Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Mind

At Mind Matters News: Study: Eight-week mindfulness courses do not change the brain

O'Leary: Eight-week courses don't provide enough time. Tibetan monks can control metabolism and even brain waves through meditation but they devote their lives to it. It would be more surprising if that fact had no effect on their brains than if it does. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Memory leans more on the brain’s electric field than on neurons

The neurons associated with our memories may change; it’s the electric field that holds the memories together, the neuroscientists say. That’s a very different picture of memories than the idea that memories are “stored” in the brain. It’s not quite like that … It's closer to the quantum world. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: John Horgan at Scientific American: Does quantum mechanics kill free will?

Horgan sides, somewhat tentatively, with free will. He notes that humans are more than just heaps of particles. Higher levels of complexity enable genuinely new qualities. What humans can do is not merely a more complex version of what amoebas can do — in turn, a more complex version of what electrons can do. Greater complexity can involve genuinely new qualities. A philosopher would say that he is not a reductionist. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Science writer: Explain-away-the-mind book doesn’t succeed

Ball notes that the Journey of the Mind authors’ (phantom) reductionist revolution relies on a single cognitive scientist’s work. It's not that he thinks it's a terrible book. But he supposes (unusually in this area) that critical standards matter and that he should apply them. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Eric Holloway asks, Is AlphaZero Actually Superior to the Human Mind?

What is actually remarkable is the sheer amount of processing power needed to bring computers up to the level of even the most basic human player! This indicates the human mind is doing something totally different and extraordinarily more efficient than the best AI algorithms we have today. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: The Philosopher’s Zombie Still Walks and Physics Can’t Explain It

The “zombie” argument does what it is supposed to do: Shows that consciousness, the motivating force in our lives, is not really a material thing. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: The mystery of how newborns know things gets deeper

An innate program guides newborns to seek human faces and body movements but it wanes in favor of personal learning. But that may take longer for autists. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Chalmers and Penrose clash over “conscious computers”

Holloway: There are hard, practical reasons why computers cannot understand concepts like “infinity” and “truth” and therefore cannot be conscious. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Does superdeterminism resolve dilemmas around free will?

Michael Egnor: If we lack free will, we have no justification whatsoever to even believe that we lack free will. In a timeless block however, the future exists simultaneously with the past and present — but that does not mean that the future determines the past and present. Read More ›

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 around their age, sex and levels of experience in their speciality. The tasks examined various aspects of cognition, including planning and reasoning, working memory, attention, and emotion processing abilities. The researchers then compared the results against those previously gathered from more than 18,000 members of the British public. The findings, which were published in the festive edition of the BMJ, reveal that only neurosurgeons showed Read More ›