Many philosophers have concluded both from experience and careful consideration that mental phenomena cannot be reduced to neural mechanisms.
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Material cells can only make decisions if specifically structured to follow a blueprint with rules of engagement. Where is the blueprint?
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Whether they continue to push the boundary, or someone else does, they can only bring up so many unaccounted-for facts before it’s time for a revolution.
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Teilhard noted the same weakness in evolution theory as Thomas Nagel does today: Excluding the origin of mind and consciousness makes it at best half a theory.
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His writings caught the imagination of many religiously minded people but they seemed more profound than they really were.
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While it is quite true that the human brain is very large by animal standards, there is no simple one-on-one relationship between brain size and intelligence.
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Real-world research shows the remarkable resilience of damaged brains housing single minds. Our brains are full of complexities and exceptions to rules.
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Of his 55,000 brain stimulations that “activated complex networks,” not one generated abstract thought — implying that it is not a “product” of the brain.
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A recent research paper looks at the way minds work with what’s available, something I often encounter in my practice as a neurosurgeon.
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Darwinian evolution theory allows any state of affairs that dates to eons ago to be called “evolution” even when, as in this case, the facts imply the opposite.
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The view Murphy outlines at Closer to Truth has more in common with modern materialism than with a traditional Christian understanding of the human soul.
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The question naturally arises, was the normally developed human mind ever incapable of abstract thought? That’s a challenge to accepted evolution theories.
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If examples of terminal and paradoxical lucidity in old age are any guide, we should not conclude that children must lack consciousness before a given stage.
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Is science about following the evidence or about confirming a materialist ideology about science? This is the big neuroscience question of our century.
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The higher human ability to think abstractly — to reason and will freely — are not physical abilities and do not come from the brain.
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Understanding the mind in terms of information processing, rather than as a byproduct of brain activity, could reshape the debate.
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Readers have brought to my attention a review article on the effect of split-brain surgery on consciousness. “Split-Brain: What We Know Now and Why This is Important for Understanding Consciousness” (2020) by Yair Pinto and his colleagues is an interesting open-access article, well worth reading for anyone interested in the topic. From the abstract: [Split-brain surgery] leads to a broad breakdown of functional integration ranging from perception to attention. However, the breakdown is not absolute as several processes, such as action control, seem to remain unified. Disagreement exists about the responsible mechanisms for this remaining unity. The main issue concerns the first-person perspective of a split-brain patient. Does a split-brain harbor a split consciousness or is consciousness unified? The current Read More ›
According to Ewert, Ray Kurzweil’s famed Singularity is not possible because AI cannot create an intelligence greater than itself.
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Unity of self after brain splitting is not surprising. Each of us is a physical creature with a single spiritual soul. It is immaterial and can’t be severed.
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Fr. Hilbert shows that we have not found anything that justifies a Darwinian approach to life as somehow more compatible with science than a Christian one.
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