CategoryPhilosophy of Mind
Is Physicalism Dead? And Is Psychology Today Here to Bury It?
Physicalism argues that the mind is simply the activities of neurons in the brain and consciousness is an illusion that they generate
Do We Need Language To Think? Some Researchers Say No
At one time, it was strictly a philosophical issue but then neuroscientists got involvedA controversy about whether we need language to think pits two MIT scholars against each other: Noam Chomsky (yes) vs. Evelina Fedorenko (no). For a long time, it was only a philosophical issue: Plato saw thinking as a conversation with oneself. If you don’t form concepts into words are you really thinking? Chomsky agreed. But later, neuroscientists like Fedorenko got involved, offering some research findings. Last summer at the New York Times, science writer Carl Zimmer reported, When Dr. Fedorenko began this work in 2009, studies had found that the same brain regions required for language were also active when people reasoned or carried out arithmetic. But Dr. Fedorenko and other researchers discovered that this overlap was a mirage. Part Read More ›
Neuroscientist Seeks the First Spark of Human Consciousness
It's a challenge. Human consciousness is very hard to define for the purposes of this kind of research
Free Will: A Materialist Thinks It Might Somehow Be Real
Psychiatrist Ralph Lewis thinks that Darwinian evolution can explain human consciousness but now hesitates to debunk free willEarlier this year, University of Toronto psychiatrist Ralph Lewis wrote a two-part series at Psychology Today titled “The Strongest Neuroscience Arguments in the Free Will Debate” (here and here). He looked at Mitchell (yes) and Sapolsky (no), both of whom published serious books on the topic in 2023. And he concluded, For now, for practical purposes, given our current level of incomplete understanding of the complexities of the brain’s decision-making processes, and our inability to predict human behaviors in most situations, we might as well regard ourselves as having free will—or rather, degrees of freedom. We do know that our brain has highly evolved systems for self-control—even for those of us who struggle with this relatively more than others, and Read More ›
At Big Think: Getting Stoned Shaped the Modern Mind
Cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian sees human civilization forming something like “the brain of Gaia” in a cosmos that is becoming increasingly conscious
Why Creationism Isn’t So Crazy After All
A case for the soul’s designSoul Survives Death? ER Doc Sam Parnia Faces Skeptical Questions
In discussion with Closer to Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Parnia stuck to his clearly defined evidence, avoiding religious digressions
Computer Prof: Handing Off Risky Operations to AI Would Be Stupid
When everything went wrong in Space Odyssey 2001, the cause was faulty programming, not the computer deciding to take over, he says.
Does Science Show That the Soul Persists After Death?
Gradually, medical findings about what happens to the mind around the time of death are undermining the assumption that the soul dies with the body
When the Computer Tried Being a Mind, It Almost…
Philosopher Andy Clark offered to explain the popular computational theory of mind to Robert Lawrence Kuhn — but then a gap appeared
Do all of us really have two minds inside our brains?
The truth is even more remarkable. When the brain is split in half, the mind remains a unity
Covert Consciousness: When “Brain Dead” Doesn’t Mean Unconscious
Now that brain scan studies have established that at least 25% of people classed as brain dead can respond, doctors ask what to do for them?
Does a “Spiritual Particle” Explain Human Consciousness?
The Hard Problem of Consciousness Remains Inescapable
Neuroscientist Francisco Aboitiz starts by offering to tell us how consciousness evolved but then makes a critical concession
Philosopher Hollers Whoa! Are Plants Really Conscious?
Pigliucci worries about the claim. But if human consciousness 1) exists and 2) is fully natural, some scientists would of course argue that plants share it
Nobel Prize Physicist Thinks Consciousness Must Underlie Universe
Brian Josephson, after whom the Josephson effect in electronics is named, hopes to find the answer to the conundrum of consciousness in biologyWhat Did Splitting Human Brains in Half Tell Us About the Mind?
How did split brain study subjects compare things when no part of their brains saw both things?
What Brain Surgery for Epilepsy Taught Us About the Human Mind
Michael Egnor continues his discussion with Pat Flynn, noting that neither seizures nor Penfield’s brain stimulation provoked abstract thought