The Problem of Smith: When Mind Uploading Multiplies Identity
Tyler Bauer: If personal identity is grounded in an immaterial soul, the real Smith is the body that contains his original soul.
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One Reason Why Near-Death Experiences Are Difficult to Study
Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup talks at Closer to Truth about the problem of trying to communicate experiences for which there are no wordsMuch that the NDE experiencer learns cannot easily be expressed, because there are no words for experiences that most people have only after they die.
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Was the Legendary Jane Goodall (1934–2025) the End of an Era?
Perhaps. A more realistic appraisal of the reality of human uniqueness is needed if we hope to prevent the extinction of chimpanzees in the wildWhile Goodall believed that there is no sharp line dividing humans and chimpanzees, she herself was one of many who embodied the sharp line.
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COSM 2025 Panel to Tackle the Hard Problem: Consciousness
Michael Egnor sees the failure to find a “material center of consciousness” in the brain as a science success, not failure. It points to an important truth about usAs prominent neuroscientist Christof Koch’s recent difficulties with Cancel Culture show, the cracks in materialist neuroscience are getting harder to paper over.
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Philosopher of Mind and Language John Searle Has Died
His Chinese Room thought experiment, an argument for why computers can seem clever without having minds, was widely understood among the lay publicThe Chinese Room thought experiment helped us see the nature of computation, as opposed to human thinking.
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Why the Soul Doesn’t — and Can’t — Weigh Anything
The question has nothing to do with whether or not the soul existsDr. Duncan MacDougall’s attempts to weigh the soul were ingenious as well as controversial but he misunderstood the soul’s nature.
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Brain Surgeon Shows Why AI Can Never Become Human
Spoiler alert: AI requires physical hardware; the mind does notAI can never be more than a machine; the human mind soars far above any machine model. Be nice to your robot. But don’t think she is human.
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Materialism in Science: Touching Another Hot Button
With a discussion of the findings of rigorous research into telepathy, the challenge to the presumption of materialism in science is beginning to be sounded loud and clearWhat’s changed? The cost of protecting materialism in science has risen gradually, consistent with the rising number of situations on which it sheds little light.
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What If Science Tried Doing Without Materialism?
In a thoughtful review of The Immortal Mind, John Zmirak points to the way it currently underlies most popular presentations of scienceWithout materialism. math still adds up, physics and chemistry are still true, and logic still works. Only forgettable projects would be forgotten.
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Consciousness Can’t Be Uploaded as AI? — Of Course It Can’t!
Converting ideas and memories into bits in a computer program does not recreate in the computer the person whose minds and memories they are — only a simulationThe uploaded quirks and memories may be a good simulation of the deceased person but it is not a surviving self. It is just data.
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Michael Egnor at The Stream: How Materialists Refute Themselves
In Part 3, he also talks about how fellow health care personnel and patients have responded to The Immortal Mind, which makes a case for the immortal soulPeople I work with in the operating room and clinics and even patients tell me that they read our book and really liked it. They are glad we are speaking up.
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Michael Egnor at The Stream: How the Mind Transcends the Brain
In his interview with John Zmirak, Dr. Egnor points out that epileptic seizures do not involve abstract thought because that type of thought is not simply a product of the brainHe noted that pioneer neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield started out as a materialist but became a dualist as a result of discovering things like these.
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Why the Mind Matters: No Free Will = No Guilt — Thus No Innocence
Michael Egnor spells out the true consequences of materialism: We come to be seen as animals to be managed by governmentMaterialism, Egnor says, is rarely defended explicitly; rather, objections are brushed off and prominent objectors may be Canceled.
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AI Consciousness Myths: Neuroscientist Offers a No-Hype Approach
Àlex Gómez-Marín’s physics background shows in the way that he dissects the hyped-up claims before responding to themAt present, it doesn’t sound as though consciousness studies can take us beyond our natural folk understanding of consciousness.
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Researchers: Sense of Purpose in Later Life Lowers Dementia Risk
They believe that it helps the brain stay resilient. Fortunately, a wide range of activities have been found in various studies to provide that senseWhile the observed effect was small, any actual effect is a tool in the box and this one does not come with the risks associated with medications.
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Why Don’t Near-Death Experiences Support One Belief System?
On the Truthful Hope podcast, Jacob Vazquez and Denyse O'Leary discuss the way people of different faiths see what they themselves recognizeThe mind that is having a near-death experience is separated from the body, relying on its own concepts. It is not necessarily a channel of divine truth.
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Isn’t It a Bit Late To Try Retreading Eliminative Materialism?
Daniel Dennett was an eliminative materialist at a time when the idea that consciousness is an illusion sounded cool and daring. And the Big Explanation was just around the corner…Overall, Jonny Thomson’s effort to keep Dennett’s eliminative materialism alive unintentionally points up how fragile it has actually become.
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New Find: Stone Tools From 1 to 1.5 Million Years Ago
The tools were found on Sulawesi, an island near Flores, where fossils of diminutive humans were found in 2003 — but they were not as old as these toolsHuman technology definitely has a history but the human mind does not. We see it where we see it, often just a glimpse in these abysses of time.
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Is the Materialist Juggernaut Running Out of Fuel?
A recent thinkmag essay prompts a thought: can intellectuals still take materialism seriously?Life would be so much easier for thinkmags if the mind were simply what the brain does. But wait. No one would produce thinkmags either.
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Part 3: A Wren Arrives — and Ruffles Many a Feather
Dr. Wren, a cognitive scientist, identifies a problem with assuming that adding another ten thousand pigeons to the project will produce novel designs...We remain confronted by the same old mystery: who, or what, imagines the birdhouse in the first place?
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