So tonight I am attending a Tippling Philosophers get-together in Fareham, UK. We are discussing transhumanism. For those who don;t know, this is the idea (or movement for the idea) that we can adapt our bodies and cognitive abilities using technology to prolong our lives, choose our babies genotype and phenotype etc etc – the harnessing of technology to change and progress what we might (erroneously?) define as our humanity, biological or otherwise.
Category Science
Childhood poverty and chronic stress may lead to problems regulating emotions as an adult, according to research published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Independent reports: Scientists ‘95 per cent certain’ that climate change is man-made
But this article is from Science Daily:
The Independent reports: Scientists ‘95 per cent certain’ that climate change is man-made. I wonder whether science denialists will ever concede.
But this article is from Science Daily:
Sep. 27, 2013 — Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident in most regions of the globe, a new assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes.
Our brains give us the remarkable ability to make sense of situations we’ve never encountered before — a familiar person in an unfamiliar place, for example, or a coworker in a different job role — but the mechanism our brains use to accomplish this has been a longstanding mystery of neuroscience.
Over my head like a large marquee, but genius nonetheless: And while you are at it: [H/T Neil Webber]
By studying how memories are made, UC Irvine neurobiologists created new, specific memories by direct manipulation of the brain, which could prove key to understanding and potentially resolving learning and memory disorders.
Recently, I have run a number of articles about morality and its intersection with biology: Human Brains Are Hardwired for…
The “mini brain” is roughly the size and developmental level of a nine-week foetus
Miniature “human brains” have been grown in a lab in a feat scientists hope will transform the understanding of neurological disorders.
University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher.
Some time ago, one of my regular commenters steered me toward listening to this podcast. It is brilliant and well…
Recently, Zytigon, a skeptic who comments on Debunking Christianity, noticed a comment on a anthropogenic global warming denial blog entry by a Johnathan Pearce, thought it was me, understandably. The spelling, though, is slightly different and this person was not me. I support the scientific consensus on global warming agreed by an overwhelming proportion of scientists in the relevant fields.
By analysing MRI images of the brain with an elegant mathematical model, it is possible to reconstruct thoughts more accurately than ever before. In this way, researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen have succeeded in determining which letter a test subject was looking at.
The journal Neuroimage has accepted the article, which will be published soon.
Manipulation is often thought of as morally repugnant, but it might be responsible for the evolutionary origins of some helpful or altruistic behavior, according to a new study.
And so it is. Goddidit and supernaturalism sidle into the corner of explanatory power as the march of science proceeds. Today, Near Death Experiences and their afterlifey dualism take a hit….
The BBC:
I love Skydivephil. He/She/They have had some properly good ding-dongs with our favourite apologist, William Lane Craig, most recently on…
This essay sets out to dispel the myth that the soul can be the originator for free will. I will start the essay by establishing the Cartesian idea of what the body is and showing that Descartes and modern biology indicate that the body is a biological machine. After indicating how Descartes (and others) use the soul as the originator for free will / volition, I will show that in order for the soul to be labelled and identified as a soul, it must have the format and properties of a soul. These must be adhered to in order to designate the soul with coherent and consistent properties. To conclude, I will maintain that if a soul must adhere to rules and laws to remain being a soul, then it must operate within a deterministic framework.
This hit the news yesterday on radio and TV. Fascinating stuff. This reported from Science Daily:
July 25, 2013 — The phenomenon of false memory has been well-documented: In many court cases, defendants have been found guilty based on testimony from witnesses and victims who were sure of their recollections, but DNA evidence later overturned the conviction.
Yonatan Fishman, PhD, Department of Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, wrote a really interesting paper contesting the idea that science and the supernatural do not overlap, and that there is no way to test the supernatural. The paper can be found here and is well worth a read. I hope to give it a greater commentary in the near, not-so-mentally busy future!
Science Daily – July 19, 2013 — If you could hit the reset button on evolution and start over, would essentially the same species appear? Yes, according to a study of Caribbean lizards by researchers at the University of California, Davis, Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts. The work is published July 19 in the journal Science.
So in my post, the Part 2 of why Vincent Torley is a Christian, Vincent called into question some of Counter Apologist’s work undermining William Lane Craig’s use of science and metaphysics to try to show that the A-Theory of time is true or that the B-Theory is false.
Craig’s case is this: