CategoryPhilosophy of Mind
Skeptic Michael Shermer’s (Non)-Vision of the Soul
Responding to Michael Egnor at COSM 2025, he said that the soul is an explanation but not a good explanation for our relationship to our bodies
Does Neuroscience Show That We Are Mere Biological Machines?
At COSM 2025, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor assembled his strongest evidence for no
Are Human Beings Machines? Surgeon and Historian Go Head-to-Head
At COSM 2025, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and Skeptic Magazine editor Michael Shermer faced off on some of the most critical questions of our lives
Neuroscience and Philosophy: Limits of Cutting-Edge Brain Science
Neuroscience topics like self-consciousness, social interaction, agency, and the binding problem sit at the intersection of science and philosophy
Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind: Bridging the Gap
Computational neuroscientist Joseph Green tackles the gap in the current Mind Matters podcast
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: Does the Soul Really Exist?
He offers evidence that helps explain why modern medicine tries to understand near-death experiences, not merely explain them away
Physicists: Math Shows That the Universe Can’t Be a Simulation
The physicists argue that pure information underlies the universe of matter and energy, as a Platonic realm of ideas
The Neanderthal Story Is Still Evolving (Even If Nothing Else Is)
Their children of mixed heritage may have suffered from a genetic problem; also, what we can learn about Neanderthals from fossil footprints
Tales From the Neanderthal Nights: Why They Really Disappeared
A new paper offers an assessment that does not need the Neanderthal to be the subhuman whose disappearance is explained by evolution. Arithmetic will suffice
A Neuroscientist on the Limits of the “Cutting Edge” of His Field
As Dr. Joseph Green tells his podcast hosts, although scientists can observe all 302 nematode worm neurons, they cannot fully explain how the worm moves or finds food
Human Tools Found From a Tumultuous Period 2.7 Million Years Ago
The authors talk much about “evolutionary” and “evolution.” But actually, it doesn’t sound as if there was much evolution at all. It sounds more like one enduring insight
This Is New: Top Thinkers Debate Terminal Lucidity
Steven Pinker tells Charles Murray at the Wall Street Journal that people are merely imagining a sudden gain in awareness before dying
Surprisingly Polite Response to Non-Materialist Book on the Mind
The discussion with well-known skeptic Michael Shermer and leading neuroscientist Christof Koch was notably polite and productive
Can an AI Really Develop a Mind of Its Own?
Specifically, can an AI develop a mind with its own goals and desires, capable of plans and strategies — as the authors of If Anyone Builds It believe?
At Psych Mag: How Your Brain Allegedly Invented God…
Not THIS again, you say? Yes, this again. Straight out of the 1970s, as if the last fifty years of research never happened
Podcast: Evidence For the Existence of the Human Soul
Michael Egnor and Denyse O'Leary argue that there is abundant scientific data demonstrating the immaterial existence of the human person and that this reality continues after we die
Why Materialism Will Probably Drift Into Panpsychism
I predict that “Nothing is conscious” will be superseded, among fashionable thinkers, by “Everything is conscious.”
“Here’s My Number. Call Me When You Have Evidence.”
On Standing for Truth, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor describes the approach he takes to those who defend materialist theories about human beings