From Claire M. Fletcher-Flinn at Frontiers in Medicine, reviewing The Logic of Madness: A New Theory of Mental Illness … It is rational behavior in response to a compound misunderstanding of various emotions. The starting point of Blakeway’s theory is a basic algorithm that converts an emotion into an action that optimizes biological fitness. Depending upon the circumstances, an action state is driven by the emotion having the highest calculated value. He divides emotions into four categories, basic survival (e.g., fear, hunger), reproductive (e.g., lust, jealousy), social (e.g., guilt, anger), and strategic (e.g., anxiety, regret). Most of these biologically derived emotions are shared with other animals, especially chimpanzees, although there is the question of whether other animals can perform tactical Read More ›

A friend writes to note changes atStanford Plato, a major 2016 revision from 2007: Since the 1950s, the concept of information has acquired a strikingly prominent role in many parts of biology. This enthusiasm extends far beyond domains where the concept might seem to have an obvious application, such as the biological study of perception, cognition, and language, and now reaches into the most basic parts of biological theory. Hormones and other cellular products through which physiological systems are regulated are typically described as signals. Descriptions of how genes play their causal role in metabolic processes and development are routinely given in terms of “transcription”, “translation”, and “editing”. The most general term used for the processes by which genes exert Read More ›

I have previously remarked on the “Goldilocks” mindset that seems to pervade climate change alarmism.  When it comes to climate we can be certain about one thing — it has been changing constantly for all of history.  Sometimes it has been much warmer than it is now, and sometimes it has been much colder.  Yet central to the climate alarmist narrative is the notion that there was some Goldilocks “just right” moment from which we are currently diverging and our job is to make it stop. Robert Tracinski comments on this phenomenon here:   The problem is that drought is normal in California. It’s normal on a year-to-year basis:Most years are dry, and the state has always relied on the Read More ›

From Climate Audit: n 2012, the then much ballyhoo-ed Australian temperature reconstruction of Gergis et al 2012 mysteriously disappeared from Journal of Climate after being criticized at Climate Audit. Now, more than four years later, a successor article has finally been published. Gergis says that the only problem with the original article was a “typo” in a single word. Rather than “taking the easy way out” and simply correcting the “typo”, Gergis instead embarked on a program that ultimately involved nine rounds of revision, 21 individual reviews, two editors and took longer than the American involvement in World War II. However, rather than Gergis et al 2016 being an improvement on or confirmation of Gergis et al 2012, it is Read More ›

From his blog: I just noticed a few interesting stories about an announcement from Tanzania that a second set of australopith tracks has been discovered about 60 meters from the original Laetoli footprint trails. The Laetoli tracks were discovered in 1978 by a team led by Mary Leakey. The trackways are about 90 feet long with about 70 prints. The feet are small and the stride is short, and they are typically attributed to an australopith. The prints were made in volcanic ash, and have been dated to 3.6 million radiometric years. More. He adds, “I’m not so sure we can tell the difference between human and australopith just from their footprints.” Autralopiths: Australopithecus (genus Australopithecus), ( Latin: “southern ape”) Read More ›

As New Scientist tells it, “Red wolf may lose endangered status because it’s just a hybrid”: The red wolf, a critically endangered species living in the south-eastern US, may be nothing more than a hybrid between coyotes and the grey wolf, a new study suggests. If so, it may lose its conservation status and protection, given that US legislation does not protect hybrids. This could lead to loss of an important evolutionary lineage, because the red wolf is the only living repository of genes from the grey wolves that were driven near extinction in the south-eastern states by trapping and agricultural development. More. Shocka: Everyone knew that about the red wolf. There is usually  no critical reason to protect hybrids except Read More ›

Must be BBC. Must be summer. Last summer, chimpanzees were entering the stone age. This summer, from BBC: An orangutan copying sounds made by researchers offers new clues to how human speech evolved, scientists say. Rocky mimicked more than 500 vowel-like noises, suggesting an ability to control his voice and make new sounds. It had been thought these great apes were unable to do this and, since human speech is a learned behaviour, it could not have originated from them. Study lead Dr Adriano Lameira said this “notion” could now be thrown “into the trash can”. More. The reporter must have got something wrong somewhere. Who says humans learned speech from orangutans? It’s not reported that the orangutan started a Read More ›

From Nature: At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, astronomer Sara Seager has begun to examine 14,000 compounds that are stable enough to exist in a planetary atmosphere. She and her colleagues are winnowing down their initial list of molecules using criteria such as whether there are geophysical ways to send the compound into the atmosphere. “We’re doing a triage process,” says Seager. “We don’t want to miss anything.” The Seattle meeting aims to compile a working list of biosignature gases and their chemical properties. The information will feed into how astronomers analyse data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, slated for launch in 2018. The telescope will be able to look at only a handful of habitable planets, Read More ›

From Neuroskeptic at Discover: In a new paper that could prove explosive, Australian neuropathologists C. V. Dennis and colleagues report that they found very little evidence for adult neurogenesis in humans. … … Dennis et al. don’t quite rule out all neurogenesis in adults. However, the authors say that if human adult neurogenesis takes place, it does so at an extremely low rate: relatively speaking, it’s about 10 times lower than the rate seen in adult rodents.More. In that case, old neurons must be learning new functions because rehabilitation happens all the time. See also: Birds have more neurons than primates do. It’s unclear how neurons relate to intelligence, exactly. Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Science News: By carefully crushing rock salt, researchers have measured the chemical makeup of air pockets embedded inside the rock. This new technique reveals that oxygen made up 10.9 percent of Earth’s atmosphere around 815 million years ago. Scientists have thought that oxygen levels would not be that high until 100 million to 200 million years later. The measurements place elevated oxygen levels well before the appearance of animals in the fossil record around 650 million years ago, the researchers report in the August issue of Geology. “I think our results will take people by surprise,” says study coauthor Nigel Blamey, a geochemist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. “We came out of left field, and I think Read More ›

At “Animals and abstraction: Reflections on Vincent Torley’s thoughts,” commenter Charles Do cats explore for the sake of exploring (curioisity)? Or are they just reconnoitering for food, danger, shelter, sex, and if so, is that a form of learning? asks. Good questions. My impression is that cats are not generally lifelong learners. They are very curious when young, and learn almost everything they need to know in the first year or two. Once they have learned a way of life, they stick to it. There can be a comical aspect to that. A vet once told me that it is wise to neuter a tomcat as young as he can safely sustain the operation. If one waits a few years Read More ›

The “hard problem” of life From Arxiv: Chalmer’s famously identified pinpointing an explanation for our subjective experience as the “hard problem of consciousness”. He argued that subjective experience constitutes a “hard problem” in the sense that its explanation will ultimately require new physical laws or principles. Here, we propose a corresponding “hard problem of life” as the problem of how `information’ can affect the world. In this essay we motivate both why the problem of information as a causal agent is central to explaining life, and why it is hard – that is, why we suspect that a full resolution of the hard problem of life will, similar to as has been proposed for the hard problem of consciousness, ultimately Read More ›

Yes, this is getting a bit bistro, isn’t it? From Animals, abstraction, arithmetic and language: During the past two weeks, over at Evolution News and Views, Professor Michael Egnor has been arguing that it is the capacity for abstract thought which distinguishes humans from other animals, and that human language arises from this capacity. While I share Dr. Egnor’s belief in human uniqueness, I have to take issue with his claim that abstraction is what separates man from the beasts. More. We ask questions about how we think, and about how animals think. No animal asks such questions. Terms like “abstraction” are human ideas; whether an animal can abstract hardly matters. He is none the worse for not caring. All Read More ›

It is often claimed that methodological naturalism is a principle which defines the scope of the scientific enterprise. Today’s post is about thirty-one famous scientists throughout history who openly flouted this principle, in their scientific writings, by putting forward arguments for a supernatural Deity. The term “methodological naturalism” is defined variously in the literature. All authorities agree, however, that if you put forward scientific arguments for the existence of a supernatural Deity, then you are violating the principle of methodological naturalism. The 31 scientists whom I’ve listed below all did just that. I’ve supplied copious documentation, to satisfy the inquiries of skeptical readers. My own researches have led me to the conclusion that the principle of methodological naturalism is not Read More ›

  Readers will remember that Tom Wolfe’s book, the Kingdom of Speech, is coming out amid summer fanfare. From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News and Views: Great minds, as you know. As I’ve said before, it’s the Thomas Nagel/Stephen King/Tom Stoppard Principle: When you reach a certain rare level of achievement and acclaim, you earn the right to speak your mind plainly in defiance of the bullies and censors. We look forward to reading Wolfe. More. In the past, it has been agreed that there are only 20 chairs. 19 chairs must be occupied by Darwin followers. The 20th chair is permitted to someone they can ricochet off. Suppose we added more chairs? Does it matter if some of the Read More ›