Denyse O'Leary
Do We Need Language To Think? Some Researchers Say No
At one time, it was strictly a philosophical issue but then neuroscientists got involvedA 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 ›
Study: Near-death experience — not mere danger — transforms lives
Researchers: Cats can eavesdrop on human conversations — sort of
The real losers in yesterday’s U.S. election were the media
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
Can Brain Structure Alone Explain Why We Have Language?
How human languages came to exist is an unsolved mystery within science
Burials from 120,000 years ago: Was it Neanderthals vs. others?
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?Seasonal AI-generated freakout: Halloween Egg! Attack
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 willEarlier 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 ›
Washington Post owner defends his refusal to endorse Harris
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.
At Big Think: Getting Stoned Shaped the Modern Mind
Cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian sees human civilization forming something like “the brain of Gaia” in a cosmos that is becoming increasingly conscious
Could Cancel Culture Be Replaced By Something Worse?
Claims that it has "run its course" come too often from those who have abandoned their colleagues and merely hope not to be next themselves
Will the AI bubble pop louder than the dot-com bubble?
Cancel Culture Dissected by One of Its Victims
Researchers are beginning to study the sociology of Woke mobs demanding the firing or silencing of whoever vexes them — with some interesting results
Musk: Don’t hate the media, become the media
Bill Dembski: When a Chatbot Tried Improving on a Literary Genius
If what matters is computer engineering and a supermassive databank, the chatbot should improve on the masters, right?
Navigating the landscape of consciousness
Many people have watched the short Closer to Truth videos at YouTube, where Robert Lawrence Kuhn has interviewed over two hundred scientists and philosophers on consciousness and related fields. The short format and lively pace are geared to those of us who are generally interested in the ideas and the people but don’t have hours or days to spare. Now Read More ›