Blind Ambition — Revisiting Searle’s Chinese Room

analytic philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, Chinese, Chinese characters, Chinese Room, Clearasil, computers, English, intelligence, Intelligent Design, intentionality, Irish Sweepstakes, John Searle, judo, MacArthur Fellowship, Neuroscience & Mind, observer, Pepsi, psychology, Roger Schank, script, Sophia Loren, The Cognitive Computer, Yale University
For the most part, computer scientists have tended to ignore Searle’s argument and the point of view that it represents. Source
Read More

Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented?

Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Applied Optics, Athanasios Papoulis, calculus, Carl Friedrich Gauss, error backpropagation, Euclid, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Intelligent Design, Isaac Newton, John F. Walkup, J´anos Bolyai, Karhunen–Loève Theorem, Kari Karhunen, mathematics, Michel Loève, Neuroscience & Mind, non-Euclidean geometry, Oberlin College, Papoulis-Gerchberg Algorithm, Peter Biles, plagiarism, space-variant processing, telegraph, telephone
Some think that math is invented. Evidence, though, points towards its discovery. Source
Read More

Researchers: Neanderthals Invented Process to Produce Birch Tar

23andMe, antiseptic, birch tar, birch wood, Clive Finlayson, Germany, Gibraltar Museum, glue, Homo sapiens, Human Origins, insect repellent, intelligence, Michael Shermer, Middle Palaeolithic, missing link, Neanderthals, Neuroscience & Mind, paleontology, Patrick Schmidt, ScienceAlert, University of Tübingen
The tar can be used for glue, bug repellent, and killing germs. This finding tracks growing recognition of Neanderthals as intelligent. Source
Read More

All We Need to Do to Give a Robot a Soul Is… (Error 404)

autonomous weapons, Buying God, Capitalism’s Toxic Assumptions, China, consciousness, David J. Gunkel, emotions, Eve Poole, hard problem of consciousness, human beings, ineffability, Intelligent Design, junk code, Leadersmithing, machines, Neuroscience & Mind, Northern Illinois University, personhood, Robot Souls, robots, Russia, Ryota Kanai, sixth sense, soul, Taylor & Francis, TechXplore, The Economist
In reality, programmers don’t leave souls out of robots because they don’t find them useful; they simply and obviously have no idea how to insert them. Source
Read More

For AI, Human Hands Are Exceptional…For Now

Artificial Intelligence, Becca Rothfeld, ChatGPT, computers, copyright, critical thinking, DALL-E, digital art, Gary Smith, human exceptionalism, human form, human hands, images, intelligence, Intelligent Design, Jean Paul, job infringement, Kyle Chayka, Midjourney, Neuroscience & Mind, novels, The Point, visual arts, writing
In many artificially contrived images, the hands come up gnarled, disfigured, or otherwise anatomically incorrect. Source
Read More

Sean Carroll: “How Could an Immaterial Mind Affect the Body?”

amino acids, analgesic, Aristotle, arthritis, biology, body, causation, chirality, Darvon, documentary, efficient cause, enantiomer, final cause, formal cause, Francis Bacon, free will, individuation, Johns Hopkins University, libertarian free will, material cause, matter, mind, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, penicillamine, philosophy, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, quantum mechanics, sculptor, sculpture, Sean Carroll, statue, trailer
Aristotle noted that when we think carefully about natural causes we see that there are four distinct ways that causes can lead to effects in nature. Source
Read More

Is Life After Death Incompatible with Physics?

Adam Frank, Bernardo Kastrup, Big Think, Bruce Greyson, Chronicle of Higher Education, Closer to Truth, consciousness, David Chalmers, death, hard problem of consciousness, life after death, moral choice, near-death experiences, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Neuroscience News, npr, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, reason, science, Scientific American, Sean M. Carroll, Standard Model
In 2011, Sean Carroll wrote an essay on why — from a science perspective — our minds must be extinguished at death Source
Read More