Dr. Sharon Dirckx, a senior tutor at the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics, has a new video out discussing neuroscience and the philosophy of the mind. Dr. Michael Egnor highly recommends the video and says, "It’s good to see a growing response to the materialist superstition about the mind and the brain from the neuroscience and philosophy community."

One of the don’t-miss speakers at COSM is Babak Parviz, on the Information Theory of Biotech panel. Currently a vice-president at Amazon, he is perhaps best known as the creator of Google Glass, a wearable computer with transparent display.

Subscribers to Mind Matters receive a special $750 discount by using the coupon code MMSAVE750 if they register for COSM by Friday here.

Claims that meditating Buddhist monks could raise their body temperature or slow their metabolism were assumed to be exaggerations for decades. It turns out that monks actually can do just that. The phenomenon has something in common with the placebo effect. The placebo effect demonstrates the power the mind can exert over the body.

Writer Isaac Asimov developed the Three Laws of Robotics, in the hope of guarding against potentially dangerous artificial intelligence. Philosopher Chris Stokes says that these laws don't work. Mind Matters contributors weigh in on the debate.

Recently, neuroscientist Michael Graziano published an essay on the "mystery of the mind." Dr. Michael Egnor responds to the subtitle of Dr. Graziano's essay, which states "Far from being a mystical 'ghost in the machine', consciousness evolved as a practical mental tool and we could engineer it in a robot using these simple guidelines"