Michael Egnor
Hamlet: Did his perplexing neurotransmitters cause the tragedy?
The neuroscientist working from a mechanical perspective would study the material and efficient causes of Hamlet’s act of revenge.
Yes, your brain is a machine—if you choose to see it that way
As a Nobel Prize physicist pointed out, our method of study determines what we learnAnil Seth, a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, gave a TED talk recently (linked below) in which he asserted that “the combined activity of many billions of neurons—each one a tiny biological machine—is generating our conscious experience…” So, is your brain really a biological “machine”? Or is that just an analogy, like saying that a restaurant kitchen is a “hive” of activity? If so, how good is the analogy? Why do we select the analogy of a “machine” rather than a different one? It’s an important question, as we will see, because the questions we ask of nature constrain the answers we obtain. A machine is an artifact. It is a human-built assembly of…
Does brain stimulation research challenge free will?
If we can be forced to want something, is the will still free?
Does your brain construct your conscious reality? Part II
In a word, no. Your brain doesn't "think"; YOU think, using your brain
Does your brain construct your conscious reality? Part I
A reply to computational neuroscientist Anil Seth's recent TED talk
Is Free Will a Dangerous Myth?
The denial of free will is a much more dangerous myth
Do either machines—or brains—really learn?
A further response to Jeffrey Shallit: Actually, brains don’t learn either. Only minds learn.
Machines really can learn!
A computer scientist responds to my parableJeffrey Shallit argues that a computer is not just a machine, but something quite special.
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Apes Can Be Generous
Are they just like humans then?
Can machines really learn?
A parable of a book that learned
AI is indeed a threat to democracy
But not in quite the way historian Yuval Noah Harari thinks
The Brain Is Not a “Meat Computer”
Dramatic recoveries from brain injury highlight the differenceThe brain looks like a computer only if we analyze it as if it were a computer. Our analysis does not mean that it is a computer, and it does not mean that computation explains the mind or even that computational approaches to neuroscience provide genuinely meaningful insight into neurophysiology.
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