Consciousness BEFORE Life? These Scientists Say Yes

Alexander Oparin, Anirban Bandyopadhyay, asteroids, Bennu, brains, consciousness, Dante Lauretta, Darwinian materialists, Evolution, genes, Institute for Arts and Ideas, mind, Murchison meteorite, Neuroscience & Mind, philosophers, quantum collapse, quantum superpositions, Roger Penrose, scientists, solar system, Stuart Hameroff, wave function
One key way life differs from non-life is that life forms have goals. For example, the amoeba seeks to protect itself. 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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Researchers: Goats Can Read Basic Human Emotions

Alan McElligott, anger, animal feed, Christof Koch, City University of Hong Kong, contentedness, Dogs, Edward Feser, emotions, fear, goats, Heaven, horses, Intelligent Design, livestock, Marianne Mason, mind, moral choice, Neuroscience & Mind, philosophers, Purzel, reason, soul, University of Hong Kong, University of Roehampton, voice
Readers may wonder at first whether this research was worth doing, but hang on. It turns out that goats can understand basic emotions by voice alone. Source
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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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To Understand Nature’s Intentionality, We Must Go Back to the Future

"God of the gaps", Aristotle, body, causation, Christianity, DNA, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, mind, Nicolaus Copernicus, Pierre-Simon Laplace, proteins, René Descartes, ribosomes, science of purpose, scientism, soul, Stephen Meyer, subject-object metaphysics, Thomas Aquinas, William Dembski
It required the truly inimitable intellect of Aquinas to Christianize and modernize what Aristotle had said 1,600 years before him. 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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