Categories

Optimism

I began a post in 2013 by recognizing something that David Deutsch said in a TED talk in 2005. I have referred back to it many times since, and here I will do it again. But this time I would like to present it more completely. It’s a beautiful articulation of something that’s just […]

New strategies, new circuitries, new mathematics

I came upon an MIT News article about the work of Ila Fiete who studies brain functions, like the neurological processes that govern navigational reasoning about our surroundings. Fiete uses computational and mathematical tools. Her interest in biology, and her respect for the “aesthetic to thinking mathematically,” (as she put it) led her to […]

Information, mathematics,and the consciousness of the universe

A New Scientist article began with a now familiar refrain:

They call it the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.” Physicist Eugene Wigner coined the phrase in the 1960s to encapsulate the curious fact that merely by manipulating numbers we can describe and predict all manner of natural phenomena with astonishing clarity…

The article by Michael […]

Truth, time, and mathematics

A special September issue of Scientific American is organized around questions about what we seem to know, and how or why we may be deceived about the nature of reality. This special September issue has the title: Truth Lies and Uncertainty. No doubt the editors are inspired, to some extent, by the challenges to […]

Soul Searching

The Closer to Truth team recently did a series of interviews addressing the following question: Do persons have souls? Interviewees included philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett; author, medical doctor and holistic healer, Deepak Chopra; philosopher Eleonore Stump; Warren Brown, Director of the Edward Travis Research Institute at the Fuller Theological Seminary and Professor […]

What does the mind’s eye see?

My attention was recently brought to a discussion of grid cells and spatial imagery as they relate to cognitive strengths in dyslexic individuals. The discussion takes place in the book The Dyslexic Advantage by Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide, and it amplified many of the thoughts I have expressed about the biological aspect of […]

Autopoiesis, free energy, and mathematics

I have long been interested in the notion of autopoiesis introduced by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in 1972. In short, autopoiesis is the model of living systems that sees every living system (from single cells to multicellular organisms) as individual unities whose living is the creation of themselves. Through the interaction of their […]

Journeying in and out

When ecently reminded of the images in Catholic texts and prayers, I considered, again, my hunch that mathematics could somehow help connect unrelated aspects our experience, in particular counterintuitive religious images and familiar sensory experience. I am not suggesting that mathematics would explain these images, but more that it could be used to encourage, perhaps […]

Multiple personality disorder – a glimpse into the cosmos?

A recent post on scientificamerican.com got my attention – no surprise given its title, Could Multiple Personality Disorder Explain Life, the Universe, and Everything. It was coauthored by three individuals: computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup, Psychotherapist Adam Crabtree, and cognitive scientist Edward F. Kelly. The article’s major source is a paper written by Kastrup, published this […]

Probabilities and hallucinations

I’ve written before about how probabilities are used to understand human perception, understanding, and learning. Joshua Tenenbaum uses probabilistic inferencing to account for how we come to learn concepts, acquire language, and understand the world around us quickly, and with very little information (How to Grow a Mind). Optical illusions are created by statistical judgments […]