bursts of creativity in art, music, literature and science. A promiscuous brain enabled Bach and Bono, Picasso and Pollock, Shakespeare and Shaw, and Descartes and Darwin. A promiscuous brain enables us to imagine things we have never directly experienced, to create once unimaginable worlds, including blissf

rs of their emergent thoughts. E.T. Bell, the historian of mathematics and mathematicians said even 12 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013512 --- PAGE BREAK --- Descartes, the essential Enlightenment rationalist, was responsive to his “...call of the Spirit...” Napier the inventor of logarithms wrote an exegetical comm

ng the terminals of the circuit of a black box. How can we know our experience of the world is real? Understanding the World The French philosopher Descartes gave us an explanation for this paradox. He spent a long time looking skeptically at everything we perceive. For example, when we poke a stick into a

it allowed us to make sense of the world around us, to plan ahead, and thus cope with all sorts of unexpected things in order to survive. However, as Descartes stated, we humans define our very existence by our ability to think. So it is not surprising that, in an anthropomorphic way, our fears about AI refl

it allowed us to make sense of the world around us, to plan ahead, and thus cope with all sorts of unexpected things in order to survive. However, as Descartes stated, we humans define our very existence by our ability to think. So it is not surprising that, in an anthropomorphic way, our fears about AI refl

ct. Then you have the idealists going back to Plato who are saying it's all mental. But even mental ideas are constructs. Then you have the dualists, Descartes, the two are separate, mind and body. But then how do you explain their interaction? It violates simple laws like thermodynamics. If mind is separate

o us, and how we reacted to our experiences. Ideology is complex. Its causes are multifaceted and rarely subject to quantification. The philosopher, Descartes, who famously said, “I think therefore I am” got it backwards. I am—I was, I will be—therefore I think what I think. The ability to think is inborn—a

only specific:types of electrical activityinside their skulls that proved they indeed existed. VVhat's.glossed over in the history books is that Descartes neverreceived a great massage from an expert holistically oriented practitioner. If he had, he certainly would have modified his state- ment a bit,