Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Denyse O'Leary

close-up-portrait-of-a-neanderthal-child-caveman-child-stock-672778560-stockpack-adobe_stock
close up portrait of a neanderthal child caveman child

Researchers: Did Neanderthal Children Collect “Stuff”?

The items that raise the question are small marine shells found in caves. They were carefully preserved but have no known function. A baby tooth was found in the same area
The study, along with recent studies of Neanderthal tools and stone circles, is making the idea that they were intellectually inferior increasingly untenable. Read More ›
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Colonisation of Mars. Mars base colony in open space. Digitally generated AI image

Why Do Science and Tech Writers Hate Elon Musk?

It's partly because he encourages bottom-up media but also he encourages a sort of vision that is now largely lost
Musk's philosophy of the future: I believe it should be curiosity about the Universe – expand humanity to become a multiplanet, then interstellar, species. Read More ›
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Tide going out on beach in Mexico at sunset with mountains behind

Woke SciAm Editor Resigns in Post-US Election Uproar

Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine and former Scientific American columnist, offers a thoughtful response
Shermer writes, "the people promulgating these woke ideas are mostly true believers" and their fervor makes it easier to convince themselves, not others. Read More ›
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Social distance concept. keep spaced between each chairs make separate for social distancing, increasing physical space between people to avoid spreading illness during transmission of COVID-19. 3D

Post-COVID, trust in science said to be on the rise

The article doesn’t really get into the question of why public trust fell so much during the COVID years. Perhaps an anecdote will help. Read More ›
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MRI scan of the brain

At Nature: What Is So Special About the Human Brain?

None of the features identified by neuroscientists explain why humans think about things that other animal life forms don't
While the article is most interesting, somehow, it doesn’t seem like we have learned more about human nature. Human nature isn’t entirely in our brains. Read More ›

Why science is not good evidence for atheism

Fr. Patrick Gorevan (St. Patrick’s Maynooth) offers some thoughts on God and science at Australia’s MercatorNet. He is discussing a recent book, Science at the Doorstep to God (Ignatius 2023) by Fr. Robert Spitzer: How about the extraordinary and unlikely fine-tuning which was needed for life to emerge? Sir Fred Hoyle, an adamant atheist, after discovering the need for exceedingly Read More ›

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A macro shot reveals a bee's intricate legs clinging to a flower's pollen, nature's delicate dance unfolds.

Possible Breakthrough: Bee Gene Specifies Complex Hive Behavior

The researchers used CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors to modify or switch off the dsx gene in selected bees
If the universe is the product of intelligence, in principle, insects could have access to it? But the question is, how, exactly? Read More ›
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Prehistoric hand paintings at the Cave of the Hands (Spanish: Cueva de Las Manos ) in Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina. The art in the cave dates from 13,000 to 9,000 years ago.

Do We Need Language To Think? Some Researchers Say No

At one time, it was strictly a philosophical issue but then neuroscientists got involved

A controversy about whether we need language to think pits two MIT scholars against each other: Noam Chomsky (yes) vs. Evelina Fedorenko (no). For a long time, it was only a philosophical issue: Plato saw thinking as a conversation with oneself. If you don’t form concepts into words are you really thinking? Chomsky agreed. But later, neuroscientists like Fedorenko got involved, offering some research findings. Last summer at the New York Times, science writer Carl Zimmer reported, When Dr. Fedorenko began this work in 2009, studies had found that the same brain regions required for language were also active when people reasoned or carried out arithmetic. But Dr. Fedorenko and other researchers discovered that this overlap was a mirage. Part Read More ›

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Two adult young cats black-white and tabby lie together in the green cat's bed

Researchers: Cats can eavesdrop on human conversations — sort of

The researchers were surprised that cats could learn speech sounds without any reward but then knowing what is going on is generally its own reward for the cat. Read More ›
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Flint sparking matchstick for authentic ignition. Concept Fire starting, Survival gear, Camping essentials, Emergency preparedness

Neuroscientist Seeks the First Spark of Human Consciousness

It's a challenge. Human consciousness is very hard to define for the purposes of this kind of research
If we have “prior models of how things ought to be” at birth, aren’t we already conscious? Read More ›
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Two chimpanzees have a fun.

Can Brain Structure Alone Explain Why We Have Language?

How human languages came to exist is an unsolved mystery within science
This recent find in evolution studies is strikingly negative. There is no physical limitation to chimpanzee speech; rather, the limitation is a mental one. Read More ›
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Bearded neanderthal man sits by fire in cave at night, caveman and bonfire on dark background. Concept of Homo sapiens, prehistoric era, primitive, ancient, Stone Age

Burials from 120,000 years ago: Was it Neanderthals vs. others?

Did ancient peoples believe that the spirits of the dead were protecting the caves they were buried in? Read More ›
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A captivating view of a black hole in space, a dark center surrounded by a swirling disk of hot, glowing gas and dust, stars and nebulae in the background being bent by its gravity, feeling of the

Did Stephen Hawking End His Career by Giving Up on Truth?

A philosopher argues the case. But has the rejection of truth in physics spread widely into popular culture?
One element of getting to choose our private truths is that we need only notice or understand the significance of the things we want to notice or understand. Read More ›
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Hyper-realistic figure standing at a forked road, with incredible detail in the environment, representing free will in a realistic scene

Free Will: A Materialist Thinks It Might Somehow Be Real

Psychiatrist Ralph Lewis thinks that Darwinian evolution can explain human consciousness but now hesitates to debunk free will

Earlier this year, University of Toronto psychiatrist Ralph Lewis wrote a two-part series at Psychology Today titled “The Strongest Neuroscience Arguments in the Free Will Debate” (here and here). He looked at Mitchell (yes) and Sapolsky (no), both of whom published serious books on the topic in 2023. And he concluded, For now, for practical purposes, given our current level of incomplete understanding of the complexities of the brain’s decision-making processes, and our inability to predict human behaviors in most situations, we might as well regard ourselves as having free will—or rather, degrees of freedom. We do know that our brain has highly evolved systems for self-control—even for those of us who struggle with this relatively more than others, and Read More ›

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newspaper production and printing process

Washington Post owner defends his refusal to endorse Harris

He sees media endorsing a candidate as part of the declining trust problem. That’s likely true but for more trust, the Post also needs to be closer to readers. Read More ›
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If Then logic statement written in white chalk on a black chalkboard isolated on white

Billboard Chris Asks a Sharp Question About “Evolution”

On a logical basis, Elston’s critique is unanswerable — but logic no longer has the status that it once did. Nor does evidence.
It may be that the big Whatever You Feel of private truth is here to stay and will slowly devour all forms of knowledge based on public truth. Read More ›