Study: Another crow first — crows can detect geometric shapes
Some of us suspect that this talent is found in crows because they are so often studied rather than because they are unique in detecting shapes.
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Denyse O'Leary
How a Split Brain Enables a Unified Mind Still Baffles Us
In the comments following Sean McDowell’s interview with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, a viewer asked, are the parts of a split brain still really connected?We are learning new things about the mind–brain complex every day and not everything is what we expected to find.
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A Challenge to Pale Blue Dot-ology: Earth Is Significant
The “pale blue dot lost in space” view of Earth seems to brand science as an intellectual property of materialist atheism. And evidence isn’t what keeps it goingPerhaps more of us should start calling out these assumptions that arise not from observing nature but from the intellectual commitments of those who make them.
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Has Physics Pounded a New Nail in the Coffin of Materialism?
Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman says that matter is now known not to be fundamental but that fact is taking a while to catch onContinued failure to materialize the mind could be the beginning of a serious reckoning with the problems that physicalism and materialism represent.
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Study: Neanderthals invented their own tech, didn’t copy others
The team suggests that their find shows that Neanderthals were able to plan ahead, not only in making the tool, but in the way it was used.
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What Did the Multi-Year Consciousness Study Really Find?
Surprisingly, the joint research teams found that the prefrontal cortex, the “personality center,” may not be as important for consciousness as we thinkThe demotion of the prefrontal cortex in consciousness is remarkable in the light of other researchers’ view that it is practically what makes us human.
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Fish Can Recognize Individual Humans — But What Does That Imply?
Wild fish told the divers apart by their diving gear when they could gain a food reward for doing soNow that we better appreciate the clever ways fish find food, we should not lurch into a relentless search for human mental and emotional qualities in them.
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Old-fashioned journalists aren’t dead; they’re on Substack
There is no turning back. The historically Democrat-leaning legacy media are losing voters even among young Democrats.
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ET Doesn’t Need to Exist in Order to Do His Real Job
His real job seems to be to support a lame argument about why humans are not exceptional. But the very idea of his existence works just as wellThe search for ET itself does the philosophical work of attempting to deflate human “self-importance.” Finding anything is a bonus.
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Salvo: The Facts and Fictions of the Scopes Monkey Trial
Society has changed so much that biologists face trouble not for believing in Darwinism but for believing in the reality of biologyThe biologists who would pride themselves on enthroning Darwinism as a public truth a century ago find that what is publicly true no long even matters the way it used to.
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Consciousness in unborn children: Touching the third rail
When it comes to honest enquiry about early human consciousness, the third rail of abortion may derail the research train.
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Does Our Humanity Really Depend on “Concept Cells”?
A recently discovered type of brain cell, thought to be unique to humans, codes for a variety of types of information around a single conceptIt’s a lot to ask of one type of cell, however unique, that it be what makes humans more intelligent than chimpanzees and that it create language.
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A sober assessment of the deadly gain-of-function virus debate
It’s no use demanding that the public trust scientists if they do nothing to deserve trust.
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A Neurosurgeon Makes the Neuroscience Case for Free Will
Michael Egnor is concerned about the serious social implications of denying free willInsisting that there is no free will amounts to declaring “I’m a meat robot, so take seriously what I’m saying.” That’s self-refuting nonsense, Dr. Egnor says.
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The Nearly Unfathomable Complexity of Even a Mouse’s Brain
Mapping a small part of a mouse's brain required 1.6 petabytes of data, which is equivalent to 22 years of nonstop high-definition videoIf it takes a hundred scientists to map a cubic millimetre of a mouse’s brain, even the material world — never mind the immaterial world of the mind — is not likely to have a simple explanation.
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Reptilian Renaissance: How Did Reptiles Develop Intelligence?
Scientists used to think reptiles were dumb but then they looked more closelyMaybe if we are looking for general principles underlying the development of intelligence, we would be wise to leave evolution out of it for a bit.
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At Quanta: High Bird Intelligence Developed on a Different Path
High intelligence developing on different paths is consistent with convergent evolution. It’s also consistent with design in natureIt is ironic that otherwise intelligent people must play the “we’re just another animal” game while demanding attention for ideas that only humans can give.
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Did the Enlargement of the Human Brain Depend on Two Genes?
The genes, unique to humans, spurred brain growth when introduced in mice and chimpanzee stem cellsWhile it is quite true that the human brain is very large by animal standards, there is no simple one-on-one relationship between brain size and intelligence.
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Information Imperialism: The Battle for Free Access Heats Up
Headline incidents are only one part of an international trend toward attempted government control of the news streamRegardless of who emerges as the victor in the battle between government censors and independent creators, the traditional media landscape is now history.
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Journalist: Seizures gave me a healthy respect for the brain
Wright learned to see himself not as the conductor, nor as the orchestra, but the music itself, which gave him the confidence he needed to move on with life.
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