Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryPhilosophy of Mind

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遊ぶチンパンジーの子供

Why Humans Can’t “Share the Spotlight” With Tool-Using Animals

As the Ivy League war on human exceptionalism motors on, researchers’ thinking sometimes shorts out — and they don’t even notice
Their discussion of animal behavior depends wholly on the uniquely human ability to abstract. That ability also radically changes how humans use tools. Read More ›
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Emergency Department: Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics Push Gurney / Stretcher with Seriously Injured Patient towards the Operating Room.

Near Death: Why Corroborated NDEs Can’t Just Be Explained Away

In some cases, Gary Habermas recounts, patients who had NDEs while in a state of clinical death report dates and numbers that are later found to be accurate
Materialist explanations for near-death experiences are much less satisfactory than simply accepting that the mind can act independently of the brain Read More ›
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Senior man looking at empty bench and remembering his friend, loss, memories

Why Can’t Our Memories Be “Stored” in the Brain?

The image of storing and erasing memories is popular due to computer technology but it is not relevant to how the human mind works
When we talk about memory, we often use word pictures that make it seem as though memories behave like material things but they don’t. Read More ›
A man going through the dark old tunnel. Tunnel with traffic lights and a silhouette of a man

Near-Death: What People Learn When They Are (Briefly) Dead

In this excerpt, Prof Gary Habermas reports that sometimes the returned experiencer says that someone else has died — but the official news only comes later
For reasons that are not yet clear, blind people can see during a near-death experience and details have been confirmed. Habermas relates some cases. Read More ›
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Women, man and hospital bed in motion blur of emergency surgery, healthcare wellness or risk condition operation. Doctors, nurses and medical workers with patient in busy er, theatre room or teamwork

Prof: There’s a Growing Number of Verified Near-Death Experiences

Gary Habermas notes more than 110 NDEs where experiencers’ detailed reports of what they saw when they were flatlined have been corroborated later
It’s exceedingly unlikely, Prof. Habermas argues, that all these cases result from misperception deception, coincidences, or mistakes. Read More ›
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Artificial intelligence, White AI robot thinking and looking big screen monitor of big data on blue high technology for the future rise in technological singularity background, Generative AI

Why, Despite All the Hype We Hear, AI Is Not “One of Us”

It takes an imaginative computer scientist to believe that the neural network knows what it’s classifying or identifying. It’s a bunch of relatively simple math
The AI scientist’s dream of general intelligence, often referred to as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), remains as elusive as ever. Read More ›
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The archaeologist is digging

Prehistoric Children with Down Syndrome Were Valued, Burials Show

The six found so far from one culture, identified by DNA evidence, did not live long but they were buried with grave goods
Today, when children with Down syndrome can grow up, they can display remarkable abilities, as the story of the Edmonton Oilers’ Joey Moss shows. Read More ›
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Consciousness, metaphysics or artificial intelligence concept. Waves go through human head. 3D rendered illustration.

Philosopher: Non-Materialism Is Fashionable Orthodoxy Now

Non-reductionism, which means that the mind is not simply reducible to the brain, is now well accepted, she argues
Giuseppina D’oro’s essay introduces two 20th-century idealist philosophers — Oakeshott and Collingwood — and their critique of psychology as a science. Read More ›
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Young african runner running on racetrack

A Philosopher Explains: How the Soul Relates to the Body

James Madden explains a philosophical approach to the soul called hylomorphism which, he argues, can benefit neuroscience
Hylomorphism, derived from ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, unites the sou with the body without denying its immateriality or immortality. Read More ›
a-depiction-of-a-landscape-inspired-by-the-uncertainty-principle-with-shapes-that-appear-to-shift-and-blur-stockpack-adobe-stock
A depiction of a landscape inspired by the uncertainty principle, with shapes that appear to shift and blur.

What If We Lost the Power to Think Abstractly?

Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges depicts a character whose total recall prevents him from using abstractions, though he recognizes their existence
Physicist Werner Heisenberg saw in the dilemma of language — the specific vs. the general — an analogy to his famous Uncertainty Principle in physics. Read More ›
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A young woman holding the hand of an old woman in a hospital bed, black and white

Palliative Care Doctor: What Dying Feels Like

Although a dying person tends to spend more and more time asleep or unconscious, there may be a surge of brain activity just before death
Fifty years ago slick commentators expected to explode myths about the soul or the hereafter but today, NDEs and terminal lucidity are serious research topics. Read More ›
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Endless reflections of mirrors in labyrinth house

Hall of Mirrors: The Many Ways Consciousness Baffles Researchers

Does consciousness have a seat at the table? Wait a minute. Isn’t consciousness the table? Or is it?
The human brain was bound to disappoint a pop culture quest for easy answers; brain imaging has not turned out to be a road map of the mind. Read More ›
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The universe within. Silhouette of a man inside the universe. The concept on scientific and philosophical topics.  Elements of this image furnished by NASA.

Is Your Mind Bigger Than the Universe? Well, Look At It This Way…

Surprisingly, there is a way to measure the mind that shows it IS bigger than the universe — information

Imagine you’re sitting at home, relaxing in your favorite easy chair. Go on, kick your legs up. Feel your limbs releasing the stress of the day, starting from the extremities, and progressing up your core to your head. Now, let your mind expand. Let go of what is holding your mind down. Feel it become free, outside of everything around it. Let the feeling continue until your mind is bigger than the universe. Now consider the question: if your mind is bigger than the universe, can it be within the universe? If a ball is bigger than a bag, can it be contained by the bag? Of course not. If the mind is bigger than the universe, then it must Read More ›

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Paradigm of Soul Geometry

Belief in the Soul Is Found in Every Time and Place

Substance dualism holds clearly that the soul and the body are two different types of entities
The materialist philosophers ground war on “substance dualism” is really a war on what all human beings innately believe. Read More ›
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Hemispheres of the brain front view

Could Human Consciousness Be a Recent Historical Development?

Julian Jaynes’s bicameral mind theory, popular in the 1970s, stated that until about 3000 years ago, humans were not really conscious
Julian Jaynes, a researcher at Princeton, developed his theory after he was not able to demonstrate the evolution of consciousness via animal studies. Read More ›
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Flame of Evolution: Unveiling the Neanderthal's Discovery of Fire - A Surprising and Transformative Moment for Homo Sapiens, Marking an Astonishing Breakthrough in Ancient Culture.

Asked at Psychology Today: Were Neanderthals Religious?

We can’t poll long-dead Neanderthals on life, death, and the hereafter but the evidence we’ve dug up suggests they were thinking about that kind of thing
We must mentally step outside nature to consider things like how the world was created or what lies beyond death. Immaterial minds can do that. Read More ›
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Blue check mark logos on a heap on a table. Copy space. Verification concept

Philosopher Tweets on Consciousness — and Gets Feedback

Tulane U’s Kevin Morris tweeted that “the brain/ nervous system IS consciousness,” and started a broad discussion with many views represented
Social media can be a tool for free discussions with people worldwide who may not go to the conferences, sign up for the courses, or read the books we do. Read More ›
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Profile portrait of a child looking up at a robot with curiosity on a dark background - not based on a real person, Generative AI

When a Brilliant Man Has a Very Confused Perspective …

Astrophysicist Avi Loeb simply doesn’t seem to see that human beings are more valuable than advanced machines
Those who think that Harvard’s best and brightest should rule over us might want to invest some time to discover how some of them really think. Read More ›
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goats on the roof

Researchers: Goats Can Read Basic Human Emotions

The research team hopes to improve care of livestock by establishing what they do and don’t feel about the way they are treated
It’s no surprise if a wide range of animals understand human contentedness vs. anger. Those are precisely the elements of the mind that we and goats share. Read More ›
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Robot talking with old man machine learning reaction or ai artificial intelligence concepts.Chat bot software network.big data and block chain system.generative art images.

Human Intelligence Is Fundamentally Different From Machine Intelligence

Design theorist William Dembski discusses the problems we will encounter when we try to integrate the two when, say, sharing the road with self-driving cars
Dembski also touches on Ray Kurzweil’s quest for digital immortality and how it falls short of the original quest and its religious expressions. Read More ›