Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagNeuroscience

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Man in a maze

Has Neuroscience Disproved Thinking?

A philosopher argues that Nobel Prize-winning research shows that the theory of mind is just another illusion, useful for survival and success

We’ve all seen this sort of argument before in many other guises. It is commonly called “reductionism.” The reductionist claims that, because an object can be construed as made up of parts, the object is just the parts. It is like saying that because an article like this one is constructed from letters of the alphabet, the article is only rows of letters.

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Conceptual image of a large stone in the shape of the human brain
The young and conceptual image of a large stone in the shape of the human brain

The Brain Is Not a “Meat Computer”

Dramatic recoveries from brain injury highlight the difference

The 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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Little girl undergoing electroencephalography procedure

Attend your own funeral!

It’s easy if you upload your consciousness to the cloud, says futurist

Presumably, in Ian Pearson’s future, the rich can attend their own funerals and alternate world funerals an indefinite number of times, each one numbering as many different people as he wants.

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