Mind

In a popular lecture delivered in Vienna I 1900, the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the fathers of statistical mechanics and the kinetic theory of gases, declared that the nineteenth century would be remembered as the Century of Darwin, then stated: In my view all salvation for philosophy may be expected to come from Darwin’s theory. … What then will be the position of the so-called laws of thought in logic? Well, in the light of Darwin’s theory they will be nothing else but inherited habits of thought. … One can call these laws of thought a priori because through many thousands of years of our species’ experience they have become innate to the individual, but it seems to be Read More ›

Non-materialist neuroscience: “You can’t fire your brain but you can retrain it.” Here’s an interview with a non-materialist neuroscientist, Jeffrey Schwartz, who is friendly to ID covers what’s wrong with materialism in neuroscience, and introduces a non-materialist approach to the treatment of phobias, compulsions, and addictions, as used in his new book, You arenot your brain.: For the past six years, Schwartz has worked with psychiatrist Rebecca Gladding to refine a program that successfully explains how the brain works and why we often feel besieged by bad brain wiring. Just like with the compulsions of OCD patients, they discovered that bad habits, social anxieties, self-deprecating thoughts, and compulsive overindulgence are all rooted in overactive brain circuits. The key to making Read More ›

In “A Testimony of Grace and the Plasticity of the Brain” (Trinity International University, July 2, 2011), Heather Zeiger reflects on one striking case: We never know how God is working in someone’s life, even as they are in the twilight of their lives or in a coma or navigating through the fog of Alzheimer’s. We know so little about how the brain actually works, and to say that someone is as good as dead when he or she is in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s or in a coma is short-sighted. There are still many mysteries about the mind/brain connection and just how plastic the brain is. The mind makes up its mysteries as it goes along, and the brain Read More ›

That’s Adam Hanft on the recent The Compass of Pleasure by neuroscientist David J. Linden, who writes at Barnes & Noble Reviews (June 27, 2011):

Disciplines from neuroscience to behavioral psychology to evolutionary biology have created a new cranial transparency that’s unleashed a gush of books like Blink by Malcolm Gladwell; Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Ron Brafman; Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein; and The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic and Work and at Home by Dan Ariely. (I interviewed Dan about his book for the Barnes & Noble Review.)David J. Linden, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins, and the author of The Accidental Mind, adds to this emerging, solipsistic genre with The Compass of Pleasure, a book that focuses entirely on how our brains pursue and process pleasure.

That one word “solipsistic” is  a bullet through the forehead of a writer. More telling: Read More ›

In “Geometric Principles Appear Universal in Our Minds” (Wired Science, May 24, 2011) , Bruce Bower reflects on the fact that research among peoples who do not even count suggests that abstract geometric principles are probably innate in humans:

If geometry relies on an innate brain mechanism, it’s unclear how such a neural system generates abstract notions about phenomena such as infinite surfaces and why this system doesn’t fully kick in until age 7. If geometry depends on years of spatial learning, it’s not known how people transform real-world experience into abstract geometric concepts — such as lines that extend forever or perfect right angles — that a forest dweller never encounters in the natural world.

As always, we needn’t wait long for a Darwin answer: Read More ›

The latest edition of The Reasoner (Volume 5, Number 7 – July 2011),

a monthly digest highlighting exciting new research on reasoning, inference and method broadly construed. It is interdisciplinary, covering research in, e.g., philosophy, logic, AI, statistics, cognitive science, law, psychology, mathematics and the sciences,

is available for download. Articles of interest: Read More ›

Apparently so. And not what was predicted. t Access Research Network, British physicist David Tyler reflects on new atheist claims about how beliefs arise, as opposed to verifiable facts on the same subject (“Science as the saviour of humanity” 06/27/11):

Here are some data of relevance to these questions. We have a trend of increasing secularism in the UK and in the US. Are there discernible trends relating to superstitions? In the UK, during the National Science Week in 2003, a survey was undertaken of superstitious behaviour. The first two findings are as follows:”* The current levels of superstitious behaviour and beliefs in the UK are surprisingly high, even among those with a scientific background. Touching wood is the most popular UK superstition, followed by crossing fingers, avoiding ladders, not smashing mirrors, carrying a lucky charm and having superstitious beliefs about the number 13.” Read More ›

Francisco Ayala, the 2010 Templeton winner known for the view that intelligent design is blasphemy and an “atrocity”*, has a new book out, Am I a Monkey? Six Big Questions about Evolution (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Here’s an excerpt.

Defending the view that you are something along the same lines as a monkey but not to worry, he writes, curiously,

Those things that count most remain shrouded in mystery: How physical phenomena become mental experiences (the feelings and sensations called “qualia” by philosophers, that contribute the elements of consciousness) and how out of the diversity of these experiences emerges the mind, a reality with unitary properties such as free will and the awareness of the self that persist throughout an individual’s life. (P. 11)Ayala sounds here as if he believes the mind exists, but he goes on to say Read More ›

Recently, there have been a number of attempts to use science to make evil intelligible. Canadian columnist David Warren reflects here, regarding a recent riot in Vancouver:

I am trying to draw attention to the very “zero” at the heart of that mob, and ultimately, any violent mob. The participants behave in ways that are finally unintelligible. To say they behave as animals would be unfair to animals, which are purposeful, and even merciful by comparison. (What they have no business with, they leave alone.)

It’s not that the books don’t explain anything. They tend to explain – either well or badly- Read More ›

At Scientific American, Douglas Fox reports on “The Limits of Intelligence,” where  we learn that “The laws of physics may well prevent the human brain from evolving into an ever more powerful thinking machine” (June 14, 2011):

Summary

Human intelligence may be close to its evolutionary limit. Various lines of research suggest that most of the tweaks that could make us smarter would hit limits set by the laws of physics. Read More ›

“Are we all travelling “incognito“, my latest at MercatorNet June 21, 2011), looks at Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist David Eagleman’s book Incognito, focusing on his proposed neuroscience fix for criminal law:

“Those who break the social contracts need to be warehoused, but in this case the future is of more importance than the past.”

“Warehoused”? How, exactly, is that a reform? We are also told that a criminal’s “actions are sufficient evidence of a brain abnormality, even if we don’t know (and maybe will never know) the details.” Yes, but one may as well say that a criminal’s “actions are sufficient evidence of infestation by Square Circle Disease, even if we don’t know (and maybe will never know) the details.”

More. Also:

Read More ›

From David DiSalvo’s “NeuropPsyched” at Forbes’blog, we learn about “Five Big Developments in Neuroscience to Watch” (June 17, 2011), such as: Read More ›

In “Human consciousness is much more than mere brain activity,” Mark Vernon writes, “When we meditate or use our powers of perception, we call on more than just a brain” (The Guardian, June17, 2011):

How does the animated meat inside our heads produce the rich life of the mind? Why is it that when we reflect or meditate we have all manner of sensations and thoughts but never feel neurons firing? It’s called the “hard problem”, and it’s a problem the physician, philosopher and author Raymond Tallis believes we have lost sight of – with potentially disastrous results.Vernon, reviewing Raymond Tallis’s new book Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity, offers,

What is astonishing about this rampant reductionism is that it is based on a conceptual muddle that is readily unpicked. Sure, you need a brain to be alive, but to be human is not to be a brain. Think of it this way: you need legs to walk, but you’d never say that your legs are walking.  Read More ›

In Incognito, Baylor College of Medicine’s “rock star” neuroscientist David Eagleman argues for  neuroscience to determine prison sentences, using the term:

Not everyone with a brain tumour undertakes a mass shooting, and not all males commit crimes. Why not? As we will see in the next chapter, it is because genes and environment interact in unimaginably complex patterns. This irreducible complexity has consequences: Read More ›

In a wide-ranging and thoughtful discussion, The European’s Martin Eierman asks Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute about the potential for genetic engineering enhancements of the mind, and Bostrom replies,essentially, that “we’ll get used to it.”

Bostrom: If you want to develop new drugs, you have to show that they are safe and effectively treat a disease. So when you want to find ways to enhance our brain activity, you perversely have to show that we are currently sick and need treatment. You cannot say, “I simply want to make this better than before”. We need to remove that stigma.

Some would butt in, before we try to enhance “mind,” “conciousness,”or “intelligence,” hadn’t we better decide what they are? There are no scientifically satisfactory definitions for any of these concepts. (There are the push poll definitions of various factions, but that is another matter.) Read More ›