Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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Abstract concept illustration from 3D rendering of a golden female head sculpture cut divided showing black interior halves and isolated on grey background.

Conundrum: Split Human Brain But Unified Perception

1500 papers later, current research suggests that a non-materialist approach to the neuroscience of the human mind is quite viable

Researcher Yair Pinto summed it up: In split-brain, patients, perception is split, but consciousness is unified.

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Android robot navigating through a cyber digital world, pointing its finger towards a glowing computer coding interface.luminous glow of digital technology, an android engages in the art of computer.

AI Is a Long Way From Replacing Software Coders

Despite C-suite claims, they are not likely to take our jobs any time soon because they do not understand what words mean and how words relate to the physical world

LLMs excel at simple coding tasks but are still too unreliable to use without extensive human supervision on complex tasks where mistakes are expensive.

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Baseball players in action on the stadium.

Monday Micro Softy 38: A Pitcher’s Lament

How can Lefty Wright be the winning pitcher in an exciting game without throwing a single pitch?

Micro Softy 37 is easier to guess if you think about what the two teams have in common that might change the opening ceremonies somewhat…

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Pigeon business portrait dressed as a manager or ceo in a formal office business suit with glasses and tie. Ai generated

Move Over, AI. Bird Brains Are Giving You a Run for Your Money

Could ten thousand birds develop a theory of mind just by scaling? A tale in three parts

Dr. Avian was sure that he had found a formula for intelligence without anything like a human mind, and his program appeared to be working.

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Ability.

Does the Mind Have a Specific Location in the Brain?

A rabbi asks neurosurgeon Michael Egnor how consciousness can exist without a place in the brain

The conventional assumption today is that consciousness has a material source. Yet no one has found a place where it lives in the brain.

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Detective board with crime scene photos, stickers, clues and red thread, closeup

AI’s Not “The Answer” In Our World of Mysteries, Not Puzzles

A focus on AI encourages us to see problems that are really mysteries as puzzles, which makes addressing them much harder

Humans are terrible at crunching data but remarkably good at seeing clues. That’s why we still outmatch our machines in domains where meaning matters.

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Education, kid learning and training with AI, knowledge and technology concept. Robot hologram in graduation hat showing while child using digital tablet with finger touch on screen, homework school.

AI in Education: Is the System Being Gamed — or the Student?

AI makes it easier to game the system, but many users are also being gamed

Users, whose output is used to train the AI systems, will pay higher electricity costs on account of them while experts eventually earn top salaries.

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White chatbot robot leading robots group on dark bluish reddish background 3D rendering

An Evil Chatbot Clones Itself… Sci-fi or Real Life Threat?

ChatGPT was asked to explain how this might be done. The results were revealing

It’s not impossible but, given technical issues and security protocols, it is much more difficult than the chatbot’s database seemed to be informed about.

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Two Scientists in the Brain Research Laboratory work on a Project, Using Personal Computer with MRI Scans Show Brain Anomalies. Neuroscientists at Work.
Two Scientists in the Brain Research Laboratory work on a Project, Using Personal Computer with MRI Scans Show Brain Anomalies. Neuroscientists at Work.

Can Faith and Neuroscience Align? Yes, Says Science Writer

If both faith and neuroscience are honestly seeking the truth, says Denyse O’Leary, they will find much that is mutually supportive

That is the key message behind the new book, The Immortal Mind (2025), of which she is neurosurgeon Michael Egnor’s co-author.

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Brain psychology mind soul and hope concept art, 3d illustration, surreal artwork, imagination painting, conceptual idea

Podcast: Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor Reads From The Immortal Mind

He followed the evidence and came to see that the human mind has a spiritual and immortal dimension

About existential questions, he says, “I no longer settled for the stock answers that many scientists, like me, had naively accepted for so long.”

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Butterfly effect illustration with a butterfly and tornado.

Sound of Thunder: Can Chance and the Butterfly Effect Coexist?

In Part 5 of my review of the sci-fi classic, I look at whether the effect could really upend evolution, however evolution is understood

The butterfly effect is one of those possibilities that sounds frighteningly plausible until one starts going into detail.

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The mathematician Eudoxus of Cnidus was chosen by the gods to devise a method to measure the stars

Faith and Science Before Modern Science — a Fresh Look

Winston Ewert offers a surprising look at how Christians debated science theories in the ancient and medieval world

What Christians thought about the claims of classical science should be seen in light of the fact that the science, not the faith, was later overturned.

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Orange oakleaf, Indian oakleaf or dead leaf, is a nymphalid butterfly

A Butterfly’s “Second Head”: What It Says About Intelligence

Not what it says about intelligence in the butterfly but in nature itself…

If there is no intelligent source of design in nature, the development over time of elaborate mimicry in insects is a conundrum.

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Brain mind way soul and hope concept art, illustration, surreal mystery artwork, imagination painting, conceptual idea of success

An Ancient Argument for the Existence of the Human Soul

Sixteen hundred years ago, Augustine tells a friend about a dream a skeptical local doctor had, where a sharp youth asked him some pointed questions

One issue that arose in that age of controversy was how anything like a human mind could function without a body?

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Mind.

Consciousness and Free Will: JP Moreland’s Case for Dualism

He argues that dualism, the sense that we are souls as well as bodies, is the natural interpretation of our lived experience

Moreland contends thatthe dualist view isn’t an irrational leap of faith but a well-supported, philosophically robust position.

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A futuristic cosmic swirl of space-time with glowing waves radiating outward, creating an abstract representation of time travel and reality manipulation, with no humans included

Sound of Thunder: Surfing the Time Waves When the Tide Is High

When plants start growing through cement walls, it is obvious that there is a problem

We learn that the butterfly effect only alters the evolution of biological material and the weather, and the effects start with plants.

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Slime mold / slime mould (physarum sp) on the decay log

Slime Mold: Memory and Learning Without Neurons

Can memories be stored outside the brain? Once we have separated memory and learning from neurons — do the traditional assumptions about them still really apply?

The findings from experiments with polycephalum have been “contentious,” probably because they raise issues about how these traits actually work.

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Montana

Monday Micro Softy 35: A House With a View

A billionaire, used to getting what he wants, demands a house where all the walls' windows offer a view in the same direction

The solution to Monday Micro Softy 34 is quite simple if we pay attention to the exact measurements of the poles and the wires.

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Landscape and Sky at Sunset

Does Dementia Show That the Mind Is Simply What the Brain Does?

People with dementia have severe memory issues, along with motor, perception and emotional disabilities, and that curtails their powers of reason

But, while the mind generally depends on a healthy brain, sometimes lucidity can come surging back to a demented person briefly and unexpectedly.

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Modern IVF micromanipulator with Petri Dish in the laboratory of the in vitro fertilization. for insemination of the egg freezing. Sperm cryopreservation. Ovum fertilization procedure

Michael Shermer Disagrees With Me on the Ethics of IVF

He sees a contradiction between my respect for and embrace of children conceived via IVF and my ethical qualms about the process of IVF: “Another example of how religion clouds rationality”

It is quite possible to seek good ends (children) by bad means (their industrial manufacture). That’s why Christian ethics are needed.

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