Sheldon: The skeptical neuroscience student talks about the sin of employing too many statistical searches on the data, also known as “p-hacking”. Once again, the sin is not in using statistics, but rather in refusing to tell the world how many searches you made on the data before you settled on this one. Because the significance is not simply the data p-value, but the search space you used in finding it.
Neuroscience
Michael Egnor: Why a budding neuroscientist is skeptical of fMRI brain scans
Takehome: If people are judging what the rest of us think based on this, stop letting them. It could get beyond a joke.
J. P. Moreland on mind over matter
Moreland on the difference between the mind and the brain, how it points to the existence of the soul, and how we can communicate this to others.
Is science drifting from simple materialism to panpsychism?
It seems to have come down to a choice between “nothing is conscious” and “everything is conscious.” But materialism becomes incoherent when it requires us to believe that we only imagine we are conscious — that’s a basic error in logic.
Is the mind just a program run by the brain?
Michael Egnor: No. The mind is the opposite of computation. Mental states are always intentional and computation, by its nature, is never intentional.
Michael Egnor’s thought experiment on partial brain transplants
Egnor: We tend to assume that there must be a medium of communication both between our eyes and our whole brain in order to see. But people who have had split brain surgery see quite well even though their hemispheres have been separated (thus there is no direct connection). If the eyes (and hemispheres) are separated by 4000 miles, would the principle be any different?
Can cryogenics (freezing at death) preserve memories or consciousness?
The question cryogenics of the connectome raises is, can we freeze and then recover consciousness itself as opposed to simply saving imprints of a person’s memories? Dr. Frankenstein is now taking your calls.
At Nautilus: A bioelectric theory of consciousness
The hypothesis that consciousness is a function of bioelectric fields includes the notion that our individual cells are conscious. Levin and Dennett are willing to think of parts of the body as agents too. But from what we can tell, whole persons are not agents in Dennett’s view.
Michael Egnor asks, Are human brain transplants even possible?
Egnor: If tiny bits of the brains from all the people in my neighborhood were transplanted into my brain, would there be a neighborhood in my skull?
Michael Egnor: What would happen to your soul if your head were transplanted?
Michael Egnor: As with so many metaphysical questions about the mind-body relationship, we need first to understand the meaning of the words we use.
We used to have a lizard brain in the 1990s but we don’t now
Such perfect Darwinism, it had to be true. But look what happened…
A science writer offers some interesting thoughts on free will
It’s interesting that a science writer sees through the most fundamental materialist rot. Unfortunately, it sounds as though he hopes to replace it with a different one.
At Mind Matters News: A reader asks: Is it true that there is no self?
Michael Egnor replies, “The assertion that self is an illusion is not even wrong — it’s self-refuting, like saying “I don’t exist” or “Misery is green”
Neuroscientists demonstrate that we can communicate with people while they are dreaming
At one time, the idea of communicating with people while they were dreaming would have been regarded by most scientists as hokey New Age stuff. But now a research group has done it.
Michael Egnor asks if materialist neuroscience is an unwitting Sokal hoax
Egnor thinks that while physicist Alan Sokal hoaxed postmodern journals (the famous Sokal hoax. of 1996), materialists like Francis Crick (1916–2004) seem to hoax themselves.