Category: Philosophy of Mind | Page 24

Robotic man cyborg face representing artificial intelligence 3D rendering

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post

News
Date
June 25, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
ai-limits}

How To Flummox an AI Neural Network

_{Kids can figure out the same-different distinction. So can ducklings and bees. But top AI can't.} _{News
June 25, 2021

3

Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind}

Science writer John Pavlus identifies a key limitation of artificial intelligence: The first episode of Sesame Street in 1969 included a segment called “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.” Viewers were asked to consider a poster that displayed three 2s and one W, and to decide — while singing along to the game’s eponymous jingle — which symbol didn’t belong. Dozens of episodes of Sesame Street repeated the game, comparing everything from abstract patterns to plates of vegetables. Kids never had to relearn the rules. Understanding the distinction between “same” and “different” was enough. Machines have a much harder time. One of the most powerful classes of artificial intelligence systems, known as convolutional neural networks or CNNs, Read More ›

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News
Date
June 21, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Autonomous Vehicles, self-driving cars}

Researchers: Humans “Exploit” Machines Without a Sense of Guilt!

_{Humans, we are told, are so unethical that we take advantage of "benevolent" self-driving cars} _{News
June 21, 2021

4

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind}

In case no one knew this, humans are cruel, greedy, and deceptive. We even take advantage of self-driving cars. Our crimes are revealed in a recent study that scolds humans as “unwilling to cooperate and compromise with machines. They even exploit them.” When you’ve stopped laughing, you might be interested to learn of some intriguing findings from studies of human behavior around self-driving cars (autonomous vehicles) and Prisoner’s Dilemma games. One team of researchers, in a test involving 9 experiments and 2000 participants, tried to determine whether humans would behave as co-operatively with AI systems as we do with fellow humans: The study which is published in the journal iScience found that, upon first encounter, people have the same level Read More ›

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News
Date
June 20, 2021

Categorized
Information Theory, Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Caleb Scharf, free will, qubits, Randomness, Scott Aaronson}

Freebits: An Interesting Argument From the Big Bang for Free Will

_{There are two types of uncertainty, we learn, only one of which could create free will} _{News
June 20, 2021

5

Information Theory, Philosophy of Mind, Science}

Caleb Scharf (pictured), author of The Ascent of Information (2021), offers an excerpt at Nautilus that introduces two new terms, the “dataome” and “freebits.” The dataome is all the ways human beings create information, from cave paintings to cloud servers. He asks, “Was all of this really inevitable? Did we ever have a choice in creating a dataome or doing any of the things we do, and does any self-aware entity in the universe have a choice either?” Relying on theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson’s 2013 essay, “The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine,” he asks us to consider that there are two types of uncertainty, only one of which could create choice. Typical “randomness” actually follows statistical laws, a Read More ›

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News
Date
June 17, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Abstraction (death as abstraction), Death (as abstraction)}

Death: Child Grave From 80,000 Years Ago Shows Abstract Thinking

_{The lovingly prepared site on the Kenyan coast held the remains of a 2–3 year-old child} _{News
June 17, 2021

5

Philosophy of Mind, Science}

A child’s grave, found recently in Kenya, pushes clear evidence of abstract thinking back to 80,000 years ago, the Middle Stone Age. The child, nicknamed “Mtoto” (child in Swahili) by the archaeologists, was 2½ – 3 years old; whether a boy or a girl is as yet unclear: In a tour de force of discovery, recovery, and analysis, an interdisciplinary research team has uncovered the earliest known human burial in Africa. The grave, found less than 10 miles inland from southeast Kenya’s lush ocean beaches, contained the remains of a two- to three-year-old child buried with extraordinary care by a community of early Homo sapiens some 78,000 years ago. While some human burials in the Middle East and Europe are Read More ›

dachsund dog portrait studio looking up.

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post

News
Date
June 13, 2021

Categorized
Natural Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Religion

Tagged
C. S. Lewis, Christof Koch, Human exceptionalism, Panpsychism (vs. materialism)}

Do Any Dogs Go To Heaven? If So, Why?

_{Neuroscientist Christof Koch was troubled as a child by the Catholic tradition that dogs like his beloved Purzel did not go to heaven} _{News
June 13, 2021

5

Natural Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Religion}

In recent articles, we’ve discussed well-known neuroscientist Christof Koch’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness which, as he acknowledges, takes a panpsychist (everything is conscious to some degree) approach to the mind. He has explained his reasoning at MIT Press Reader: Materialists must see human consciousness as an illusion — but then whose illusion is it? Panpsychism allows humans to have actual consciousness but, he says, “experience may not even be restricted to biological entities but might extend to non-evolved physical systems previously assumed to be mindless — a pleasing and parsimonious conclusion about the makeup of the universe.” His perspective is gaining popularity in science. One, perhaps unexpected, factor that he mentions as shaping his overall approach was youthful Read More ›

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News
Date
June 13, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Emergentism}

A Physicist’s Defense of Reality, Despite Quantum Physics

_{He explains why Eddington’s solid table really IS solid, even if, at the highest resolution, it is mostly empty space} _{News
June 13, 2021

5

Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Science}

In the wake of quantum physics, King’s College philosopher of physics Alexander Franklin is concerned to stress that “everyday reality is not illusory but emergent”: Popular science often tells us that we are radically deceived by the commonplace appearance of everyday objects and that colour and solidity are illusions. For instance, the physicist Sir Arthur Eddington [pictured] distinguished in 1928 between two tables: the familiar table and the scientific table, while the former is solid and coloured, the scientific table “is nearly all empty space”. Eddington then makes the striking claim that “modern physics has by delicate test and remorseless logic assured me that my second scientific table is the only one which is really there”. Alexander Franklin, “Solid objects Read More ›

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News
Date
June 12, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Consciousness, Metacognition, Ryota Kanai}

Neuroscientist: Conscious AI Is Not an Insurmountable Problem

_{Neuroscientist: Conscious AI is not an insurmountable problem} _{News
June 12, 2021

4

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind}

Neuroscientist Ryota Kanai, founder and CEO of Tokyo-based startup Araya, aims to “understand the computational basis of consciousness and to create conscious AI.” He isn’t sure, he says, if we want AI to be conscious. But, technically, he doesn’t see it as an insurmountable problem: If we can’t figure out why AIs do what they do, why don’t we ask them? We can endow them with metacognition—an introspective ability to report their internal mental states. Such an ability is one of the main functions of consciousness. It is what neuroscientists look for when they test whether humans or animals have conscious awareness. For instance, a basic form of metacognition, confidence, scales with the clarity of conscious experience. When our brain Read More ›

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post

News
Date
June 6, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Consciousness, David A. Oakley, human brain}

We Are Now Informed: Consciousness Does Not Really Exist

_{Rubbish. Giving up consciousness as an illusion would be like turning off the master switch. What would the ensuing darkness and powerlessness tell us?} _{News
June 6, 2021

2

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

What you think is enabling you to listen with any attention to neuroscientists (your dog, coffee cup, and your toothpaste are not listening to neuroscientists) is something — some of them tell us — we should give up as an illusion. Read More ›

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News
Date
June 6, 2021

Categorized
Economics, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
China, free will, Population}

Is More Coercion — in Principle — an “Extension” of Morality?

_{Activist Garrett Hardin popularized government coercion to “save the planet” in 1968} _{News
June 6, 2021

5

Economics, Philosophy of Mind}

Recently, the Communist Party of China has announced permission for the three-child family, possibly because of the demographic ruin that the previous one-child family has occasioned in that country. But the basic idea that government should control everything is not new and it did not originate in China. Let’s go back to the 1960s in the United States. In 1968, Garrett Hardin (1915–2003) made a famous appeal in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine, Science, for good old-fashioned coercion of human beings to stop having so many children: The abstract for his “Tragedy of the Commons” (Science, 1968), a Cool concept at the time, read simply “The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental Read More ›

A cute girl playing with wooden abacus. Educational concept for kids. Learing to count. Math for children. Math for children.

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News
Date
June 5, 2021

Categorized
Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Abstraction, Number sense}

The Mystery of Numeracy: How DID We Learn To Count?

_{Some animals can do rough figuring but only humans count} _{News
June 5, 2021

3

Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind}

At a time when many people see numbers, arithmetic, and mathematics as mere oppression, others are intrigued by the basic question, how did the human race learn to do math? There are some clues, as a new project called Quanta is trying to establish. First, while no animals use abstract numbers in the wild, some animals can do rough figuring: Although researchers once thought that humans were the only species with a sense of quantity, studies since the mid-twentieth century have revealed that many animals share the ability. For instance, fish, bees and newborn chicks can instantly recognize quantities up to four, a skill known as subitizing. Some animals are also capable of ‘large-quantity discrimination’: they can appreciate the difference Read More ›

Tree brain with human head cape, idea concept of think hope freedom and mind , surreal artwork, dream art , fantasy landscape, imagination of nature

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post

News
Date
June 5, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Benjamin Libet, free will, Free won't, Michael Egnor, Robert J. Marks}

New Paper Provides Further Evidence for Free Will

_{According to the new research, many of the busy brain signals on which the “no free will” position depends on were system noise} _{News
June 5, 2021

6

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

We all sense that free will is real. We know that we could have stopped ourselves from making some mistakes. For decades, some neuroscientists have claimed that free will is an illusion, based on some well-publicized experiments. Some recent research challenges that: Experiments spanning the 1960s and 1980s measured brain signals noninvasively and led many neuroscientists to believe that our brains make decisions before we do—that human actions were initiated by electrical waves that did not reflect free, conscious thought. However, a new article in Trends in Cognitive Science argues that recent research undermines this popular case against free will. “This new perspective on the data turns on its head the way well-known findings have been interpreted,” said Adina Roskies, Read More ›

Little brave pawn wearing artificial paper crown suit on chessboard with figures, business entrepreneur leadership concept

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post

News
Date
June 4, 2021

Categorized
Ethics, Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Neuroscience}

Do You Have a “Selfish Prefrontal Cortex”?

_{Do you tell “white lies” only for selfish motives?} _{News
June 4, 2021

3

Ethics, Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind}

A recent neuroscience paper claims to determine whether your motives are selfish: You may think a little white lie about a bad haircut is strictly for your friend’s benefit, but your brain activity says otherwise. Distinct activity patterns in the prefrontal cortex reveal when a white lie has selfish motives, according to new research published in Journal of Neuroscience. White lies — formally called Pareto lies — can benefit both parties, but their true motives are encoded by the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). This brain region computes the value of different social behaviors, with some subregions focusing on internal motivations and others on external ones. Kim and Kim predicted activity patterns in these subregions could elucidate the true motive behind Read More ›

Veterinarian feeding African gray parrot

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News
Date
June 4, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Language}

Is the Key to Human Language To Be Found In Singing Birds?

_{If singing birds can explain human speech, why aren’t the birds all giving interviews?} _{News
June 4, 2021

5

Philosophy of Mind}

That’s the claim of a recent article in Cognitive Sciences: The study is based on evidence from diverse fields such as archaeology, evolutionary genomics, neurobiology, animal behaviour and clinical researcher on neuropsychiatric disorders. With these, it shows that the reduction of reactive aggressiveness, resulting from the evolution and process of self-domestication of our species, could have led to an increase in the complexity of speech. According to the authors, this development would be caused by the lowest impact on brain networks of stress hormones, neurotransmitters that activate in aggressive situations, and which would be crucial when learning to speak. To show this interaction, researchers analysed the genomic, neurobiological and singing-type differences between the domesticated Bengalese finch and its closest wild Read More ›

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News
Date
May 31, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Access consciousness, Angus Menuge, Consciousness, Elon Musk, Featured, Neuralink, Robert J. Marks}

What Will Elon Musk’s Neuralink Really Change, If It Catches On

_{Neuralink’s computer chip implants may help restore function in people with motor or sensory disabilities} _{News
May 31, 2021

6

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind}

Finishing the third and final podcast of the series, “Unity of Consciousness,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks and Angus Menuge, professor and chair of philosophy at Concordia University, had a look at entrepreneur Elon Musk’s implanted brain chip venture, the Neuralink: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Angus-Menuge-Episode-3-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 14:28 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks: Let me end our discussion together by asking you an outlier question. Elon Musk is developing something called Neuralink. It’s a chip which goes into the brain. Its immediate application is going to be for those that are handicapped. It is going to allow them communicate directly to objects that they can’t control normally because of their handicap. Read More ›

Cells under a microscope. Cell division. Cellular Therapy. 3d illustration on a dark background

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News
Date
May 30, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Angus Menuge, Cell (biology), Featured, Robert J. Marks}

Why Don’t Changes to Our Bodies Create a Different Consciousness?

_{The sense of consciousness remains single and united despite ceaseless bodily change} _{News
May 30, 2021

6

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In the third podcast of the “Unity of Consciousness” series, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviews Angus Menuge, professor and chair of philosophy at Concordia University, on unique features of human consciousness, including the question of why there really can’t be two of you. But Dr. Marks asks one final question: If consciousness is simply generated by the body, as materialists think, why don’t changes to our bodies create different consciousnesses? https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Angus-Menuge-Episode-3-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 11:06 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks: There are cells that change quite a lot. And then there are cells that don’t change a lot, for example, neurons. That is, you keep the same neurons. Read More ›

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News
Date
May 29, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Angus Menuge, Conjoined twins, Featured, Michael Egnor, Personal identity, Robert J. Marks}

Life in the Plural: If There Were Two of You, Would “You” Exist?

_{According to philosopher Angus Menuge, there can’t be two of you, because two things cannot be one thing.} _{News
May 29, 2021

5

Neuroscience, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind}

In the third podcast of the series, “Unity of Consciousness,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviews Angus Menuge, professor and chair of philosophy at Concordia University, on unique features of human consciousness, including the fact that our experiences are a unity, which has prompted some interesting thought experiments, for example those of Richard Swinburne. But here’s another one: What if there really were two of you? https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Angus-Menuge-Episode-3-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 06:49 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks: What is the idea of “too many thinkers” in philosophy? Angus Menuge (pictured): The simple view of personal identity is that your soul or your mind is always you. That’s a dualist view. Read More ›

Double exposure. A curly-haired brunette is standing in the doorway of the theater. Poster events, personality psychology. Cloak and reincarnation. Fasting alcoholic fears. Bifurcation. Made in camera

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post

News
Date
May 27, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Angus Menuge, Consciousness, Consciousness as unity, Featured, Michael Egnor, Richard Swinburne, Robert J. Marks}

Why Do We Stay the Same Person Over Time? Why Not Split Up?

_{It would be a total fluke if all the different clouds of atoms that produce your brain would always produce the same consciousness. But they do} _{News
May 27, 2021

6

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In the third podcast of the series, “Unity of Consciousness,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviews Angus Menuge, professor and chair of philosophy at Concordia University, on unique features of human consciousness, including the fact that our experiences are a unity, despite being scattered across many brain regions and even if our brains are split in half: But now let’s do some thought experiments, as proposed by Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Angus-Menuge-Episode-3-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 04:55 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Angus Menuge: There’s another problem raised by [philosopher] Richard Swinburne: He imagines that he’s going to have an operation where each of his cerebral hemispheres is placed in another person. So Read More ›

Human brain model for education in laboratory.

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post

News
Date
May 27, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Henry Markram, human brain, Jeff Hawkins, Neocortex, Paul D. MacLean, Triune brain concept}

Intelligence: A Thousand Brains — or a Thousand Theories?

_{What does the iconic mammalian neocortex do that equivalent systems in birds and octopuses can’t do? That’s not clear} _{News
May 27, 2021

6

Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Jeff Hawkins, inventor of PalmPilot (a smartphone predecessor) and co-founder of Numenta (2005), does not lack confidence. After an interview with him in connection with his new book, A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (Basic Books 2021), Will Douglas Heaven tells us at MIT Review, “Neuroscientist and tech entrepreneur Jeff Hawkins claims he’s figured out how intelligence works—and he wants every AI lab in the world to know about it”: He’s not the first Silicon Valley entrepreneur to think he has all the answers—and not everyone is likely to agree with his conclusions. But his ideas could shake up AI. Will Douglas Heaven, ““We’ll never have true AI without first understanding the brain”” at MIT Technology Review (March Read More ›

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post

News
Date
May 26, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Angus Menuge, Michael Egnor, Robert J. Marks, split-brain surgery, Sybil (1976 film)}

How Split-Brain Surgery Underlines the Unity of Consciousness

_{At one time, some thought that if the brain were split, consciousness would be too, but that did not turn out to be true} _{News
May 26, 2021

6

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In the third podcast of a series, “Unity of Consciousness,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviews Angus Menuge, professor and chair of philosophy at Concordia University, on unique features of human consciousness. They started with the fact that our experiences are a unity despite being scattered across many brain regions. But it’s a remarkable fact that our consciousness remains single even when our brains are split in half: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Angus-Menuge-Episode-3-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 03:04 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks: Let’s talk about the split brain operation where a neurosurgeon goes in and separates the right and left hemispheres. As I understand it, the signal for the epileptic fits starts on Read More ›

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post

News
Date
May 25, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Angus Menuge, Consciousness (unity), Featured, Robert J. Marks}

Mystery: Our Brains Divide Up Events But We Experience Them Whole

_{That’s one of the conundrums of consciousness} _{News
May 25, 2021

3

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In the third podcast of the series, “Unity of Consciousness,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviews Angus Menuge, professor and chair of philosophy at Concordia University, on some of the unique features of human consciousness, starting with its unity. https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Angus-Menuge-Episode-3-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 01:04 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks: We hear of “Dr. Jekyll–Mr. Hyde” dual personalities but most of us only have one consciousness. What is the so-called unity of consciousness? It’s an area in philosophy, is that right? Angus Menuge (pictured): Going back a very long way. It’s mentioned by Plato and Aristotle, and later on by Kant… We can have many experiences concurrently. So when you Read More ›