CategoryPhilosophy of Mind
Can There Really Be an Ultimate Happiness Machine?
Technology can do so much. Can it really provide an answer to the eternal human quest for happiness?
Deciphering the Hidden Meanings of Cave Art
In many cases, there are more dots and lines than animals, which suggests some sort of early information system
A Biochemist Begins To Sense the Limits of Materialism
William Reville seems both confident and uncertain at the same time that science can crack the problem of consciousness
Why Logician Kurt Gödel Believed in Life After Death
He saw human folly as an opportunity to reform and learn, because our souls are immortal whether we like it or not
What Was It Like To Grow Up in the Paleolithic era?
We are learning much about our ancestors’ lives from the less highly publicized finds
A Commonsense Defense of Idealism
Idealism is the most compelling final destination for former dualists, writes Douglas Axe
Great Ideas, Like All Ideas, Are Immaterial in Principle
The main reasons we hear more ideas today is that we are building on basic past ideas plus there are many more human beings and communications systems
The Placebo Effect Shows That the Mind Is Real
The placebo effect works even when patients know it’s a fake,
Defending Why We’re More than Machines
We need to look beyond materialism to understand what it means to be human.
Science Needs a Mind to Work
The use of science to discredit the existence of mental subjects is fatally flawed.
If Science Doesn’t Support Dualism — Well, It Should
At Big Think, Kmele Foster interviews five figures in consciousness studies. Not one is a dualist but a listener may come away with a new appreciation for dualism
Philip Goff’s “Why” and Inflated Success
We are still nowhere closer to arriving at a science of consciousness
Researchers: Early Humans Chose Their Toolmaking Rocks With Care
Different types of flint were useful for different purposes 70,000 to 30,000 years ago
Can the Simplest Animal Minds Explain Human Minds?
Kristin Andrews thinks consciousness researchers should discard the assumptions of “overwhelmingly white, male and WEIRD” philosophy profs and study more crabs
Neuroscience Must Be Dualist, Whether or Not “Science” Allows It
Why the Turing Test Is Becoming Obsolete
Chatbots can easily pass the test without doing any thinking at all
Claim: What consciousness studies needs is more Darwinism
The Darwinian view of the evolution of the human mind is, at best, a ladder with no upper rungs
The Likely Reason the Human Mind Has No History
Our efforts to explain the origin of the human mind fall flat because we are looking for an origin that probably doesn’t exist