Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagMinding the Brain (Discovery Institute Press 2023)

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Human brain stimulation or activity with neuron close-up 3D rendering illustration. Neurology, cognition, neuronal network, psychology, neuroscience scientific concepts.
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
November 14, 2023
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Will Neuroscience Ever Accommodate Immaterial Consciousness?

Joseph Green offers an informative account in Minding the Brain of the current state of neuroscience. What we now know is remarkable — but so is what we don’t
Denyse O'Leary
November 14, 2023
6
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

“On the Limitations of Cutting-Edge Neuroscience,” which is Chapter 15 of Minding the Brain, offers neuroscientist Joseph Green’s candid assessment of the current state of the discipline. If you would like to enjoy a discussion of neuroscience today without another massive dose of promissory materialism, bookmark this one for sure. Green starts with a premise that may be startling to some: Neuroscientists are nowhere near figuring out how the brain works. More significantly, “ no specific philosophical theory should be preferred over another on the basis of scientific findings.” That is because “ … the current dogma that pervades neuroscience—materialist monism that can be simply stated as “we are nothing but our brains”—is established by intellectual pressure rather than solid Read More ›

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Synaps with neurons in the background, neurotransmitters in synaptic junction, information transmission in the brain
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 24, 2023
Categorized
Free will, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Neuroscience Has Never Provided Much Evidence for Materialism

In a chapter of the new book, Minding the Brain, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor points out that many great neuroscientists were non-materialists
Denyse O'Leary
October 24, 2023
6
Free will, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Over the past century, philosophers and philosophy connoisseurs have had a great time making fun of dualism. It was so easy. The human mind, we are told, is just the ghost in the machine, something that, as science will prove, doesn’t really exist. We are just bodies with brains. Life is all material. An early warning that things aren’t as simple as that should be the outcome of the wager between prominent neuroscientist Christof Koch and dualist philosopher David Chalmers. After 25 years of search, Koch conceded to Chalmers because no consciousness “signature” had been found in the brain. Was it just a ripple effect of that outcome that, shortly afterward, many leading neuroscientists denounced Koch’s well-regarded Integrated Information Theory Read More ›

Choosing the High Road or Low Road
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 21, 2023
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Modern Neuroscience Does NOT Disprove Free Will

In a chapter of Minding the Brain (2023), Cristi L. S. Cooper looks at the current state of neuroscience research on free will
Denyse O'Leary
October 21, 2023
6
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

If you’ve heard the latest from pop science, you probably “know” that science disproves free will. Actually, after decades of research on the topic, it doesn’t. Chapter 14 of Minding the Brain (Discovery Institute Press, 2023) is neuroscientist and educator Cristi L. S. Cooper’s look at the real state of the neuroscience around free will. In “Free Will, Free Won’t, and What the Libet Experiments Don’t Tell Us,” Cooper recounts in some detail the research around readiness potentials in the brain. The controversy started with 1983 findings by American neuroscientist Benjamin Libet (1916–2007). Briefly, Libet et al. found that the brain initiates spontaneous movements (“readiness potential”) before subjects recall making as choice to act. And, Cooper notes, “This finding kicked Read More ›

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Concept tunnel of light in near death experience, soul finding their ascension, astral trip, astral projection, people going through the portal of karma, death and birth. Spirituality, esoteric.
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 10, 2023
Categorized
Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind
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Are Near-Death Experiences Becoming Science Now?

The laughter has died down? Good. It was modern medicine — not religion — that created the hard evidence for credible near-death experiences
Denyse O'Leary
October 10, 2023
6
Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind

Gary Habermas, a professor of Divinity at Liberty University who appears in the upcoming Angel Studios’ film After Death., also has a chapter on near-death experiences in the just-released book Minding the Brain (Discovery Institute Press 2023). The chapter looks at the conundrums created by people who have, according to conventional measurements, died and are then brought back by medical heroics — and then report seeing people or learning things they could not possibly have seen or learned unless some element in their being was active while their hearts and brains were not functioning. Call it the mind, call it the soul… Here are a couple of highlights from Habermas’s heavily footnoted chapter, “ Evidential Near-Death Experiences”: Sometimes the experiencer Read More ›