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.
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.
Michael Egnor: Did consciousness evolve to help us “find love”?
Egnor: How tight a link might we expect between reproductive success and the contemplation of truth? Not a lot, it would seem, if the experience of philosophy majors on the dating scene is any measure.
Michael Egnor: Did consciousness “evolve”?
Michael Egnor: If consciousness is merely a property of the brain, it has no agency—no power to cause anything—in itself. Properties can’t do anything. For example, if you hit a nail with a yellow hammer, you hit it with the hammer, not with the yellow.
If you are not a p-zombie, you should not be a materialist either
But don’t tell neuroscientist Michael Graziano, who has set his sights on figuring out consciousness from a materialist perspective. Let it be a surprise
Eric Holloway: Can free will be a scientific idea?
In everyday life, we casually throw around the terms “confidence,” “chance,” and “likely.” We sometimes attach numbers too. We say that an event has a 90% chance of occurring. But, what do we mean by a “90% chance”?
Why the “computer” model of the human brain fails
Why it isn’t: Biomedical engineer Yuri Danilov: Again, it is a separate discussion, extremely painful for many but it is something that is happening right now.
Melanie Phillips muses on the extinction of reason
Petteri Talalas: “The IPCC reports have been read in a similar way to the Bible: you try to find certain pieces or sections from which you try to justify your extreme views. This resembles religious extremism.”
Egnor on the evidence against materialism:
News just tagged this on to a news post but this is worth headlining: Blurb: Discovery Science In this bonus interview footage from Science Uprising, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discusses the evidence against materialism and explains how materialism undercuts rather than supports genuine science. Be sure to visit https://scienceuprising.com/ to find more videos and explore related […]