Recently, we were apprised that the rarest of intellectual qualities, true genius, is merely an overdose of testosterone before birth. You heard it here first and forgot it here first. Recently, real news – of another child genius – has been making the rounds At 12-years-old, Jacob Barnett is a genius. He’s already in college, Read More…
Mind
Psychologist: Human freedom holds up to scientific scrutiny
In “Jules Evans on Neuroscience and Polytheism”, psychologist Evansoffers that we can make too much of claims that humans are ruled by unconscious motives (April 6, 2011). Such a claim forms a basis for “neurolaw” and “neuromarketing” ( also here (law and marketing as if you didn’t really exist). He notes, The ancients’ idea that Read More…
Great debates: William Lane Craig versus Sam Harris tomorrow night
Topic: Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? (Thursday, April 7 – 7:00pm – 9:00pm Eastern time) Facebook page Live webcast: www.ndtv.net One viewer commented … the atheist damage control machine is going full throttle! Craig absolutely wiped the floor with Krauss. It might be the worst debate performance ever versus Craig, adding Check Read More…
Ask the doctor: ID-friendly neurosurgeon talks about mental illness
“So if someone is mentally ill, is it the mind (spiritual, demonic, etc.) or the translating organ of the brain (age, MS, injury, other disease, etc.) that is the cause, (or perhaps both)? How does one distinguish the causes?”
The Nature of Nature — sticky
THE NATURE OF NATURE is now finally out and widely available. If you haven’t bought it yet, let me suggest Amazon.com, which is selling it for $17.94, which is an incredible deal for a 7″x10″ 1000-page book with, for most of us, no tax and no shipping charge (it costs over $10 to ship this Read More…
Soul Time: Well, it must be, because we are hearing from the New Humanists again
(Who were the old Humanists, by the way? Anyone know?) In “Natural history of the soul”, Caspar Melville profiles “the man who thinks that spirituality is essential to consciousness, and science can tell us why.” That would be Nicholas Humphrey, an evolutionary psychologist and author of Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness who claims to Read More…
Why isn’t the argument that “Darwinism is false because it rules out the mind” decisive? You could also call this “The Trouble with Thomism”
Recently, Bantay, a commenter on a post addressing the origin of language, quoted …because Darwinists need to chase their tails by denying precisely what language itself affirms (meaning, order, and purpose)” and asked Does that mean that when Dawkins speaks, it is meaningless, orderless and purposeless? Well, let me try to unpack that a bit. Read More…
Interview with Dutch journalist: On trolls, free will, the self, and nakedness
Here’s an introduction to Henk Rijkers’ review/profile/interview with me about The Spiritual Brain (Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary) in a Dutch Catholic newspaper. The book covers the failure of materialism to fulfil its promises and offers a look at a non-materialist approach to neuroscience, hence the controversy. Update: Here’s the complete text. You’ll need Google Read More…
But I thought that thought was thought to be just the random buzz of neurons …
Scientists Steer Car With the Power of Thought ScienceDaily (Feb. 21, 2011) — You need to keep your thoughts from wandering, if you drive using the new technology from the AutoNOMOS innovation labs of Freie Universität Berlin. The computer scientists have developed a system making it possible to steer a car with your thoughts. Using Read More…
Last call: Pop science not quite too stupid to parody properly?
A good laugh will help you sleep: Brain area for empty news stories discovered Satirical website Newsbiscuit has a cutting article making fun of the regular ‘brain scans show…’ news items that are a staple of the popular science pages. Scientists are heralding a breakthrough in brain scan technology after a team at Oxford University Read More…
Hush! Your brain is talking: “Forget all that crap they told you about me”
Why you should swear off all popular science media (except for Uncommon Descent and other sensible blogs) for your own mental health: Where does all this leave us?Let me return to the beginning, to Cordelia Fine and how we can think better about science, neural function, and human difference. The essentialist view of the brain Read More…
Computer vs Mind 2011 – getting out of Dodge
In “Mind vs. Machine”, in The Atlantic (March 2011), Brian Christian reflects When the world-champion chess player Garry Kasparov defeated Deep Blue, rather convincingly, in their first encounter in 1996, he and IBM readily agreed to return the next year for a rematch. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov (rather less convincingly) in ’97, Kasparov proposed Read More…
Do atheists know enough about the concept of God to reject it on rational grounds?
Sometimes I think atheists are simply having arguments with themselves – or, more precisely, with phantoms bred by their own ignorance. It’s easy to see why atheism does not make more headway, even in modern secular society: Once atheists begin to spell out the sort of deity they are rejecting, it becomes clear that they Read More…
Mind and popular culture: Placebo effect increasing? Big pharma not exactly delighted
This very interesting article by Steve Silberman in Wired (“Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why,” 08.24.09) notes True, many test subjects treated with the medication felt their hopelessness and anxiety lift. But so did nearly the same number who took a placebo, a look-alike pill made of milk sugar or Read More…