Omnivore - What Neuroscience Is Learning

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, this is cool collection of links related to mind and consciousness, including several pieces on free will.

One of the highlights of this collection is a review by John Jeffery and Todd K. Shackelford (from Evolutionary Psychology, 2013. 11(5): 1077-1083) of Daniel C. Dennett’s Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking and Nicholas Humphrey’s Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. Here is part of the review:

Humphrey, like Dennett, dispels the more romantic notions of consciousness as the gift of a spirit, but he cleverly reappropriates the terminology of spirituality to align with a scientific vision of consciousness. Both he and Dennett employ tactical vocabularies, wishing to make their arguments more appetizing to a general audience and, in Dennett’s case for compatibilism, safe for consumption. Most importantly, Soul Dust and Intuition Pumps work to collapse the irresistible assumption that we live in a phenomenological reality outside of our biology, while simultaneously celebrating and elevating its significance.

Enjoy the other links, as well.

What neuroscience is learning

Feb 27 2014  

9:00AM

• From Methode, a special issue on Free Will: Thirty Points of View. 
• Joshua May (UAB): On the Very Concept of Free Will. 
• Manuel Vargas (San Francisco): If Free Will Doesn't Exist, Neither Does Water; and How to Solve the Problem of Free Will. 
• Jennifer Matey (FIU): Can Blue Mean Four? 
• Alfred Mele (FSU): Free Will and Neuroscience. 
• Could quantum mechanics save the soul, and in the light of 20th century physics, is free will plausible? 
• Sam McNerney on the illusion of conscious will. 
• Herbert Gintis reviews Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain by Patricia S. Churchland. 
• From PUP, the introduction to Developmental Neuroscience: A Concise Introduction by Susan E. Fahrbach. 
• Safecracking the brain: Virginia Hughes on what neuroscience is learning from code-breakers and thieves. 
• From The Atlantic Monthly, Paul Bloom on the war on reason: Scientists and philosophers argue that human beings are little more than puppets of their biochemistry — here's why they're wrong. 
• Eran Asoulin reviews Explaining the Computational Mind by Marcin Milkowski. 
• Pumping dust: John Jeffery and Todd K. Shackelford review Daniel C. Dennett’s Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking and Nicholas Humphrey’s Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. 
• Brandon Keim on Christof Koch’s radical theory of how networks become conscious. 
• Sorry religions, human consciousness is just a consequence of evolution: Krishna Andavolu interviews Michael Graziano, author of Consciousness and the Social Brain. 
• Consciousness is the greatest mystery in science; don’t believe the hype — the Hard Problem is here to stay. 
• Is Google wrecking our memory? Nope — it’s much, much weirder than that. 
• R. Douglas Fields on how to erase bad memories.