Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Denyse O'Leary

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A phoenix rising from the ashes against a fiery backdrop - AI Generated

Why Logician Kurt Gödel Believed in Life After Death

He saw human folly as an opportunity to reform and learn, because our souls are immortal whether we like it or not
In a deeply rational, ordered universe, Gödel argues, human potential — frustrated in so many ways here — must flower afterward elsewhere. Read More ›
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Why Don’t We Hear So Much About “False Information” Any More?

The new censorship target, “disinformation,” means something profoundly different, and the difference is scary
As Tablet editor Jacob Siegel shows, truth or falsehood is irrelevant to disinformation, which is whatever government does not want you to know. Read More ›
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Tribe of Hunter-Gatherers Wearing Animal Skin Holding Stone Tipped Tools, Stand Near Cave Entrance. Neanderthal Family Ready for Hunting in the Jungle or Migration

What Was It Like To Grow Up in the Paleolithic era?

We are learning much about our ancestors’ lives from the less highly publicized finds
From the fragments gathered so far, it seems we have no evidence for a history of the human mind, only the history of human technology. Read More ›
Mathematics in everyday life Reuben Teo Unsplash Hba7In7vnoM

Great Ideas, Like All Ideas, Are Immaterial in Principle

The main reasons we hear more ideas today is that we are building on basic past ideas plus there are many more human beings and communications systems
i Loeb sounds as though has absolutely no idea what makes human intelligence unique; thus he mistakes the result for the cause. Read More ›
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Generative AI illustration of neanderthal prehistoric caveman

Does It Take a PR Agency to Make Neanderthals Human?

It’s interesting to watch how science writing on Neanderthals has changed over the years
There is no reason to think Neanderthals were not human in the usual sense except that someone must be the subhuman if Darwinism is true. Read More ›
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press and media camera ,video photographer on duty in public new

How Bottom Up Media Now Threaten the Traditional Top Tier

New media resources like subscription-based Substack are rapidly becoming the venue of choice for whistleblowers with stories to break
The rise and fall of intellectual movements may well now depend on their ability to use new media successfully to express their views. Read More ›
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Psychology concept. Sunrise and woman silhouette.

If Science Doesn’t Support Dualism — Well, It Should

At Big Think, Kmele Foster interviews five figures in consciousness studies. Not one is a dualist but a listener may come away with a new appreciation for dualism
Dualism — human consciousness is real, immaterial, and special — is the only approach to consciousness that accords with the evidence. Read More ›
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Young freelancer working with laptop at home. Side view of male working on freelance at home office.

How Bottom Up Media Are Slowly Replacing Top Down Media

The decline and death of legacy media organizations is speeding up and the media replacing them are much smaller, more numerous and more independent
A key problem: The legacy media that cling to government and corporate interests in order to survive have so much less use now for freedom of the press. Read More ›
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Two chimpanzees have a fun.

Why Does the Proposal for Chimp–Human Hybrids Keep Coming Back?

From David Barash’s perspective, the humanzee’s suffering is rendered worthwhile precisely because it enables the denigration of other human beings
Physicist Rob Sheldon warns, when ridiculous inhumane ideas are routinely aired, we become more willing to accept inhumane ideas that are in fact quite viable. Read More ›
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Multiracial team of professional medical surgeons performs the surgical operation in a modern hospital. Doctors are working to save the patient. Medicine, health and neurosurgery.

Human Brain Tries Immediately to Compensate for Language Loss

Neurosurgeons recently had a unique opportunity to observe brains undergoing the loss of the speech area and compensating in real time
The observations showed that the brain needs specific lobes for normal processing but also — good news for rehab — that it compensates naturally. Read More ›
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Macro photo of Toxocara canis, dog roundworm

Can the Simplest Animal Minds Explain Human Minds?

Kristin Andrews thinks consciousness researchers should discard the assumptions of “overwhelmingly white, male and WEIRD” philosophy profs and study more crabs
Panpsychism is a faith, like materialism; its assumptions and assertions are not “value-free.” We are likely to be unpacking them for some time. Read More ›
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illustration, mouse in the kitchen, generative ai.

Mice Pass the Mirror Test — Not a Self-Knowledge Test

Whether an animal recognizes its own image surely has less to do with self-awareness than with the role that sight — as a sense — plays in its life
The researchers, refreshingly, made clear that they were NOT making unsubstantiable claims about mouse self-awareness; they were studying neural wiring. Read More ›
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Natural Dualism

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

Riccardo Manzotti and Paulo Moderato set out the dilemma: The human mind makes no sense apart from the forbidden dualist perspective. Read More ›
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A close - up handshake between a doctor and a patient in a medical office with clean

Do Scientists Need to Learn to Lie More Believably?

As public trust in science diminishes, one serious proposal that scientists should manipulate our beliefs for our own good
Why should we believe what materialists say anyway? Generally, the sciences whose ultimate message is meaningless void-ism are running aground. Read More ›
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Purkinje neuron, GABAergic neuron located in the cerebellum

Researchers: Human Cerebellum Aids Higher Cognitive Functions

At one time, the cerebellum was thought to facilitate only functions like movement. But recent research shows that it’s more complex
It’s not wise to bet against complexity in the brain. Or to bet that no differences will be found between the human brain and, say, the mouse brain. Read More ›
Atomic structure. Futuristic concept on the topic of nanotechnology in science. The nucleus of an atom surrounded by electrons on a technological background

Hossenfelder vs Goff: Debate About Electrons Sparks Social Media!

The public has not suddenly become interested in whether electrons exist. Rather, more people are using new media for an increasingly broad array of purposes.
A classic top-down discussion is now taking place on X, an intrinsically bottom-up platform — broadening access while threatening former gatekeepers. Read More ›
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Brain development during pregnancy of unborn baby. 3D rendered illustration.

Study: Babies Start Learning Their Home Language Before Birth

Neuroscience researchers found that newborns responded better to a folk tale in French than in Spanish or English — when French was their mothers’ native language
Before birth, the child is hearing the rhythm of speech rather than individual words, through the amniotic fluid; that may speed learning later. Read More ›
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Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain

Claim: What consciousness studies needs is more Darwinism

The Darwinian view of the evolution of the human mind is, at best, a ladder with no upper rungs
Researchers seem to have honed their skills in presenting failure as success and in portraying more of what hasn’t worked as a solution. Read More ›