At GenEng and BioTech mag: “In a new study, stem cell scientists at the Lund University, Sweden, explore the role of non-coding regions of the genome—previously deemed to be functionless “junk” DNA—and find humans and chimpanzees use a part of their non-coding DNA in different ways. This they claim affects how and when the human brain develops.”
Mind
At Mind Matters News: GWT: A leading consciousness theory depends on information theory
If information flow in the brain is “largely unconstrained” by anatomical wiring, it’s easy to understand why we sense that we have “minds” apart from our brains.
At Mind Matters News: Leading astronomer gets it all wrong about free will and destiny
In response to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb denying free will and all that, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor points out, “Logic and reason aren’t laws of physics and therefore they transcend physical properties.”
At Mind Matters News: Did minimal consciousness drive the Cambrian Explosion?
Eva Jablonka’s team makes the daring case, repurposing Hungarian chemist Tibor Gánti’s origin of life studies. Where their approach differs from many is that they do not try to identify a mechanism of consciousness.
Eric Holloway: Move Over Turing and Lovelace – We Need a Terminator Test
The Turing test, and the Lovelace test, are attempts to determine if computers can show human-like intelligence. Holloway asks, what happens if researchers succeed in creating lifelike machines? in the sense of “wanting” things? “If we create an all-powerful artificial intelligence, we cannot assume it will be friendly. Thus, we need a Terminator test.”
World’s oldest art raises question: Is it art?
Researchers would not be asking if it is art if it were not so old (between 169,000 and 226,000). The underlying assumption seems to be that humans did not think imaginatively in those days. The evidence seems to contradict the evolutionary assumption.
At Mind Matters News: New theory of mind offers more information, less materialism
First, let’s begin by noting a remarkable fact: Panpsychism seems to have triumphed in the area of theories of consciousness.
At Mind Matters News: The final materialist quest: A war on the reality of the mind
When George Orwell wrote 1984, he addressed destroying minds, not denying their possibility and changing the language associated with them.
At Mind Matters News: The science “advances” are proving the mind ever more elusive
What Seth is saying is that he wants to undermine the feeling that human consciousness is different from what happens to clams and sand dollars. If that doesn’t work? Well, it never has.
When science becomes anti-human life
David Coppedge calls this stuff “anti-Christian.” It is that. But that’s because it’s becoming anti-human. All human traditions must speak against it.
Maybe this is an argument for the rights of human embryos…
Researchers: The result revealed several key characteristics of the human embryonic development process. Firstly, mutation rates are higher in the first cell division, but then decrease to approximately one mutation per cell during later cell division. Secondly, early cells contributed unequally to the development of the embryo in all informative donors, for example, at the two-cell stage, one of the cells always left more progeny cells than the other. The ratio of this was different from person to person, implying that the process varies between individuals and is not fully deterministic.
At Mind Matters News: A neuroscience theory that actually helps explain the brain
Epstein’s theory is that that the brain is a type of transducer, that is, a device or an organ that converts one signal to another signal, commonly from one medium to another. A microphone, for example, is a transducer that converts sound waves to electrical current. Your eye is a transducer that converts light to vision. So the brain converts thoughts to material effects.
At Mind Matters News: Non-materialist science is wanted — dead or alive
Michael Egnor: I’ve gotten calls to my department in my university demanding that I be fired. That’s a fairly frequent thing. I was called a couple of years ago by the campus police that there was a death threat against me and they wanted to protect me. So this kind of stuff goes on. And some of these people are vicious.
At Mind Matters News: Can science really engineer a bigger human brain?
The human brain has actually been shrinking in the last 30,000 years, the same period that has also shown great intellectual achievements.
At Mind Matters News: Quantum physicist shows how consciousness may create reality
In his argument against physicalism (physical nature is all there is), Tim Andersen draws from the 19th-century philosopher Schopenhauer the concept of Will as the basis of all reality.