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 Read More ›
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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