Denyse O'Leary
At SciAm: When did human ancestors start using stone tools?
Setting aside the question of whether the various groups mentioned in the article are in fact our ancestors, stone tool use is not even confined to primates
Can the Soul Be Defined Out of Existence?
Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff argues that the soul could not really amount to much without a physical brain
Major Canadian media are suing OpenAI for copyright violation
Study: Great Apes Point to How Human Language May Have Evolved
What’s revealing in these types of studies is not what the researchers find but what the science media choose to make of them
Philosopher warns of social conflict over AI consciousness
Is Physicalism Dead? And Is Psychology Today Here to Bury It?
Physicalism argues that the mind is simply the activities of neurons in the brain and consciousness is an illusion that they generate
We are all the media now, whether we like it or not
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
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
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
Remember when chatbots would write poetry better than Shakespeare?
Post-COVID, trust in science said to be on the rise
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'tWhy 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 ›
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
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
