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Neuroscience & Mind

chimps
chimps
Photo credit: Alexas Fotos, via Pixabay.

Return (Yet Again) of the Humanzee

So it comes down to a war on the human soul. Now, here’s the interesting part: Humans are self-evidently unique. Read More ›
cat sleeping
Photo credit: Kate Stone Matheson, via Unsplash.

Sleeping and Waking — A Designer’s Gift

Why is sleeping, in which the conscious mind/brain is asleep, categorically more restful and recuperative to the body than merely lying down? Read More ›
crab pincers
Photo credit: David Spode, via Unsplash.

Can Animal Minds Explain Human Minds?

Kristin Andrews thinks consciousness researchers should discard the assumptions of “white, male and WEIRD” philosophy profs and study more crabs. Read More ›
Ouroboros
Image: Ouroboros, the snake that consumes its own tail, via Wikimedia Commons.

Neuroscience Must Be Dualist, Whether or Not “Science” Allows It

No matter what terminology is chosen, the materialist project always and necessarily amounts to eliminating the mind. Read More ›
covid
Photo credit: Surprising_Shots, via Pixabay.

Should Scientists Lie to Us for Our Own Good?

People suspect that we are being conned about a lot of things. How would an accepted, admitted policy of conning us not make it worse? Read More ›
honey bee
Photo credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann via Unsplash.

What Do Bees’ Joy and Pain Really Tell Us About Insect Minds?

Efforts to relate insect to human consciousness are doomed because the distinguishing features of human consciousness are abstract thinking and moral choice. Read More ›
Sam Harris
Photo: Sam Harris, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

On Free Will, ChatGPT4 Blows Away Atheist Sam Harris

Rather than refute Harris by pointing out why his statement scores high on the irony meter, I thought I’d ask ChatGPT to do it for me. Read More ›
Marks and Myers 2
Photo: Robert J. Marks and Walter Myers at COSM conference, by Nathan Jacobson.

Must AI Inevitably Degenerate into Nonsense, through “Model Collapse”?

AI works because humans are real creative beings, and AIs are built using gigantic amounts of diverse and creative datasets made by humans. Read More ›
Chinese Han characters
Gauger
Photo: Chinese Han characters, by Michael Coghlan, via Flickr (cropped).

Passing the Turing Test Is No Guarantee of True AI

A person who speaks no Chinese whatsoever inhabits a room full of file cabinets full of questions and answers — all written in Chinese. Read More ›
Ray Kurzweil
Photo: Ray Kurzweil, by Nathan Jacobson.

Ray Kurzweil Predicts: The “Singularity” by 2045

Under Kurzweil’s transhumanist vision of the future, AI promises us superhuman capabilities complete with heaven on earth and eternal life. Read More ›

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