CategoryPhilosophy of Mind
Yes, your brain is a machine—if you choose to see it that way
As a Nobel Prize physicist pointed out, our method of study determines what we learnAnil Seth, a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, gave a TED talk recently (linked below) in which he asserted that “the combined activity of many billions of neurons—each one a tiny biological machine—is generating our conscious experience…” So, is your brain really a biological “machine”? Or is that just an analogy, like saying that a restaurant kitchen is a “hive” of activity? If so, how good is the analogy? Why do we select the analogy of a “machine” rather than a different one? It’s an important question, as we will see, because the questions we ask of nature constrain the answers we obtain. A machine is an artifact. It is a human-built assembly of Read More ›
How a Computer Programmer looks at DNA
And finds it to be "amazing" code
Brain hacks
Do we understand the brain better if we see it as a computer?
A Short Argument Against the Materialist Account of the Mind
You can simply picture yourself eating a chocolate ice cream sundae.
Does brain stimulation research challenge free will?
If we can be forced to want something, is the will still free?
Is Free Will a Dangerous Myth?
The denial of free will is a much more dangerous myth
Knowledge is power, sort of…
If that’s ALL knowledge is, the resulting science is bound to be limited, says Michael Egnor
Do either machines—or brains—really learn?
A further response to Jeffrey Shallit: Actually, brains don’t learn either. Only minds learn.
Could AI Understand the Universe?
World-renowned chemist thinks it might understand what we can’t, including consciousness
Could HAL 9000 Ever Be Built?
I say yes. Some reflections on the 50th Year Anniversary of 2001: A Space OdysseyAt one point on the trip from Earth to Jupiter, HAL becomes suspicious that the crew might be sabotaging the mission. HAL then purposely tries to kill all the crew. The most logical explanation for this act is a coding error. HAL was programmed to operate on the basis that the mission took priority over human life.
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Can a Game Prove That Computers Could Really Think?
Philosopher Daniel Dennett thinks so. Let's apply Occam's Razor and seeDo Big Brains Matter to Human Intelligence?
We don’t know. Brain research readily dissolves into confusion at that pointWe also know very little about the human brain. Take this controversy about why the large human brain evolved...
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Why Can’t Machines Learn Simple Tasks?
They can learn to play chess more easily than to walk
The Brain Is Not a “Meat Computer”
Dramatic recoveries from brain injury highlight the differenceThe brain looks like a computer only if we analyze it as if it were a computer. Our analysis does not mean that it is a computer, and it does not mean that computation explains the mind or even that computational approaches to neuroscience provide genuinely meaningful insight into neurophysiology.
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Boy loses large hunk of brain
And is “doing just fine”
AI That Can Read Minds?
Deconstructing AI hypeThe source for the claims seems to be a 2018 journal paper, "Real-time classification of auditory sentences using evoked cortical activity in humans." The carefully described results are indeed significant but what the Daily Mail article didn't tell you sheds a rather different light on the AI mind reader.
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How to hack your unconscious mind
Assuming it exists
Attend your own funeral!
It’s easy if you upload your consciousness to the cloud, says futurist
Can free will even be an illusion?
Michael Egnor reiterates the freeing implications of quantum indeterminacyMany say so. For example, at Cosmos, senior artificial intelligence research scientist Alfredo Metere explains, … there is a causal relationship between the Big Bang and us. In other words, free will is not allowed, and all of our actions are just a mere consequence of that first event. Such a view is known as “determinism”, or “super-determinism” (if one finds it productive to reinvent the wheel). He asserts that today we know the universe to be chaotic. Because the cosmos is clearly chaotic, we can observe time-reversibility only locally, rather than globally. This in turn means that free will is an inevitable illusion for us humans, due to our subjective perception of the universe, rather than its innermost nature. Read More ›