Materialist neuroscience creates big problems. And it is not as if materialists have a big solution that others are stubbornly refusing to acknowledge.
Neuroscience
The Paris Zoo “blob”: What exactly IS the role of the brain in processing information?
“Polycephalum’s type of organism is thought to have existed for roughly a billion years though it has only been studied intensively in recent decades. It is technically called a “protist” (a catch-all category for life forms that are hard to classify). It makes decisions with no apparent source of intelligence.”
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.
Karsten Pultz: The perils of talking about ID He wonders, should he give up?
I am seriously considering abandoning giving ID-talks in Christian settings, as it seems completely purposeless and because I find it exhausting, depressing and frustrating. While atheists and theistic evolutionists reject ID because they consider it creationism, the creationists reject ID because it is not creationism
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.
Far from disproving that meditators can change their metabolism, science is proving it
From the film: It soon became apparent that this monk was breathing at an extremely low rate, 6 to 7 breaths per minute. It was established that during his stabilization meditation, it was a decrease in metabolism of 64 percent from rest. Never before had such a decrease been documented.
Did the neural pattern that showed that there is no free will turn out to be noise?
If it was just noise, you may not hear that any time soon from the textbook mill.
Panpsychism: Scientists who believe that the universe is conscious
Some prominent physicists and neuroscientists who cannot accept the idea of a separate immaterial reality (dualism) turn to the simplest alternative, that the whole universe participates in consciousness (panpsychism).
Winston Ewert explains why the mind is not a computer
“An abstract mathematical device cannot experience qualia or consciousness. If they could, we would expect mathematical formulas like the quadratic formula or the area of a sphere to experience consciousness. But that seems absurd, so we must conclude that a computer cannot exhibit consciousness. Put another way, consciousness is not a form of computation.”
Forty years ago, Douglas Hofstadter was sure a materialist explanation of the brain would work…
“There is, quite simply, no mechanical explanation of how the human mind has emerged from brawling chimpanzees over the course of millions of years of evolution.” That keeps happening with materialist theories. We thought their hat had way more rabbits.
Michael Egnor: A materialist neuroscientist continues the argument with himself
Dr. Ali seems to take both sides of the question.
Michael Egnor: Now Dr. Ali argues with Dr. Ali
In short, he argues that it’s no surprise that cutting the brain in half has no effect on abstract thought, and then he argues that delicate complexity and interconnection is essential for abstract thought. Dr. Ali is debating Dr. Ali.
Michael Egnor: Why abstract thoughts cannot arise from material things
Abstract thought is qualitatively different from concrete thought. To understand this, consider a chiliagon. A chiliagon is a closed regular polygon with 1000 sides. It is very simple to understand abstractly. However, it cannot be imagined concretely
Philosopher: Morality is merely community norms
Why is it that the people most likely to be attracted to this sort of naturalism (nature is all there is), often called “materialism,” also appear to be full of rage against what they perceive to be injustice, smashing stuff and people? And none of their theories about how they’ll make anything better sound very convincing.