Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryPhilosophy of Mind

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The universe within. Silhouette of a man inside the universe, physical and mathematical formulas.. The concept on scientific and philosophical topics. Elements of this image furnished by NASA.
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post
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News
Date
May 7, 2022
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind
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A Purpose Must Underlie the Universe If Intelligent Beings Exist

Theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser argues that intelligent life is extremely rare in the universe
News
May 7, 2022
2
Philosophy of Mind

Dartmouth College theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser offers to explain why intelligence is rare in the universe: We are the only humans in this universe. And if we consider what we have learned from the history of life on Earth, chances are that intelligent life is extremely rare. While intelligence is clearly an asset in the struggle for survival among species, it is not a purpose of evolution; evolution has no purpose. Until it becomes intelligent, life is happy just replicating. With intelligence, it will be unhappy just replicating. This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the human condition. Putting all this together, we propose that we are indeed chemically connected to the rest of the cosmos, and that we Read More ›

blue-glowing-4-dimensional-object-in-space-abstract-fractal-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
Blue glowing 4 dimensional object in space abstract fractal background
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post
Author
News
Date
April 20, 2022
Categorized
Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind
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Hard Problem of Consciousness Solved?: A 4th Spatial Dimension?

Philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes argues that higher spatial dimensions might hold the key
News
April 20, 2022
2
Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind

In an abridged chapter of his recent book Modes of Sentience (2021), University of Exeter philosopher of mind, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, argues that higher spatial dimensions might hold the key to the hard problem of consciousness:” He is a fan of the More–Broad–Smithies theory of consciousness: The word tesseract was coined by the aforementioned mathematician and author Charles Howard Hinton, [58] whose work on the fourth dimension can be used to our ends. In his essay of 1880, ‘What is the fourth dimension?’ – published four years prior to the related book Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott – Hinton employs analogy to lower dimensional worlds to elucidate a speculated four-dimensional world. I shall briefly explain it, then connect this four dimensional world to the n-dimensional world of Read More ›

dolbadarn-castle-stockpack-adobe-stock
Dolbadarn Castle
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post
Author
Michael Egnor
Date
April 19, 2022
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Yes! There Is Evidence For the Intelligent Design of the Brain

If our brains were not intelligently designed, we would have no reason to believe anything our senses tell us
Michael Egnor
April 19, 2022
5
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

This is a big topic, of course. The brain, like all of biology, is obviously intelligently designed. From the elegant coordination of neural activity between neurons and brain regions to the remarkable law-like behavior of individual molecules and atoms that comprise neurons and neurotransmitters, the brain carries the unmistakable fingerprint of a Designer. But there is another common-sense way to infer design of the brain that is simple and I think quite convincing — it is based on our belief that our perceptions and concepts accord with truth. To see how this points to intelligent design of the brain, consider a very compelling argument for God’s existence proposed by philosopher Richard Taylor (1919–2003) in his book Metaphysics. Thomist philosopher Edward Read More ›

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Charting Consciousness.
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Author
News
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April 16, 2022
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Philosophy of Mind
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The Physics of Consciousness: There IS Such a Thing?

There are no really good theories of consciousness but some physicists, including Roger Penrose, make a good stab at it. Jordan Peterson listens
News
April 16, 2022
2
Philosophy of Mind

Yes. Jordan Peterson talks to Roger Penrose about that: Dr. Peterson recently traveled to the UK for a series of lectures at the highly esteemed Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. This conversation was recorded during that period with Sir Roger Penrose, a British mathematical physicist who was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for “discovering that black hole formation is a robust predictor of Einstein’s general relativity.” Moderated by Dr. Stephen Blackwood. ___________ Chapters ___________ [0:00] Intro [1:00] Is Consciousness Computational? [3:20] Turing Machines [6:30] Determinism & the Arrow of Time [12:15] Consciousness & Reductionism [17:30] Emergent Randomness & Evolution [23:00] The Tiling Problem, Computation, & AI [29:30] Escher, Brains, Bach [39:00] Pattern Recognition & Intuition [45:30] Mathematical Representations Read More ›

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Super macro shot tiny fruit flies on the top of a banana
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post
Author
News
Date
April 7, 2022
Categorized
Medicine and Health, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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The Brain Unfolds Like a Drama, With Neurons in Different Roles

Researchers studying fruit flies hope that spotting the stages at which human neurons go missing or wrong can help develop treatments to insert or replace them
News
April 7, 2022
3
Medicine and Health, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

We are not accustomed to thinking of fruit flies as even having brains. But they have 120 types of neurons in their visual system alone (which could be why they are so pesky): In the research published in Nature, the researchers studied the brains of the fruit fly Drosophila to uncover the complete set of tTFs needed to generate the roughly 120 neuron types of the medulla, a specific brain structure in the visual system of flies. They used state-of-the-art single-cell mRNA sequencing to obtain the transcriptome — all of the genes expressed in a given cell — of more than 50,000 individual cells that were then grouped into most of the cell types present in the developing medulla… The Read More ›

brain-surgery-stockpack-adobe-stock
Brain surgery
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post
Author
News
Date
April 4, 2022
Categorized
Ethics, Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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What Would Head or Partial Brain Transplants Do To Consciousness?

Researchers had some success swapping rodent heads (though there’s a catch) but no luck with monkeys. And then animal lovers weighed in…
News
April 4, 2022
7
Ethics, Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Science writer Max G. Levy, profiling Brandy Schillace’s book, Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher (2021), reminds us of the strange case of neurosurgeon Dr. Robert White (1926–2010) and his quest to develop human head transplants — or, as he liked to put it, body transplants. A new body for your old head… an offbeat form of immortality. White started with rhesus monkeys. At Case Western Reserve University, starting in 1970, he attempted many such transplants. Only one attempt succeeded (sort of). Without the usual spinal connections and thus without access to a body, the monkey head lived only nine days. Another such monkey head transplant was reported in 2016 — carried out by Xiaoping Ren at Harbin Medical University, China Read More ›

Girls eye with paint and earth
Girls eye with paint and earth
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post
Author
News
Date
April 1, 2022
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Physics
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New Scientist Offers a Sympathetic Account of Panpsychism

A serious, long form article shows that physicalism (“the mind is just what the brain does”) is failing
News
April 1, 2022
5
Philosophy of Mind, Physics

Panpsychism, the view that all nature participates in consciousness, has been growing under the radar for some time in science. But it is now coming into plainer view. New Scientist is one of the last places one might have expected to find a serious, long-form account of panpsychism — one that, in the context, amounts to a defense. Yet that’s just what science writer and filmmaker Thomas Lewton has been permitted by the editors to do. He tells us about his own journey at his site: “Studying physics, I thought telescopes and particle colliders would offer firm answers, but instead they raised more questions.” And at New Scientist, he tells us why: It can seem as if there is an Read More ›

Depth electrode on brain MRI imaging.
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post
Author
News
Date
March 25, 2022
Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Imaging Studies Fail Badly at Linking Brain and Behavior

Aha! news stories about what brain imaging reveals about human behavior are probably based on studies whose findings would not be confirmed by further research.
News
March 25, 2022
5
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Brain imaging has shed much light on medical conditions in recent decades. So it was hardly good news for neuroscientist Scott Marek at the University of Washington when the results of a study linking brain function with intelligence in 2000 children produced very counterintuitive results. He and his colleagues had divided the sample into two groups of 1000 and run the same analysis on each — and they did not match. At first, he told Nature, “I stared out of my apartment window in depression, taking in what it meant for the field.” Then the team decided to study the problem on a larger scale, using the three key studies in this type of research, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Read More ›

hinduism-religious-ceremony-puja-flowers-and-candle-on-river-ganges-water-india-stockpack-adobe-stock
Hinduism religious ceremony puja flowers and candle on river Ganges water, India
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post
Author
News
Date
March 22, 2022
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Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Religion
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Understanding the Hindu View of Free Will and Evil

Arjuna Gallagher points out that concepts of reincarnation and karma make both problems look very different in the Hindu tradition
News
March 22, 2022
16
Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Religion

In last week’s Mind Matters News podcast, “Hinduism, Metaphysics, and Free Will,” neurosurgeon Michael Egnor again interviews Arjuna Gallagher, a Hindu in New Zealand. (The earlier podcast was Hinduism, Reincarnation, and the Mind–Body Problem.) Gallagher hosts a YouTube channel called Theology Unleashed, which has featured many guests discussing the spiritual dimension of our lives — philosopher David Bentley Hart, neuroscientist Mark Solms, atheist Matt Dillahunty… a variety of voices on the spiritual life. Gallagher has also produced a documentary, The Persecuted Saints You’ve Never Heard Of about the persecution of Orthodox Christian monks. https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Mind-Matters-News-Episode-178-Arjuna-Gallagher-Episode-2-rev1.mp3 A partial transcript, notes, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow: Michael Egnor: In our last session, we talked a little bit about the evolutionary argument against Read More ›

Brain under water 3D render, subconscious mental life and brainstorm idea.
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post
Author
News
Date
March 18, 2022
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Consciousness Experiments Confirm Each Research Group’s Theories

News
March 18, 2022
5
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Human consciousness is by far the biggest mystery in the universe. We can be pretty sure that a researcher bold enough to claim to have found simple answer is mistaken. A recent study out of Tel Aviv University dramatically illustrates the problems we face. The researchers, focusing on the methods of study (methodological choices) that consciousness researchers from various schools of thought chose, found that a computer program could predict their results with 80% accuracy. That wasn’t supposed to happen: “The big question is how consciousness is born out of activity in the brain, or what distinguishes between conscious processing and unconscious processing,” Prof Mudrik explains. “For example, if I see a red rose, my visual system processes the information Read More ›

mri-or-magnetic-resonance-image-of-head-and-brain-scan-close-up-view-stockpack-adobe-stock
MRI or magnetic resonance image of head and brain scan. Close up view
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post
Author
News
Date
March 17, 2022
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind

Yes, the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe

But that’s not even the most remarkable thing about our brains
News
March 17, 2022
3
Philosophy of Mind

The question was asked — and answered — by Central University of Venezuela psychology student Jaimar Tuarez: Astronomist Carl Sagan said: “The total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches on planet earth.” We are talking about ten sextillion stars, a 1 followed by 22 zeros (1×10²²). In size, the universe studied ranges, according to estimates, between 13 and 48 million light year In comparison, the human brain has approximately 1×10¹¹ neurons that interconnect with each other 1×10¹⁵ times (in a changing manner). All this with a weight of around 1.5 kg and a volume of 1,300 cubic centimeters. That is enough to tell us who we are: beliefs, Read More ›

boy in blue balls
Child playing in ball pit. Colorful toys for kids. Kindergarten or preschool play room. Toddler kid at day care indoor playground. Balls pool for children. Birthday party for active preschooler
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post
Author
News
Date
March 16, 2022
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Philosophy of Mind, Physics
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At Scientific American: Does Quantum Mechanics Kill Free Will?

Physicists take sides. Sabine Hossenfelder thinks superdeterminism enables quantum mechanics to kill free will; George Ellis disagrees
News
March 16, 2022
7
Philosophy of Mind, Physics

One of the most interesting science writers of our era is John Horgan, who has managed to infuriate so many of the right people (to infuriate, that is) while giving the rest of us something to ponder. In a recent column in Scientific American he takes on the question of whether quantum mechanics (quantum physics) rules out free will. At first glance, that might seem unlikely. Isn’t quantum mechanics (QM) the ultimate in things you can’t determine in advance? Ah, but some physicists think they have found a way around that: superdeterminism. Sabine Hossenfelder explains that, if we knew enough, we would see that everything is determined anyhow: “The reason we can’t predict the outcome of a quantum measurement,” she Read More ›

mayapur-temple-iskon-headquarter-stockpack-adobe-stock
Mayapur temple , ISKON headquarter.
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post
Author
News
Date
March 14, 2022
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Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Religion
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What Do the World’s 1.2 Billion Hindus Think About the Mind?

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviews Hindu Arjuna Gallagher on the similarities and differences between that tradition and Western theism
News
March 14, 2022
22
Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Religion

In our most recent Mind Matters News podcast, “Hinduism, Reincarnation, and the Mind–Body Problem,” neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviews Arjuna Gallagher, a Hindu in New Zealand. Gallagher hosts a YouTube channel called Theology Unleashed, which features an array of guests who have something to say about the spiritual dimension of our lives — philosopher David Bentley Hart, neuroscientist Mark Solms, atheist Matt Dillahunty… a variety of voices that can help us understand the intellectual climate in which we live. Gallagher has also produced a documentary, The Persecuted Saints You’ve Never Heard Of.about the persecution of Orthodox Christian monks. https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Mind-Matters-News-Episode-177-Arjuna-Gallagher-Episode-1-rev1.mp3 A partial transcript and notes, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Michael Egnor: I don’t know a lot about Hinduism, and I Read More ›

large-cog-wheels-in-the-motor-stockpack-adobe-stock
Large cog wheels in the motor.
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post
Author
Eric Holloway
Date
March 12, 2022
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind
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Can Computers –- and People — Learn To Think From the Bottom Up?

That’s the big promise made in a recent article at Aeon
Eric Holloway
March 12, 2022
6
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tufts University biologist Michael Levin and Columbia University neuroscientist Rafael Yuste have an ambitious project in hand: To explain how evolution “‘hacked’ its way to intelligence from the bottom up,” that is, from nothing. They base their thesis on computer science: This is intelligence in action: the ability to reach a particular goal or solve a problem by undertaking new steps in the face of changing circumstances. It’s evident not just in intelligent people and mammals and birds and cephalopods, but also cells and tissues, individual neurons and networks of neurons, viruses, ribosomes and RNA fragments, down to motor proteins and molecular networks. Across all these scales, living things solve problems and achieve goals by flexibly navigating different spaces – Read More ›

frog eyes mud
Frog hiding in the mud
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post
Author
News
Date
March 8, 2022
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Science Writer: Explain-Away-the-Mind Book Doesn’t Succeed

In a departure from an all-too familiar approach to science writing, Philip Ball offers constructive criticism of the “nothing but”approach to the mind
News
March 8, 2022
5
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

At eminent science journal Nature, science writer Philip Ball reviews a book offering to explain how the mind arose from the mud. And he departs from the script. The book is Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos by neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. One would expect a conventional science writer to announce that this new book is an important contribution to the quest to naturalize the human mind — to show that the mind is a mere adaptation that enabled the tailless ape to survive the savannah. Such a belief needn’t be true (and isn’t); it’s intended as a placeholder for a better-founded purely naturalist belief. Yet Ball looks at the claims made in Journey of Read More ›

new-ideas-stockpack-adobe-stock
New ideas
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post
Author
News
Date
March 3, 2022
Categorized
Creativity, Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind
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Do Mathematicians Think Differently From Other People?

A math teacher illustrates some ways in which creative ones do but it’s really about imagination, not just getting the figures right
News
March 3, 2022
6
Creativity, Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind

Math teacher Ali Kayaspor has thought a lot about how mathematicians have come up with fundamental ideas about the nature of reality and he shares anecdotes that give us a glimpse. But first, the cold shower: Unfortunately, there is no clear way to answer the question of how a mathematician thinks. But we can approach this question as follows; if you watched any chess tournament, the game’s analysis is shared in detail at the end of the match. When you examine the analysis, you will see a breaking point in each game. Similarly, mathematicians also experience a breaking point while working on a problem before finding a solution. Ali Kayaspor, “How Does a Mathematician’s Brain Differ from Other Brains?” at Read More ›

surreal-brain-tree-in-a-desolate-land-and-a-determined-person-watering-it-using-a-sprinkling-can-man-splashes-the-green-shrub-using-a-water-pot-taking-care-of-mental-health-human-mind-concept-stockpack-adobe-stock
Surreal brain tree in a desolate land and a determined person watering it using a sprinkling can. Man splashes the green shrub using a water pot, taking care of mental health. Human mind concept
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post
Author
News
Date
March 3, 2022
Categorized
Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind
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It’s Not Even Clear How the Mind Relates to the Brain

Journalist and editor Ken Francis asks a series of skeptical questions of those who claim that the mind is really just the brain
News
March 3, 2022
7
Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind

Kenneth Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd (2018), offers some thoughts at New English Review on why the mind cannot be the same as the brain. The context is whether artificial intelligence will ever have minds or be able to read our minds (as opposed to scanning our brains): Without even a basic understanding of what consciousness is, the idea of putting it into a machine, while not difficult to imagine in the fantasy of science fiction, becomes almost impossible to grapple with when it comes down to real and practical implementation… As to where the mind resides, that is the biggest mystery in philosophy. Although it interacts with Read More ›

texture-of-multi-colored-sweet-marshmallows-marshmallows-candy-for-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
Texture of multi-colored sweet marshmallows. Marshmallows candy for background.
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post
Author
News
Date
March 1, 2022
Categorized
Education, Ethics, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Can Waiting for a Marshmallow Predict a Child’s Future?

Believing so was all the rage in recent decades but later research didn’t back up the idea
News
March 1, 2022
8
Education, Ethics, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

You’ve maybe heard of Stanford University’s “marshmallow experiment,” right? A child’s future can be predicted, we were told by psychologist Walter Mischel (1930–2018), by whether the child can delay gratification: Walter Mischel’s pioneering research at Bing in the late 1960s and early 1970s famously explored what enabled preschool-aged children to forgo immediate gratification in exchange for a larger but delayed reward… This research identified some of the key cognitive skills, strategies, plans and mindsets that enable self-control. If the children focused on the “hot” qualities of the temptations (e.g., “The marshmallows are sweet, chewy, yummy”), they soon rang the bell to bring the researcher back. If they focused on their abstract “cool” features (“The marshmallows are puffy and round like Read More ›

brain-wave-on-electroencephalogram-eeg-for-epilepsy-illustration-stockpack-adobe-stock
brain wave on electroencephalogram, EEG for epilepsy, illustration
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post
Author
News
Date
February 23, 2022
Categorized
Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind
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Will Your Life Flash Before Your Eyes When You Die?

Sophisticated neuroscience equipment accidentally captured the complex brain states of the final moments of a dying patient.
News
February 23, 2022
4
Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind

Recently, researchers were able to study the brain of an 87-year-old patient while administering treatment for epilepsy. Dr Raul Vicente of the University of Tartu, Estonia and colleagues were using continuous electroencephalography (EEG) to detect the seizures but during the recordings, the patient had a heart attack and passed away. Thus they were abled to record the activity of adying human brain: “We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” said Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, US, who organised the study. “Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw Read More ›

tunnel-of-light-stockpack-adobe-stock
Tunnel of light
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
February 23, 2022
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind
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, ,

Agnostic Psychiatrist Says Near-Death Experiences Are Real

They change lives but he is unsure what they mean
Denyse O'Leary
February 23, 2022
8
Philosophy of Mind

Psychiatrist Bruce Greyson, emeritus at the University of Virginia, tells us that he first started thinking about near-death experiences many decades ago when a young woman, rescued from suicide, asserted that she had seen a spaghetti stain on his tie during an out-of-body experience. She could not have known that he had gone to considerable pains to conceal the embarrassing mark from colleagues. Nothing in his background had prepared him, as a young psychiatrist, for taking seriously the possibility that the mind could be detached from the brain. He grew up with a chemist father who had a great love for science but no metaphysical convictions. But he just could not forget the spaghetti stain episode and that background prompted Read More ›