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POPSDaniel Dennett on Evolutionary Theology You've got to love these typical Dennett-style skeptical questions. Full report by Daniel Dennett on the "Darwin Festival in Cambridge", funded by the Templeton Foundation, via PZ Myers blog: Pharyngula.
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POPSCan We Know Our Own Minds? Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.
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POPSDoes Religion Make You Nice?Does atheism make you mean? It is at this point that the "We need God to be good" case falls apart. Countries worthy of consideration aren't those like North Korea and China, where religion is savagely repressed, but those in which people freely choose atheism. In his new book, Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman looks at the Danes and the Swedes—probably the most godless people on Earth. They don't go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they're nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And—even without belief in a God looming over them—they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.
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POPSVitalism - The Spark of Life You'll need to visit the BBC sites to get a full picture. The In Our Time Series has an episode on Vitalism just as new evidence for the role of lightning in the origins of life come to light.
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POPSDan Dennett: Can we know our own minds? Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us. Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are.
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POPSDan Dennett: Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes -- concepts that are literally alive. Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are.
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POPSRobert Winston criticises dangerous 'science delusion' Bit like the chook and the egg. Scientists have for centuries been questioned closely by religions and many theories went on hold due to church action. Now that the science world is taking the limelight from religions, they want to do some discussing. The emphasis on trying to prove the big bang theory could be interpreted as a swipe at religion.
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POPSTransformers - The Nature of Alien Life
The driving factor is a pragmatic desire to improve mental capacity. Alien beings may have already reached a point in their evolution where, having exhausted the potential of their biological brains, they have taken the next logical step and opted for robotic brains equipped with artificial intelligence. This brain swap may not be as far off for humans as one might think. In only a few decades, the computer revolution here on Earth has produced supercomputers capable of performing more than a quadrillion calculations per second. According to research by Hans Moravec, an artificial-intelligence expert at Carnegie Mellon University, that rate trumps the human brain’s estimated top speed of 100 trillion calculations per second. Some scientists speculate that in a few decades, an event called the technological singularity will occur, and machines armed with computer brains will become sentient and surpass human intelligence. Civilizations equipped with technology light-years ahead
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POPSThe Boogey Man is Gonna Get Ya! According to the review of this new book it seems the author is rehashing the same old discounted arguments over what he dubs the "New Atheism". Using fear and misdirection it seems once again to be a weak attempt to defend the indefensible by a christian apologist.
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POPSAtheists aren't skeptical enough and... ...the best skeptics are actually theists. The agnostics ski down the mountain into the woods, searching for hard evidence on the basis of which to decide whether God exists—which is very odd, given that a moment ago they were standing here with us, ready to climb as declared skeptics. Agnostics, plainly, are wafflers in their skepticism: As the team gets going, they U-turn back to the foothills, where every true skeptic says there is nothing to find. They do not care about the truth. But even more astonishing than that, the atheists have just gone home. They are not down in the valley looking for evidence; they are not looking at all. They have packed in the science without lifting a boot, as if the summit were already taken, the question answered.
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POPSHow To Have A Mindful Sensuality "The more we can obtain our mindful sensuality the better we will ultimately be able to cope with the uncertainties in our lives." + video of Daniel Dennett on Consciousness.
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POPS21st Century Turing Test: A heterophenomenological approach In this video I argue against Chalmers 'Hard Problem' of consciousness and propose that we discuss necessary conditions of what we would consider to be human consciousness. Then decide what so called 'objective observations' we could carry out in order to see what it would take for a machine to be conscious (in the way that we of course define it). For those of you slightly unfamiliar with the topic I have provided a few links which you may find interesting :) The Turing Test history and future: http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~asaygin... Example of AI bot: http://www.alicebot.org/articles/wall... Searles Chinese Room: http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Min... Some Dennett: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg_7EK... http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/ar... Wiki entry on quantum consciousness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_...
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POPSRobert Wright on his interview with Dan Dennett I confess to having a problem with this. There is no reason to suppose that there is a 'higher' purpose just because something heads in a particular direction. It is fair to say that if something has a purpose it will head in one direction, as otherwise it probably isn't well designed. But if something is not designed, it can still have directionality. To ascribe the idea of design purely on the basis of directionality is the same as ascribing the quality of being a football to things just because they are more or less round. Heads up, people.
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