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From Berit Brogaard at Psychology Today: A new volume of papers on panpsychism edited by philosophers Godehard Bruntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla just appeared with Oxford University Press. It features paper by prominent philosophers David Chalmers, Galen Strawson and Brian McLaughlin, among many others. According to the traditional version of panpsychism, everything around you is conscious: the chair your are sitting on, the rock you use as a doorstopper at home and the thick hurricane-safe windows in your office. Panpsychism literally means that particular kinds of psychological states are embedded in everything. An alternative to the traditional view is the view that everything around you has a form of rudimentary consciousness. More. Brogaard suggests, “…we can imagine that there is qualitative Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: It’s the ultimate chicken-or-egg conundrum: What was the “mother” molecule that led to the formation of life? And how did it replicate itself? One prominent school of thought proposes that RNA is the answer to the first question. Now, in ACS Central Science, researchers in this camp demonstrate RNA has more flexibility in how it recognizes itself than previously believed. The finding might change how we picture the first chemical steps towards replication and life. Today, plants, animals and other organisms reproduce by making copies of their DNA with the help of enzymes and then passing the copies onto the next generation. This is possible because genetic material is made of building blocks — or bases A, T, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: It has been known for quite some time that genetically modified bacteria, which have lost their ability to produce certain amino acids and retrieve these nutrients from their environment grow better than bacteria, which produce all nutrients themselves. This led researchers to inquire whether natural selection would favor the loss of abilities, thus making bacteria more dependent on their environment. Of course it did or they wouldn’t be writing about it but this has nothing to do with “natural” selection. The researchers had produced the bacteria themselves. A similar loss of traits has been observed not only in bacteria, but also in other groups of organisms. Many animals, including humans, are not able to produce vitamins themselves — Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer, Britside, at Evolution News & Views: Our biologist friend writes of yesterday’s session: Some opposing views were aired in the morning sessions, with polite but pointed disagreement between Drs. Sonia Sultan and Russell Lande on the subject of phenotypic plasticity. It is clear that opinion is divided in the room. Some applause for bolder statements was quickly quashed, the audience having been warned at the beginning that boos and cheers were not acceptable. More. We all know that science is best represented by unquestioning deference to dogma, even in the face of growing contradictions with reality. Right? He describes the meeting as tense. How about “tense but timid”? We’ve all been through that at some time in Read More ›

Darwinian Christian racism? Election years bring dangerous creatures from the shadows From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at MercatorNet: Just recently, one Russell Kirk (probably a pseudonym*) blind-copied me on a post to “oxfordchristia” to advise me that Many younger Bible-centered conservative Christians have declared war on Christian Cultural Marxism. At first I thought, well, if young Christians want to live, they had better learn the difference between friends and foes, between life and death. But then, What is human biodiversity? Many younger, high IQ Christians have become very interested in human biodiversity. Modern studies in population genetics are showing that there are many differences in human populations. For example, Europeans about 8,000 years ago developed genes lactose tolerance that Read More ›

We are “conscious beast-machines.” (Aw, sit down. We owe this guy a hearing out of politeness. ) From neuroscientist Anil K. Seth at Aeon: In my work at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex in Brighton, I collaborate with cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, brain imagers, virtual reality wizards and mathematicians – and philosophers too – trying to do just this. And together with other laboratories, we are gaining exciting new insights into consciousness – insights that are making real differences in medicine, and that in turn raise new intellectual and ethical challenges. In my own research, a new picture is taking shape in which conscious experience is seen as deeply grounded in how brains and Read More ›

From Annalee Newitz at Ars Technica: In a stunning discovery, a team of archaeologists in Australia has found extensive remains of a sophisticated human community living 50,000 years ago. The remains were found in a rock shelter in the continent’s arid southern interior. Packed with a range of tools, decorative pigments, and animal bones, the shelter is a wide, roomy space located in the Flinders Ranges, which are the ancestral lands of the Adnyamathanha. The find overturns previous hypotheses of how humans colonized Australia, and it also proves that they interacted with now-extinct megafauna that ranged across the continent. Dubbed the Warratyi site, the rock shelter sits above a landscape criss-crossed with deep gorges that would have flowed with water Read More ›

From Helen Thomson at New Scientist: In recent years it has become clear that hallucinations are much more than a rare symptom of mental illness or the result of mind-altering drugs. Their appearance in those of sound mind has led to a better understanding of how the brain can create a world that doesn’t really exist. More surprising, perhaps, is the role they may play in our perceptions of the real world. As researchers explore what is happening in the brain, they are beginning to wonder: do hallucinations make up the very fabric of our reality? (paywall) More. Of course in a world where the war on falsifiability is the new cosmology, objectivity is just evidence that a guy is Read More ›

From Mike Wall at LiveScience: Humanity should be wary of seeking out contact with alien civilizations, Stephen Hawking has warned once again. … For what it’s worth, some other astronomers believe Hawking’s caution is unwarranted. Any alien civilization advanced enough to come to Earth would surely already know of humans’ existence via the radio and TV signals that humanity has been sending out into space since 1900 or so, this line of thinking goes. More. Hawking airs his concerns in his new documentary, Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places (paywall) See also: But surely we can’t conjure an entire advanced civilization? and How do we grapple with the idea that ET might not be out there? Follow UD News at Twitter! Trailer:

From Hanneke Weitering at Space.com: In the film, six astronauts aboard the space station study a sample collected from Mars that could provide evidence for extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet. The crew determines that the sample contains a large, single-celled organism — the first example of life beyond Earth. … At first, the tiny alien seems cute and harmless as it sits inside a gloved containment box. When one of the astronauts puts his hands into the gloves and reaches in to touch the alien, its small, stringy, mushroom-like figure wiggles as if it’s being tickled. But the cuteness doesn’t last long. More. No, It wouldn’t. Otherwise, there’d be no story. Happily… See also: What we know and don’t Read More ›

According to Living Planet. From Nisha Gaind at Nature: The populations of Earth’s wild mammals, birds, amphibians, fish and other vertebrates declined by more than half between 1970 and 2012, according to a report from environmental charity WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Activities such as deforestation, poaching and human-induced climate change are in large part to blame for the decline. If the trend continues, then by 2020 the world will have lost two-thirds of its vertebrate biodiversity, according to the Living Planet Report 2016. “There is no sign yet that this rate will decrease,” the report says. More. Apart from issues around data bias covered in Gaind’s article, a question remains: When we try to save a Read More ›

From Rochelle Poole at Science: On the first day of my first field expedition, my adviser abruptly shifted all the field resources to a different topic that didn’t match my experience or career ambitions, ignoring our rigorous research plans—and my growing objections. Such a capricious change was unacceptable, I said, but my adviser countered my resistance. “I have the power to do this,” he said. “This is how science works; you are just naïve.” To some extent he was right: Ph.D. advisers wield the power to create or destroy research careers, and students typically have few—if any—ways to protect themselves from advisers who misuse this responsibility, especially during remote fieldwork. I was upset, but he was the field manager, so Read More ›

From Kendall Powell at Nature: But some data and anecdotal evidence suggest that scientists do face more hurdles in starting research groups now than did many of their senior colleagues 20–30 years ago. Chief among those challenges is the unprecedented number competing for funding pools that have remained stagnant or shrunk in the past decade. “The number of people is at an all-time high, but the number of awards hasn’t changed,” says Jon Lorsch, director of the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) in Bethesda, Maryland. “A lot of people with influence on the system recognize this is a serious problem and are trying to fix it.” Young scientists and senior scientists alike feel an acute pressure to Read More ›

From Massimo Pigliucci at Nautilus: Is evolutionary biology about to prove a two-millennia old metaphysical speculation? Or is metaphysics about to fundamentally change the way we look at biology? Andreas Wagner, a developmental biologist at the University of Zurich, argues for both theses. I’m not convinced. Just read the last two sentences of his 2014 book, Arrival of the Fittest: How Nature Innovates. They come in an epilogue, titled “Plato’s Cave.” “We are shedding new light on one of the most durable and fascinating subjects in all of philosophy,” he writes. “And we learn that life’s creativity draws from a source that is older than life, and perhaps older than time.” (Italics mine.) The source of this creativity, Wagner argues, Read More ›

From Ruth Williams at The Scientist: Newly made cells in the brains of mice adopt a more complex morphology and connectivity when the animals encounter an unusual environment than if their experiences are run-of-the-mill. Researchers have now figured out just how that happens. According to a study published today (October 27) in Science, a particular type of cell—called an interneuron—in the hippocampus processes the animals’ experiences and subsequently shapes the newly formed neurons. … Most of the cells in the adult mammalian brain are mature and don’t divide, but in a few regions, including an area of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, neurogenesis occurs. The dentate gyrus is thought to be involved in the formation of new memories. In Read More ›