CategoryPhilosophy of Mind
Are Mind vs. Brain Issues Going Mainstream?
Capitol Hill lobby HillFaith has been sponsoring discussion of the immateriality of the mind in recent yearsAbout the claim that chatbot Claude 3 showed self-awareness…
Has anyone noticed the resemblance between the conviction that an AI project thinks like a human and that extraterrestrials are visiting us?How Is Intentionality Embedded in the Universe?
All efforts to extinguish intentionality and morality only serve to further establish their inescapable realityConsciousness Observes Different Laws From Physics
At Closer to Truth, British philosopher and pastor Keith Ward provides an example to host Robert Lawrence KuhnLast week at Closer to Truth, host Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviewed British philosopher and pastor Keith Ward on “What’s the Stuff of Mind and Brain?” Ward is an idealist philosopher who “believes that the material universe is an expression or creation of a Supreme Mind, namely that of God’s.” In this excerpt, he explains how we can know that the mind is not simply what the brain does. One way is that the mind or consciousness functions according to different rules: Kuhn: [5:53] Keith, what is it that we need to combine with the brain to make this non material consciousness? Ward: [6:04] Well, you need — what Buddhists would say is — thoughts and feelings and sensations and perceptions. Read More ›
How Materialism Handicaps Us in Understanding AI’s Limits
Sabine Hossenfelder acknowledges AI’s limits, yet she is convinced that it will become consciousIn “Scientists warn of AI collapse,” theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder warns, “We’ve all become used to AI-generated art in the form of text, images, audio, and even videos. Despite its prevalence, scientists are warning that AI creativity may soon die. Why is that? What does this mean for the future of AI? And will human creativity be in demand after all? Let’s have a look.” She discusses the problem that chatbots and other generative AI create; they end up reprocessing and degrading their own information, essentially eating their own tails: [1:28] The more AI eats its own output the less variety the output has. For example in a paper from November, a group of scientists from France tested this for Read More ›
Neuroscientist: How the Brain-as-Computer Myth Led Science Astray
Michael Merzenich explains neuroplasticity — how the brain organizes itself in detail — to Robert Lawrence Kuhn at Closer to TruthCan Informational Realism Help Sort Out the Mind–Body Problem?
According to William Dembski, informational realism asserts that the ability to exchange information is the defining feature of realityWhy Humans Can’t “Share the Spotlight” With Tool-Using Animals
As the Ivy League war on human exceptionalism motors on, researchers’ thinking sometimes shorts out — and they don’t even noticeAt Sapiens, Oxford archaeologist Michael Haslam and Harvard archaeologist Abigail Desmond offer a fascinating look at the way animals use tools. It’s marred by a mental “short circuit” (I am not sure of a better way to describe it) about human beings. They are not happy with human exceptionalism at all. For example, they write, “Archaeologists have long considered tool use to be an evolutionary milestone that distinguished our lineage from other animals. Humans were considered the technological species.” Indeed, their purpose in writing is to show us that it’s not so. Before we turn to their argument, let’s look at their claim about archaeologists’ views. If archaeologists indeed think that humans are “distinguished” from other animals, they have made Read More ›