No. 6 Story of 2023: On Free Will, ChatGPT4 Blows Away Atheist Sam Harris

atheists, Being as Communion, Belief, brain, ChatGPT4, consciousness, Culture & Ethics, decision-making, determinism, free choice, free will, illusion, irony, Judgment, mind, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Persuasion, reality, Reasoning, Sam Harris, The Design Inference, Winston Ewert, YouTube videos
Yes, the irony here is palpable, and I’ve long been critical of Harris’s view of free will as an illusion. Source
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Can Animal Minds Explain Human Minds?

Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, Christof Koch, consciousness, crabs, dualists, Francis Crick, hard problem of consciousness, John Horgan, Kristin Andrews, Life Sciences, materialism, mind, nervous system, neurological capacity, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, panpsychism, philosophers, philosophy, physiology, The Animal Mind, theists, York University
Kristin Andrews thinks consciousness researchers should discard the assumptions of “white, male and WEIRD” philosophy profs and study more crabs. Source
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Consciousness May Occur Near Time of Birth

abortion, baby, birth, Children, Christof Koch, consciousness, dreaming, fetuses, hard problem of consciousness, Icahn School of Medicine, infant experience, Integrated information theory, Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, newborn, philosophy, pregnancy, prenatal consciousness, Robert Wright, synaptic connections, Thomas Nagel, Trinity College Dublin, unborn humans
Researchers generally stress that the unborn child’s brain is in a rapid, ongoing, and little understood state of development. Source
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Study: Brain Is Still Active After Death

brain, consciousness, cosmic fine-tuning, CPR, Dartmouth College, Durham University, Elsevier, hospitals, Langone Medical Center, Marcelo Gleiser, Medicine, near-death experiences, Neuroscience & Mind, NYU, oxygen deprivation, persistent vegetative state, Philip Goff, Rachel Nuwer, researchers, Resuscitation (journal), Sam Parnia, Scientific American, wrongthink
Obviously, these experiences point to something that is irrelevant to claims about evolution. Source
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A Theoretical Biologist’s Mission Impossible: Banish Teleology While Retaining Meaning

academic politics, Chemistry, consciousness, Darwinian evolution, DNA, Evolution, genes, genetic code, information, Intelligent Design, Marcello Barbieri, materialism, Meaning, natural selection, paradigm, physics, private truth, public truth, teleology, University of Ferrara
The nonsense will cease eventually. But eventually is a long way off, if Barbieri’s dilemma is any guide. Source
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Self-Referential Absurdity in a Theory of Consciousness

blindness, Charles Darwin, consciousness, Euler's Identity, Evolution, evolutionary epistemology, Ezequiel Morsella, intelligence, Intelligent Design, Leonhard Euler, materialists, mathematics, mind, Nancy Pearcey, Neuroscience & Mind, rationality, Richard Dawkins, San Francisco State University, self-referential absurdity, self-referential fallacy, Theodosius Dobzhansky, William Provine, zombies
Leonhard Euler was known to work out complex derivations in his head while blind. Of what possible use was this ability for survival? Source
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Craig, Moreland: Two Philosophers Discuss Aliens and Artificial Intelligence

aliens, Artificial Intelligence, Biola University, consciousness, Culture, Culture & Ethics, dating, extraterrestrial life, Faith & Science, friendship, Internet, J.P. Moreland, marriage, Neuroscience & Mind, philosophy of mind, Sean McDowell, sexuality, Technology, virtual existence, william lane craig, worship
As an old professor of mine told me in an email recently: “Long live visceral proximity!” Source
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Clues About Consciousness from Dementia Research

Andrew Peterson, brain, Cait Kearney, Canada, consciousness, deeply forgetful, dementia, Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People, euthanasia, lucidity, Medicine, memory, neurobiology, neurodegenerative diseases, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, paradoxical lucidity, Parnia Lab, Penn Memory Center, Stephen Post, Stony Brook University
The phenomenon is called "paradoxical lucidity" because it is unexpected and we know very little about its causes. Source
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In Some Science Contexts, “Emergence” Really Means “We Don’t Know How”

Abram, Artificial Intelligence, caterpillars, consciousness, Derek Cabrera, emergence, empathy, Evolution, evolutionary theory, explanations, Genesis, intelligence, language, materialism, mind, monotheism, Neuroscience & Mind, origin of life, promissory materialism, religion, RNA, robotics, socialization, transcendental aesthetics, Yervant Kulbashian
The word often permits the improbable to be considered probable for the purposes of sounding like science without providing any. Source
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Neuroscientist Vows: We’ll Nail Consciousness Yet!

Anil Seth, beast machine theory, Being You, body, brain, British Festival of Neuroscience, Christof Koch, consciousness, consciousness spot, David Chalmers, hallucinations, human brain, James Pang, Life Sciences, Monash University, Nature (journal), Nautilus, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, University of Sussex
Anil Seth, proponent of the “hallucination” theory of consciousness, vows that researchers will find that consciousness spot or circuit in the brain. Source
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