Category: Neuroscience

Neuroscience, pseudoscience, neurobollocks …

“The dazzling real achievements of brain research are routinely pressed into service for questions they were never designed to answer. This is the plague of neuroscientism ” more

Neuroscientists claim octopus has consciousness

The problem is that no one knows what consciousness is, exactly, or how it arises, and – hat tip to Thomas Nagel – no one knows what it is like to be a bat, or octopus. more

Free will is compatible with an “expensive meat” view of the mind?

Readers can be the judge of whether his approach works. There’s been a surprising amount of this lately. more

Getting a handle on the true nature of empathy

As understood by humans. more

New word of the month: Biobabble

” … the seemingly endless and tedious pages of evolutionary psychology that make up the key sections of the book’s first three chapters. ” more

New neuroscience findings: Free will is back in town?

“‘If we are correct, then the Libet experiment does not count as evidence against the possibility of conscious will,’ says Schurger.” more

Lose that scarlet letter, will you? When researchers rip off, who is to blame a wunderkind science writer?

“That Lehrer’s preposterous reductive effort was so widely welcomed by the public and leading publications is what we most need to be concerned about.” more

Can the concept of information explain consciousness?

Tononi’s theory of consciousness is a measure of information. more

Raymond Tallis: Sleep is still a biological – and psychological – mystery

“the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid, is that we get sleepy.” more

Jonah Lehrer, and the truth losing its facts

The simple solution of not taking any materialist neuroscience seriously – treat it like politicians’ campaign biographies – would solve the problem. more

“Inside our skull is more than just a brain”

Astonishing that such words would appear in a regular issue schmience journal – but maybe it isn’t that any more. Wait and see. more

Integrating Non-physical Causation Into Cognitive Models

For the next installment of the Engineering and Metaphysics Conference Videos, we have a talk on setting up a testable line between physical and non-physical causation, as well as how one can integrate non-physical causation into models of cognitive processes. more

Neuroscientist Bradley Voytek: Forget Lehrer. Neuroscience’s “own house is in such disarray”

The assumptions on which neuroscience proceeds today are often shallow and misleading, producing nonsense intended by special interest groups to manipulate the public. more

From MercatorNet: What can a brain scan tell us about ourselves?

Publicity around brain scans can create an uncertain, gullible public, easily swayed. more

Surprise, surprise, worm’s nervous system “much more complex than thought”

“Before, people simply thought each neuron was one functional module, … there are, potentially, many more functional units. That hugely enlarges the computational capability of this relatively simple neural system.’” more

Another myth shattered: Smart people are MORE vulnerable to thinking errors, not less

“Although we assume that intelligence is a buffer against bias … it can actually be a subtle curse.” more

Has the pop neuroscience of creativity been “underbussed”?

“Their sponging off science is what gives these writers the authority that their readers impute to them, and makes their simplicities seem very weighty. ” more

ID-friendly neurosurgeon Michael Egnor now has a blog

Egnorance! more

There is something wrong with the popular idea of what brain scans can tell us if …

… they are getting signals from dead fish. more

Oxytocin, love drug, turns out not to be

The “love hormone”, it turns out, has a dark side, one that is only just starting to come to light. more

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