Intelligence Without a Brain? The Case of Fungi

awareness, computers, decay, decisions, fungi, fungus colony, humans, intelligence, Intelligent Design, Japan, learning, machines, machine cognition, memory, metacognition, Michelle Starr, nature rights, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, panpsychism, Phanerochaete velutina, rescue dogs, Science Alert, slime molds, thinking, Tohoku University, transhumanism, Yu Fukasawa
We confuse the issue if we imply that the intelligence displayed by fungi is equivalent to that displayed by the humans who research them. Source
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Do Fungi Have Free-Will?

agency, automaton, biology, Chemistry, Complexity, consciousness, decision-making, Evidence, Evolution, free will, fungal mind, genetics, human behavior, hyphae, imago Dei, intelligence, Intelligent Design, Internet, Judeo-Christian tradition, learning, Life Sciences, materialism, memory, Miami University, mind, mycelium, mycology, Neuroscience & Mind, Nicholas P. Money, Ohio, physics, randomness, science writers, scientists, sensitivity
Whenever a new hypothesis like this is published and calmly debated in scientific journals without arousing any furor, your first instinct may be to scoff. Source
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Dreaming Animals and Human Exceptionalism

abstractions, American Kennel Club, animals, bird song, birds, cats, cuttlefish, David M. Peña-Guzmán, dolphins, dreaming, horses, human exceptionalism, information, jumping spiders, learning, Life Sciences, memory, Neuroscience & Mind, rapid eye movement, sleep, Smithsonian Magazine, spiders, symbols, Teresa Iglesias, thought, whales
Researchers have detected something like REM (rapid eye movement) sleep — which is associated with dreaming in humans — in jumping spiders. Source
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Origin of Life Is Not Reducible to Physics

Anthropic Principle, biology, can opener, entropy, Eugene V. Koonin, Evolution, genes, handwaving, Intelligent Design, learning, natural selection, Neural Networks, origin of life, physics, second law of learning, Second Law of Thermodynamics, Theodosius Dobzhansky, thermodynamics, Thomas Malthus, universe, vitalism, Vitaly Vanchurin
This continues an evaluation of a proposal that treats natural selection as a law of physics that is applicable to the entire universe. Source
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