Is Materialism Falsifiable? Yes, Easily.
Neurologist Steven Novella is sure that materialism is not falsifiable by scienceContrary to Steven Novella's claims, cosmological singularities refute materialism. Kurt Gödel can explain
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Fatherhood Is Not “Subpersonal”
Human fathers care (but gorillas don’t) because fatherhood depends on explicitly human ideasWhy do men see themselves as “fathers” but male gorillas don’t? Proposed answers from evolutionary psychology are hopelessly inadequate.
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Philosopher Flattens Evolutionary Psychology
There is no such thing as a fossil mindRejecting evolutionary psychology means realizing that we cannot both claim to represent “Science!” and refuse to be bound by its standards.
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Why Richard Dawkins Thinks AI May Replace Us
He likes the idea because it is consistent with his naturalist philosophyDawkins thinks we didn’t evolve so as to understand consciousness. But that our odd situation points nowhere. Isn’t all this past its sell-by date?
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Thinking Outside the Box Is Not a Disease
Enforced orthodoxy, often described euphemistically as “scientific consensus,” is an impediment to scienceAt the Skeptical Inquirer, we read about the“Nobel Disease,” whereby Nobel Prize-winning scientists ditch critical thinking and embrace unorthodox views. In reality, unorthodoxy helped them win the Prize.
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Physicist Rejects Free Will — and Thus Fails Logic
If we accepted his argument for materialism, we would have to stop believing in it—a curious, self-refuting resultCarroll’s argument that man is wholly governed by physics is self-refuting. Because physics and logic share no commonality, materialists like Carroll implicitly assert that their own arguments lack logic. One might say that the only thing materialists get right is that their ideas are nonsense. If man is all physics, he can have no logic.
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Should AI Hold Patents? The Flash-of-Genius Answer
To understand why AI cannot independently invent, let’s look at how famous inventors have actually done itLike Excel, AI assists programmers in their design work. AI can search through trillions of possibilities, using data from a million sources, to find a successful design. But the structure of the search and the source of the data is the choice of the programmer. A look at how famous inventors developed products that changed the world sheds some light on the process.
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Will Ideas or Algorithms Rule Science Tomorrow?
David Krakauer of the Santa Fe Institute offers an unsettling vision of future science as produced by machines that no one really understandsThe basic problem is that accepting on faith what we can’t ever hope to understand is not a traditional stance of science. Thus it’s a good question whether science could survive such a transition and still be recognizable to scientists. But does turning things over to incomprehensible algorithms, as Krakauer proposes, really work anyway? Current results from a variety of areas give pause for thought.
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Philosopher: Consciousness is Not a Problem. Dualism Is!
Physicalist David Papineau says consciousness is just “brain processes that feel like something”Physicalist David Papineau argues that consciousness “seems mysterious not because of any hidden essence, but only because we think about it in a special way.” In short, it's all in our heads. But wait, say others, the hard problem of consciousness is not so easily dismissed.
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Why Is Science Growing Comfortable with Panpsychism (“Everything Is Conscious”)?
At one time, the idea that “everything is conscious” was the stuff of jokes. Not any more, it seemsA recent article at New Scientist treats panpsychism as a serious idea in science. That’s thanks to the growing popularity of neuroscientist Giulio Tonioni’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which offers the opportunity for mathematical modeling, along with the implication that inanimate matter and/or the universe may be conscious. If IIT continues to gain a sympathetic hearing, panpsychism could become, over time, a part of normal science.
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Is There a Creativity Module in the Brain?
Both hemispheres are important for creativity, according to recent research, but the adventure lies beyondWhat we are really learning is that minute mapping of the brain is not likely to give us a complete explanation of creativity. Let alone a means of control. Answers, when they appear, lie in the immaterial world of the mind.
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Jerry Coyne Just Can’t Give Up Denying Free Will
Coyne’s denial of free will, based on determinism, is science denial and junk metaphysicsSome day, I predict, there will be a considerable psychiatric literature on the denial of free will. It’s essentially a delusion dressed up as science. To insist that your neurotransmitters completely control your choices is no different than insisting that your television or your iphone control your thoughts. It’s crazy.
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Why Our Minds Can’t Really Be Uploaded to Computers
The basic problem is that human minds aren’t “computable.” Peter and Jane are not bits and bytesThe underlying problem with creating immortality by uploading our minds to computers is that people are conscious and even the most sophisticated foreseeable computers are not. And we are not at all sure what consciousness even IS.
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Why Your Computer Will Never Talk to You
As a jokester recently demonstrated, even “shirts without stripes” is a fundamental, unsolvable problem for computersAt first, “shirts without stripes” might not seem like much of an issue but it turns out that many important and interesting problems for computers fundamentally reduce to this “halting problem.” And understanding human language is one of these problems.
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Can Human Minds Be Reduced to Computer Programs?
In Silicon Valley that has long been a serious belief. But are we really anywhere close?Computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord recalls, “I remember asking James Moor, the Dartmouth professor who’s written quite a bit on AI: “You know. Jim, you really are a true believer in this stuff but can you tell me how much time you’re willing to give these AI people? I mean, if we give them another thousand years, and we still don’t have cognition as I’ve characterized it… Are you going to be skeptical now?” He was, I suppose, as an academic, predictably clever and evasive, but the bottom line is, we don’t have this cognition captured.
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Can People in Comas Have Abstract Thoughts?
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discusses how we might test for that abilityIn the recent podcast, “Michael Egnor on Whether People in Comas Can Think,” Robert J. Marks raised an interesting point with Egnor: Can people in comas think abstractly or do they form thoughts only at a much more basic level, given how physically distressed they are? The answer might surprise you.
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Is There Really a “Rubber Hand” Illusion?
A venerable claim in psychology, that our minds are easily fooled about our bodies, comes under fire
Thinking Machines? Has the Lovelace Test Been Passed?
Surprising results do not equate to creativity. Is there such a thing as machine creativity?The feats of machines like AlphaGo are due to superior computational power, not to creativity at originating new ideas. Computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord sees the ability to write, say, a novel of ideas as a more realistic test of human vs. computer achievement.
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Thinking Machines? The Lovelace Test Raises the Stakes
The Turing test has had a free ride in science media for far too long, says an AI expertIn the view of Rensselaer philosopher and computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord, the iconic Turing test for human-like intelligence in computers is inadequate and easily gamed. Merely sounding enough like a human to fool people does not establish human-like intelligence. He proposes the much more challenging Lovelace test, based on an observation from computer pioneer Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) that true creativity is what distinguishes humans from machines.
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Can Loved Ones in a Coma Hear Us?
Modern brain imaging studies show that very often they can. And, with help from new technology, they can answer us tooPioneering research using brain imaging (fMRI) over the last fifteen years has shown that, even in deep coma, people can hear, understand, and respond. It’s no longer just anecdotes from caregivers. The controversial Terri Schiavo case might be decided very differently today.
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