Science and Culture Today Discovering Design in Nature
Topic

cognition

Kissinger 3
Photo: Henry Kissinger, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, via Flickr.

Kissinger: A.I. Machines Won’t “Think”

Transhumanists and other anti-human exceptionalists have been arguing of late that artificial-intelligence machines are destined to become so sophisticated that they will become “self-aware.” Read More ›
cauliflower-2
Photo: Cauliflower, by Couleur, via Pixabay.

Biologist Scott Turner: What Is Life? And Other Simple Questions

The picture of life that biologist Scott Turner sketches in his recent book is remarkable, and not easy to fully take aboard in your mind. Read More ›
ant
Image credit: viamoi [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

In Purpose and Desire, Scott Turner Argues that Cognition Is Foundational to Life

The evidence of purpose and design permeate life at every level, and this evidence presents ever increasing challenges to all theories of undirected evolution. Read More ›
mitosis
Scott Turner
Image: Cell mitosis in an onion root, by staticd (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Biologist Scott Turner’s Purpose and Desire, In His Own Words

If Turner is right, the clockwork, mechanistic, DNA-centric model may have met its match. Read More ›
brain
Photo credit: Grzegorz Jereczek from Gdańsk, Poland (Uni Karlsruhe) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Use Your Brain: Scientific Controversies and Intelligence

"The brain is, after all, by far the smartest system we know of in the universe." Well, then why not consider the possibility of design? Read More ›
brain
Image credit: GoodIdeas - Adobe Stock

Another Reason to Doubt the Relevance of Jeffrey Shallit

Materialist mathematician Jeffrey Shallit has a post on an article in the Globe and Mail about philosophy and the immateriality of the mind. Shallit’s post is titled “Another Reason to Doubt the Relevance of Philosophy”. Shallit doesn’t think much of philosophy: If philosophers think the view that “The brain is not an organ of consciousness. … The brain has no cognitive powers at all” deserves anything more than a good horselaugh, this simply shows how irrelevant philosophy has become … Our future understanding of cognition will come from neuroscience, not from Wittgenstein. Philosophy is plainly irrelevant to Shallit, which is the problem. Wittgenstein may not inform Dr. Shallit’s understanding of cognition, but Descartes, Kant, Hume, James, Skinner, Block, the Churchlands, Read More ›

© Discovery Institute