Rudy Garns's Public Library

This is a précis of an argument that naturalism forces upon us a very disillusioned “take” on reality. It is one that most naturalists have sought to avoid, or at least qualify, reinterpret, or recast to avoid its harshest conclusions about the meaning of life, the nature of morality, the significance of our consciousness self-awareness, and the limits of human self-understanding. This is a vast agenda and it’s presumptuous to address it even in a format 30 times longer than this one. My excuse is that I stand on the shoulders of giants: the many heroic naturalists who have tried vainly, I think, to find a more hopeful version of naturalism than this one.

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naturalism value nihilism

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self splitbrain Parfit materialism 150

Philosophy, et cetera:

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self splitbrain Parfit 150

Derek Parfit in effect denies Descartes's conclusion. He would insist that the conclusion is not nearly as innocent and straightforward as it seems. When Descartes says that he exists, he means that there is a continuing subject of experiences or self or ego, or whatever word you prefer, that exists. Parfit denies that there really is any such thing, and therefore denies that we can know that there is.

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self splitbrain Parfit 150

Beyond the hype of left brain versus right brain lies the work of acclaimed neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga. His career was forged in the lab of Nobel laureate Roger Sperry, and together their trailblazing experiments have illuminated the differences between the brain's two hemispheres. All In The Mind - 14 November 2009 -

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mind splitbrain Gazzaniga 150 brains cogsci

Evolution in humans is commonly thought to have essentially stopped in recent times. But there are plenty of examples that the human race is still evolving, including our brains, and there are even signs that our evolution may be accelerating.

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human-evolution brains evolution

As colleges across the country continue to cinch their belts, both administrators and students have been forced to decide which sorts of programs are good investments and which are now unaffordable luxuries. And with students sweating a cutthroat job market that favors specific skills, many in higher education have been left wonder how the recession stands to affect the liberal arts.

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liberal-arts highereducation education

free access

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cognitive-science computing journal

By comparing how a gene critical for language works in humans and chimpanzees, researchers have identified an entire network of genes involved in the incredible linguistic powers of Homo sapiens.

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human language primates genetics AZB evolution

There have been many discussions relating to transhumanism and augmenting intelligence as well as just intelligence itself. However, at the heart of many of these discussions the subject of Artificial Intalligence (AI) emerges. This raises the question of whether AI is possible and what it actually means.

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intelligence AI mind 150

the reality is that oxytocin is a LOT more complicated than that, and has different effects of your body and your behavior, depending on who you are. It varies from person to person (as all biological things do) as well as between men and women. And today, we're going to discuss the ladies. Because if there is anything oxytocin is famous for, it's for its effects on women.

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oxytocin

The National Science Foundation delivers $1.1 million to Rensselaer Polytech researchers to stimulate the Semantic Web

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semantic web CDC 150

If professors record their lectures and put them online, will students still come to class?

That question came up in two different sessions at the 2009 Educause Conference here on Friday. And in both cases, the panelists cited research indicating that students’ likelihood of skipping class has no correlation with whether a professor decides to capture her lecture and post it the Web.

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lecture edtech ttl lecture-capture

So the question basically came down to this: What are the effects of oxytocin in female vs males, in particular the effects on sexual and bonding behavior, and how does this influence the autonomy of people (eg, are we really the tools of our hormones). The short answer: yes and no.

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oxytocin neuroscience

New Survey Finds Colleges Moving Away From Pure "Cafeteria-Style" General Education Requirements, with only 15 Percent Now Using Distribution Requirements Alone
Two-thirds of Colleges Are Incorporating More Engaged and Integrative Learning Practices Into General Education Programs

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education highereducation curriculum general-education

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Chalmers in action live at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He didn’t talk about zombies, telling us instead his thoughts about the so-called Singularity, the alleged moment when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, resulting in either all hell breaking loose or the next glorious stage in human evolution — depending on whether you typically see the glass as half empty or half full. The talk made clear to me what Chalmers’ problem is (other than his really bad hair cut): he reads too much science fiction, and is apparently unable to snap out of the necessary suspension of disbelief when he comes back to the real world. Let me explain.

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singularity chalmers philosophy mind zombies

David Chalmers is a famous philosopher of mind. His fame rests in great part on his 1996 book, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. It’s too bad that the crucial idea behind the book, dualism, is hopelessly flawed, and -- more surprising yet -- that Chalmers got away with one of the most idiotic thought experiments ever, which a lot of people inexplicably seem to think is oh so very clever. This all came back to (my) mind because of a recent article in Philosophy Now by Rebecca Hanrahan (an assistant professor of philosophy at Whitman College in Washington state), who’s finally got the chutzpah to point out the obvious, telling it like it is about Chalmers’ famous “zombie argument.”

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philosophy mind zombies

We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them.

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information culture technology edge CDC

From their very first days, newborns' cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, reveals a new study published online on November 5th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The findings suggest that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, and certainly long before their first babble or coo.

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development language human

On Tuesday, the groups released a federally funded analysis of a "test validity study" conducted by the makers of the three tests showing that the three tests produced comparable outcomes at the institutional level, based on having been administered at a diverse range of 13 institutions, big and small, public and private. - Inside Higher Ed

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education ttl assessment