Category: Neuroscience
Neurosurgeon: Neither books nor brains learn, only minds learn
| October 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience |
Recently, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor offered a parable about whether machines really learn. The tale features a book that “learned” to fall open at the right places. Computer scientist Jeffrey Shallit responded, claiming that machines really CAN learn!, and Dr. Egnor responded to him, pointing out that a baseball glove can “learn” the game if adjustment […]
It’s amazing how much the public believes about neuroscience that is just myth
| September 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Education, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
But maybe it doesn’t matter. For example, as British Psychological Society’s Research Digest’s editor, Christian Jarrett, tells it, Educational neuromyths include the idea that we learn more effectively when taught via our preferred “learning style”, such as auditory or visual or kinesthetic … the claim that we use only 10 per cent of our brains; […]
New research: Human brains do not differ much from reptile brains
| September 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
These findings don’t show that reptiles are secretly smart. They mainly deepen the mystery of the human mind, which traverses regions unknown to any of them without the brain being that much different.
Times a-changin’ New Scientist now hails mind over matter
| September 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Medicine, Mind, Neuroscience |
No, really. Here’s what they say in 2018 about the placebo effect (you start to get better when you think you are getting better): “OUR minds aren’t passive observers simply observing reality as it is; our minds actually change reality. The reality we experience tomorrow is partly the product of the mindsets we hold today.” […]
Unique type of cell found in human brain: rosehip neurons
| August 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
At least, it hasn’t been seen in other life forms. From ScienceDaily: Tamás and University of Szeged doctoral student Eszter Boldog dubbed these new cells “rosehip neurons” — to them, the dense bundle each brain cell’s axon forms around the cell’s center looks just like a rose after it has shed its petals, he said. […]
Researchers: Primates vary in speech capability. (But none speak.)
| August 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Intelligent Design, language, Mind, Neuroscience |
From ScienceDaily: The vocal tract and larynx is similar in form and function amongst virtually all terrestrial mammals, including humans. However, relative to humans, non-human primates produce an extremely limited range of vocalisations. Published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, the new research investigates whether the reason primates are incapable of producing speech is because […]
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: The brain is not a “meat computer”
| August 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Medicine, Mind, Neuroscience |
At Mind Matters Today: Early in my neurosurgical career, I was called to the emergency room to see a four-year-old boy who had had a stroke. He was playing on a sofa and fell on his head, twisting his neck. He told his mom that his head hurt—then lapsed into a coma. The CT scan […]
How to hack your unconscious mind
| August 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
Before we spend much time worrying about the AI apocalypse (evil robot minds destroy us, etc.), we should recall how little we know for sure about what a mind even is. Views differ dramatically.
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor asks, how can there NOT be free will?
| July 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Physics |
From Mind Matters Today: Succinctly, researchers using Bell’s theoretical insight into quantum entanglement have shown that there are no deterministic local hidden variables. This means that the final state of entangled quantum particles is not determined by any variables in the initial state. Nature at its most fundamental level is indeterminate. The states of bound […]
So, 25 years later, whatever became of the Hard Science of mind?
| July 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience |
The one that was supposed to waste traditional philosophy? At Mind Matters Today, Back in 1992, philosopher of mind Jerry Fodor said, “…we’re all materialists for much the reason that Churchill gave for being a democrat: the alternatives seem even worse. The new research project [science of mind] is therefore to reconcile our materialism to […]
Linguists skeptical of Darwinian theory that toolmaking “paved the way” for human language
| June 23, 2018 | Posted by Denyse OLeary under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, language, Mind, Neuroscience |
Should young ID theorists study language origins, as retired linguist suggests below? From Ben James at The Atlantic: Oren Kolodny, a biologist at Stanford University, puts the question in more scientific terms: “What kind of evolutionary pressures could have given rise to this really weird and surprising phenomenon that is so critical to the essence […]
At New Scientist: The neuroscientists’ bet that a signature of human consciousness will be found in the brain has only five years to go…
| June 22, 2018 | Posted by Denyse OLeary under Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
If it is still on. From Per Snaprud at New Scientist: TWENTY years ago this week, two young men sat in a smoky bar in Bremen, northern Germany. Neuroscientist Christof Koch and philosopher David Chalmers had spent the day lecturing at a conference about consciousness, and they still had more to say. After a few […]
From Scientific American: “we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness.”
| June 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience |
From Bernardo Kastrup, Adam Crabtree, and Edward F. Kelly at Scientific American: In 2015, doctors in Germany reported the extraordinary case of a woman who suffered from what has traditionally been called “multiple personality disorder” and today is known as “dissociative identity disorder” (DID). The woman exhibited a variety of dissociated personalities (“alters”), some of […]
Neuroscientist debunks hype about no free will, etc.
| June 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience |
A friend writes, “This young German brain researcher publicly condemns exaggerated claims of neuroscientists, “debunking” of free will, so-called dangerous brains, and so forth.” Talk by Dr. S. (Stephan) Schleim at the 2014 Heymans Symposium ‘Research Worth Spreading’ of the Psychology department of the University of Groningen and Understanding the possibilities and limitations of brain […]
Neuroskeptic serves up some skepticism about a recent memory transfer claim
| May 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
For sea slugs, via RNA transfer. At Discover: There’s a couple of reasons why I don’t think this is evidence of “memory transfer”. Firstly, what was transferred here was hardly a memory in the usual sense of the word. It is simply an increase in the sensitivity of a set of neurons, a single reflex […]
Can we build a computer with free will?
| March 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
While some dispute the very existence of free will, others claim to know how to build a computer with free will (so, presumably they think free will, or something like it, exists). From physicist Mark Hadley at The Conversation: Strangely, the philosophical literature does not seem to consider tests for free will. But as a […]
Neuroskeptic: Research casts doubt on the idea that the brain is a machine with parts
| March 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
A machine with parts that each do one thing. From Neuroskeptic at Discover: This “behavior-first” approach has revealed many associations between particular functions and particular brain regions. However, Genon et al. say, it has become clear that any given behavioral function involves more than one brain region, and it may be that there is no […]
The memtransistor as brainlike computing – with what outcome?
| February 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Information, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
From ScienceDaily: In recent years, researchers have searched for ways to make computers more neuromorphic, or brain-like, in order to perform increasingly complicated tasks with high efficiency. Now Hersam, a Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, and his team are bringing the world closer to realizing […]
Neuroscientist: We will never build a machine that mimics our personal consciousness
| February 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience |
From Michael S. Gazzaniga at Nautilus: Perhaps the most surprising discovery for me is that I now think we humans will never build a machine that mimics our personal consciousness. Inanimate silicon-based machines work one way, and living carbon-based systems work another. One works with a deterministic set of instructions, and the other through symbols […]
The Edge, a science thinksite, asks “The Last Question”
| February 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Computing, AI, Cybernetics and Mechatronics, Information, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
as in “your last question, the question for which you will be remembered.” Some interesting answers (in the form of questions) emerge: Can we program a computer to find a 10,000-bit string that encodes more actionable wisdom than any human has ever expressed? – Scott Aronson Are complex biological neural systems fundamentally unpredictable? – Anthony […]
