20Oct 2023 by Post

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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11Oct 2023 by Post

Are Near-Death Experiences Science Now?

After Death, Angel Studios, Angels, Bruce Greyson, Carol Zaleski, death, experiencers, Faith & Science, Gary Habermas, Heaven, immortality, Jesus, Medicine, Michael Egnor, Minding the Brain, near-death experiences, Neuroscience & Mind, neurosurgeons, nurses, Otherworld Journey, Oxford University Press, psychiatrists, shoelaces, spaghetti, The Human Soul
The laughter has died down? Good. It was modern medicine — not religion — that created the hard evidence for credible near-death experiences. Source
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03Oct 2023 by Post

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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01Oct 2023 by Post

Are Plants Cognitive, Intelligent Beings?

audible range, botany, cognition, Darwinism, David G. Robinson, ecologists, EMBO Reports, emotions, Frantisek Baluška, infection, intelligence, Life Sciences, Louvre, mathematics, Neuroscience & Mind, panpsychism, plants, random mutations, spirituality, Tel Aviv University, teleology, Third Way of Evolution, University of Heidelberg, water deprivation, ZME Science
Some plant biologists want to see them that way; others continue to insist on a Darwinian view. Source
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26Sep 2023 by Post

For Males, an Engineering Marvel that Originates in the Brain

Actin, bioactivity, brain, calcium ions, corpus cavernosum, ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, erectile tissue, erection, guanylate cyclase, human physiology, humans, Irreducible Complexity, irreducibly complex systems, Life Sciences, Medicine, motor neurons, muscles, myosin, Neuroscience & Mind, nitric oxide, nitric oxide signaling pathway, pelvic floor, penis, physiological processes, prostate gland, reproduction, seminal fluid, seminal vesicles, smooth muscle cells, sperm cells, vaginal cavity, vas deferens
The male erection and ejaculatory reflex require multiple physiological processes to work together in an incredible coordinated manner. Source
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20Sep 2023 by Post

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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14Sep 2023 by Post

Inferring the Best Explanation via Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence, Bayesian analysis, blues, boogie-woogie, ChatGPT, ChatGPT4, chess, country music, Culture & Ethics, Erik Larson, Google Bard, gun, hiccups, inference to the best explanation, musicians, Neuroscience & Mind, Noam Chomsky, piano, Stockfish, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence
The analogy with chess is apt — computers play chess but in ways different from us by being able to brute force their way through millions more positions. Source
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07Sep 2023 by Post

Is the Cell a Machine, or More Like a Mind? 

Barbara McClintock, cell, cellular architecture, cellular behavior, cellular cognition, Chance and Necessity, circuitry, cognition, conformation, Daniel Nicholson, DNA, electronic circuitry, function, functional promiscuity, Intelligent Design, intracellular transport, Jacques Monod, Journal of Theoretical Biology, lymphotactin, machine, machine conception of the cell, machine metaphor, membranes, molecular biology, neural circuitry, Neuroscience & Mind, nucleic acids, proteins, self-assembly, Sewall Wright, wiring
At least as we’re accustomed to thinking in our age of AI, the alternative to a machine is a mind. Source
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27Aug 2023 by Post

By Using Floor Buttons, Can Dogs Talk?

abstractions, animal behavior, Bunny (dog), Carl Sagan, chimpanzees, confirmation bias, crows, Dogs, emotions, floor buttons, gibberish, humans, language, Life Sciences, marine biologists, Neuroscience & Mind, puppies, Sarah Sloat, Scientific American, sheepadoodle, Stephanie Pappas, Thomas Fudge, TikTok, Washington State, wolves
The latest fad in the “Talk to the animals” arena appears to be a classic in confirmation bias. Source
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