Clinical Psychologist Supports Human Exceptionalism

A New Unified Theory of Psychology, animals, Aristotle, behavior, Culture & Ethics, Dogs, emotions, evolutionary biologists, Feelings, Gregg Henriques, human exceptionalism, humans, Marc Bekoff, Michael Egnor, moral choice, Neuroscience & Mind, prejudice, psychology, Psychology Today, Racism, reason, secular humanists, sensations, sexism, speciesism, The Immortal Mind, Thomas Aquinas, Wesley J. Smith
Gregg Henriques, a secular humanist, has developed an approach that accepts human exceptionalism without denying that animals have mental abilities. Source
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Getting Stoned: Did It Shape Human Origins?

abstract thinking, anthropology, Aristotle, behavior, Big Think, Bobby Azarian, consciousness, Entropic Brain Hypothesis, Evolution, evolutionary psychology, Food of the Gods, human mind, Human Origins, magic mushrooms, Neuroscience & Mind, neuroscientists, New Stoned Ape Theory, panpsychism, psilocybin, Roger Penrose, Stone Age, Stoned Ape Theory, Terence McKenna
For a really wild excursion, nothing beats efforts to explain the evolution of the human mind. Source
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Reply to Free Will Deniers: Show Me

auto accident, behavior, Belief, brains, Chemistry, choice, Clarence Darrow, Culture & Ethics, Darwinian evolution, deterministic free will, faith, free will, free will deniers, ham sandwich, human beings, Jerry Coyne, LARPing, Ludwig Wittgenstein, materialists, Meaning, Neuroscience & Mind, parking lot, philosophers, physics, physiology, Politics, rain, Robert Sapolsky, Sam Harris, Stephen Cave, The Blue Book
If you carelessly dent a genuine free will denier’s car in a parking lot, he wouldn’t hold you responsible any more than he’d hold your car responsible. Source
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Fossil Friday: New Evidence for the Human Nature of Neanderthals

anatomy, antibiotics, Australian aboriginals, behavior, Bence Viola, biospecies, body decoration, cave art, cavemen, eagle talons, Fossil Friday, gene pool, genetic admixture, glue, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, human nature, Human Origins, human uniqueness, jewelry, lordosis, mating partners, Michael Shermer, native Australians, Neanderthals, ochre, painkillers, paleontology, seafood, spinal curvature, stone circles, Svante Pääbo, Thomas Huxley, University of Toronto
What is at stake is not just some esoteric species problem in the ivory tower, but the very question of human nature and human uniqueness. Source
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Brain as a Quantum System: Theory Gets New Traction

Al Gore, anesthesiologists, Astonishing Hypothesis, behavior, Bill Clinton, birds, brain tissue, consciousness, Dorje C. Brody, Francis Crick, George Musser, human mind, internal compass, materialism, Medicine, neurons, Neuroscience & Mind, New Scientist, Orch Or Theory, organoids, proteins, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation, quantum computation, Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff, Trinity College Dublin, University of Surrey
Hameroff and Penrose’s Orch Or Theory sees consciousness as the outcome of a quantum collapse of a wave function. Source
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Physics and Chemistry Could Not Give Rise to Biology

behavior, Big Bang, biological complexity, biology, Brian Miller, Casey Luskin, Chemistry, convergence, death, Diversity, Douglas Axe, electrostatic laws, environmental conditions, enzymes, equilibrium, Evolution, evolutionary algorithms, first law of thermodynamics, George Ellis, gravity, initial conditions, Intelligent Design, laws of forms, laws of nature, leaves, mass-energy, material mechanisms, natural selection, Nature (journal), nucleotide sequences, periodic table of elements, phenotypic plasticity, physics, proteins, quantum physics, Rope Kojonen, Second Law of Thermodynamics, stem cells, Stephen Dilley, structuralism, The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, The Compatibility of Evolution and Design (series)
The laws of nature provide stable conditions and physical boundaries within which biological outcomes are possible. Source
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The Superior Programming that Makes Plants Look Smart

animals, anthropomorphism, bacteria, behavior, biology, Chapman University, Curiosity rover, Darwinians, Duke University, ethylene, flowers, herbivores, Ian T. Baldwin, intelligence, Intelligent Design, ivy, leaf senescence, leaves, Life Sciences, memory, Michael Pollan, Nature (journal), nitrogen, programming, Richard Karban, self-awareness, strigolactone, synthetic organic chemistry, tendrils, tentacles, The New Yorker, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, trees, Wesley Smith
Two signaling molecules — strigolactone and ethylene — can work independently to begin the process of leaf senescence. Source
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Is Human Psychology Better Explained by Evolution or Design?

African Savannah, art, behavior, cathedrals, Daniel Dennett, Darwinian evolution, David Barash, environment of evolutionary adaptedness, evo psych, Evolution, evolutionary psychologists, evolutionary psychology, genes, Henry Schlinger, Human Origins, humans, Intelligent Design, Judith Eve Lipton, just-so stories, Marc Hauser, Moon, museums, music, Oskar Schindler, Philip Skell, Pleistocene, Richard Dawkins, Subrena Smith, survival machines, The Descent of Man, Victorian England
“We are survival machines,” wrote atheist biologist Richard Dawkins, “robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” Source
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Intelligent Design in Animal Self-Location and Navigation

algorithms, Animal Algorithms, bats, behavior, biology, circuits, electronic circuit, Engineering, fish, grid cells, head-direction cells, hindbrain, hippocampus, homeostasis, information, Intelligent Design, Life Sciences, mammals, navigation, neural network, neurons, optical flow, place cells, proximate neurons, Research, science, self, zebrafish
A question is whether such mechanisms exist in more ancient brain regions of other animals. A new study has identified a self-location mechanism in zebrafish. Source
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How to Destroy Love with Darwinism

Alice in Wonderland, alleles, altruism, antelopes, ants, behavior, behaviorism, biology, bioRxiv, bonobos, cooperation, Darwinian theory, Evolution, game theory, genetic determinism, Green Beard hypothesis, Kaleda K. Denton, kin selection, Lausanne University, leaping, lions, Love, pandemic, Red Queen hypothesis, slime molds, watchman crow
When Darwin proposed a new view of biology based on chance, he cheapened everything, including our most precious human values. Source
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