, when necessary, remove the skin, crack the bone and eat the bone marrow,” Prof. Gopher explains
Talking to a computer? Marks and Montañez offer tips on how to tell
Robert J. Marks: It’s always easy to determine if you are talking to a computer or a human. You can just ask them to compute the square root of 30 or something because a human would take a while to get the square root of thirty …
Can we engineer consciousness into a robot?
We actually don’t know what consciousness is, so it feels odd to speak of “engineering” it.