Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryPhilosophy of Mind

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3 d render illustration of brain with brain inside3 d render illustration of brain with brain insidebrain in modern computer lab

Does the Brain Constrain the Mind Instead of Creating It?

There is no systematic, science-based reason today to think that’s not true and plenty of evidence suggests that it is
To insist that the mind is not real and can’t be constrained amounts to taking a philosophical position, not one based on science. There is no relevant science. Read More ›
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Party Background with lights, confetti, balloons and serpentine

Can There Really Be an Ultimate Happiness Machine?

Technology can do so much. Can it really provide an answer to the eternal human quest for happiness?
What if we had a machine that could access and manipulate the internals of the human mind? It would fall victim to the halting problem. Read More ›
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the drawings from the ceiling of Altamira cave in Santillana Del Mar, Cantabria, Spain

Deciphering the Hidden Meanings of Cave Art

In many cases, there are more dots and lines than animals, which suggests some sort of early information system
Our remote ancestors were forging a system for writing down what they knew thousands of years before what we think of as history. Read More ›
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Surreal brain tree in a desolate land and a determined person watering it using a sprinkling can. Man splashes the green shrub using a water pot, taking care of mental health. Human mind concept

A Biochemist Begins To Sense the Limits of Materialism

William Reville seems both confident and uncertain at the same time that science can crack the problem of consciousness
Materialist science has got about as far as it can go and progress will only be made if we are willing to contemplate non-materialist approaches. Read More ›
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A phoenix rising from the ashes against a fiery backdrop - AI Generated

Why Logician Kurt Gödel Believed in Life After Death

He saw human folly as an opportunity to reform and learn, because our souls are immortal whether we like it or not
In a deeply rational, ordered universe, Gödel argues, human potential — frustrated in so many ways here — must flower afterward elsewhere. Read More ›
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Tribe of Hunter-Gatherers Wearing Animal Skin Holding Stone Tipped Tools, Stand Near Cave Entrance. Neanderthal Family Ready for Hunting in the Jungle or Migration

What Was It Like To Grow Up in the Paleolithic era?

We are learning much about our ancestors’ lives from the less highly publicized finds
From the fragments gathered so far, it seems we have no evidence for a history of the human mind, only the history of human technology. Read More ›
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Great Ideas, Like All Ideas, Are Immaterial in Principle

The main reasons we hear more ideas today is that we are building on basic past ideas plus there are many more human beings and communications systems
i Loeb sounds as though has absolutely no idea what makes human intelligence unique; thus he mistakes the result for the cause. Read More ›
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Big data and artificial intelligence concept. Machine learning and cyber mind domination concept in form of women face on dark blue technology background, 3d illustration.

Defending Why We’re More than Machines

We need to look beyond materialism to understand what it means to be human.
If something like dualism is true, then it goes a long way to showing the implausibility of the idea that we are solely meat machines, robots, etc. Read More ›
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A meteor streaks across the Milky Way during the Perseid meteor shower of 2016.

Science Needs a Mind to Work

The use of science to discredit the existence of mental subjects is fatally flawed.
The idea that science has somehow shown the irrelevance of the mind to explaining behavior is seriously confused. Read More ›
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Psychology concept. Sunrise and woman silhouette.

If Science Doesn’t Support Dualism — Well, It Should

At Big Think, Kmele Foster interviews five figures in consciousness studies. Not one is a dualist but a listener may come away with a new appreciation for dualism
Dualism — human consciousness is real, immaterial, and special — is the only approach to consciousness that accords with the evidence. Read More ›
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Brain activity

Philip Goff’s “Why” and Inflated Success

We are still nowhere closer to arriving at a science of consciousness
There’s little of substance favoring this new theory of consciousness. We still need something like a god piloting the universe.  Read More ›
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Closeup shot of flint tools in finders hand

Researchers: Early Humans Chose Their Toolmaking Rocks With Care

Different types of flint were useful for different purposes 70,000 to 30,000 years ago
Ancient humans calculated how much time and trouble went into a specific tool, in relation to its use — much as we do today. Read More ›
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Macro photo of Toxocara canis, dog roundworm

Can the Simplest Animal Minds Explain Human Minds?

Kristin Andrews thinks consciousness researchers should discard the assumptions of “overwhelmingly white, male and WEIRD” philosophy profs and study more crabs
Panpsychism is a faith, like materialism; its assumptions and assertions are not “value-free.” We are likely to be unpacking them for some time. Read More ›
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Natural Dualism

Neuroscience Must Be Dualist, Whether or Not “Science” Allows It

Riccardo Manzotti and Paulo Moderato set out the dilemma: The human mind makes no sense apart from the forbidden dualist perspective. Read More ›
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Robotic hand using wooden geometrical shapes at during machine learning. 3d illustration.

Why the Turing Test Is Becoming Obsolete

Chatbots can easily pass the test without doing any thinking at all
One research team recommends replacing the Turing test (can it deceive humans?) with tests for actual reasoning skills. Read More ›
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Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain

Claim: What consciousness studies needs is more Darwinism

The Darwinian view of the evolution of the human mind is, at best, a ladder with no upper rungs
Researchers seem to have honed their skills in presenting failure as success and in portraying more of what hasn’t worked as a solution. Read More ›
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Mind labyrinth and business success psychology concept with back view walking businessman to the light spot in corridor with walls in form of human head

The Likely Reason the Human Mind Has No History

Our efforts to explain the origin of the human mind fall flat because we are looking for an origin that probably doesn’t exist
To the extent that the uniquely human part of the mind is immaterial, it won’t have a history any more than the Pythagorean theorem, in itself, does. Read More ›
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New Book Looks at Design in Nature From a Catholic Viewpoint

Catholic thinkers who reject Darwinism don’t focus so much on its claims about universal common descent as on its utter inability to account coherently for the human mind
n Chapter 10, Scott Ventureyra points out that, paradoxically, our weakness and capacity for sin makes us nobler than the countless life forms that cannot sin. Read More ›