On this bingecast archive episode of Mind Matters News, guest host Pat Flynn welcomes Dr. Winston Ewert to the show to discuss Ewert’s chapter in the volume Minding the Brain.
In his contribution, titled “The Human Mind’s Sophisticated Algorithm and Its Implications,” Dr. Ewert argues that the human mind’s problem-solving cognition can be modeled as a sophisticated algorithm. Ewert explains that any cognitive task can be expressed as a version of the halting problem from computer science, where an algorithm either halts or continues infinitely. He suggests that humans are able to solve a large and sophisticated subset of these problems, but are limited in the same way that no algorithm can solve all halting problems. Ewert contends that this algorithmic view of human cognition has implications that challenge reductive materialist and neo-Darwinian views, despite resistance from some thinkers who believe human abilities transcend any algorithm.
Simply put, there is no gradualistic pathway to explain penguins…or cetaceans, or bats, or marine iguanas, etc., or almost anything else, as Behe made clear.
On today’s episode, guest host Pat Flynn welcomes Dr. Eric Holloway and Professor Robert J. Marks to the podcast to discuss the information cost of creativity. Today’s conversation is based on a chapter in the book Minding the Brain authored by Dr. Holloway and Marks. Essentially, they are addressing the following question: Can the marvels of human creativity, like novels, speeches, and Read More ›
I’ve been reading the modern classic The Brothers K by American writer David James Duncan. Not to be confused with The Brothers Karamazov, this novel creatively riffs off of Dostoevsky’s iconic novel while retaining its own unique flavor. Set in Washington state during the crazy 1960s, The Brothers K is about the Chances, a family with a father beaten down after a failed shot at pro baseball, and the four brothers who each respond differently to the rapidly changing culture of the United States. The Chances’ grandmother, who they affectionately call “Grandawma,” is a staunch Darwinist, while Mrs. Chance is a devout Seventh Day Adventist. The Chance children have to wade through the opposing worldviews they’re brought up in, and Read More ›
The film, in keeping with the previous three in the series, is smart, exciting, and provocative. It forces the viewer to confront what it really means to be human.
Joe Rogan recently sat down with Tucker Carlson to have an often-bizarre conversation that involved everything from UFOs to evolution to saunas. Rogan’s comments on artificial intelligence, however, were some of the most provocative of the exchange, and reflected a sentiment common among futurists and transhumanists: AI could become a life form, evolve, and replace the human race. Rogan situates his views by noting that only humans think humans are important. In the grand scheme of the cosmos, human life is inconsequential. He went on to note that AI could become “God,” and evolve to a certain point where it would basically know everything there is to know. The question is: why would anyone want that, and why should that Read More ›
On a classic episode of ID the Future, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviews Bernardo Kastrup, a philosopher with a background in computer engineering, about consciousness, evolution, and intelligent design. Did consciousness evolve? What does the evidence suggest? And how do materialists deal with the seemingly immaterial reality that is consciousness? Enjoy this guest episode from Mind Matters, a podcast of Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. Dig Deeper Cross-posted at Evolution News.
Can this teleonomic behavior of evolution simply be a byproduct of non-teleological forms of evolution? Information theory suggests that this is not likely.
One semi-random movie franchise I’ve been a massive fan of is the newest iteration of The Planet of the Apes. The original trilogy, directed by Matt Reeves (The Batman) concluded in 2017, but a “fourth” film is set to release on Memorial Day of 2024, and a trailer for it dropped this week. I’m starting to become somewhat “anti-trailer” given that more often than not they tend to either distort the hype of the film or give away the story entirely. But in the cases of movies I’m most excited about, I confess that generally I give the trailer a quick view. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set years after Caesar, the founder of the ape colony Read More ›
The events of the past week in Israel have left the civilized world reeling. Hamas has killed more than 1,200 Jewish innocents in the most violent eruption of anti-Semitism since the Holocaust, and it seems likely a war will follow that will soon kill thousands more innocent people. As we ponder and pray over this mass slaughter, it is worthwhile to reflect for a moment on what these events tell us about the ideological and scientific dogmas of the 21st century — about atheism, determinism and Darwinism. Are these dogmas true, and do they provide a meaningful understanding of man and of moral action? If atheism is true and there is no God, there is no Moral Lawgiver. The concept of Read More ›
Some argue that humans are growing more peaceful, enlightened, and improved by the year, and that a coming technological singularity may well usher in utopia. Berlinski isn’t buying it.
Left to its own devices, ChatGPT is heavily biased toward methodological naturalism and will not say that intelligent design is a theory of biological origins
In December, physicist and author Lawrence Krauss interviewed the late American novelist Cormac McCarthy, who died on June 13th at the age of 89 in Santa Fe, N.M. McCarthy is famous for his remarkable fictional works like The Road and Blood Meridian, but he was also deeply fascinated with mathematics and science. Apparently, he enjoyed reading science more than he did fiction! He moved to Santa Fe from El Paso to be closer to the Santa Fe Institute, a science think tank where McCarthy would spend time speaking with various physicists, scientists, and mathematicians. His latest two novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, are about a brother and sister who are both brilliant mathematicians. Towards the beginning of the interview, Read More ›
Kenneth Miller is a biologist at Brown University who has been very active in his written and vocal support for Darwin’s theory of evolution. He’s neither a materialist nor an atheist – he is a Catholic, and in being one of the rare Darwinists who doesn’t subscribe wholeheartedly to the materialist/atheist paradigm, he allows himself to be used as a token theist by the Darwinists. It helps his career, no doubt, but doesn’t advance the truth. Not an admirable place to be. Miller’s New Book and What it Misses In his 2018 book The Human Instinct: How We Evolved To Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will, Miller manages a feat uncommon even for Darwinists – even the title of the Read More ›
With a tremor in his voice, Donald Hoffman tells Robert Lawrence Kuhn that even the Big Bang must be understood in a universe where consciousness is fundamental
In a recent episode of Closer to Truth, Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviewed University of California cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman on a challenging topic, “Why did consciousness emerge? (7:41 min, December 10, 2022): There was a time when there was no consciousness in our universe. Now there is. What caused consciousness to emerge? Did consciousness develop in the same way that, say, the liver or the eye developed, by random mutation and fitness selection during evolution? Inner experience seems to be radically different from anything else. Are we fooling ourselves? Donald Hoffman is the author of Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See and coauthor of Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory Of Perception (Norton, 2000) A partial transcript and some Read More ›
