Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism

[downbeatplumb]

Seems like a shit & run to me.

No he's a "shit and stayer".

[Anomalocaris]

I found this absolutely fascinating, and thought the various members would also love to hear this and talk about their own views. 




As a Christian, I am a mind-body dualist, and I am not a materialist.

What do you think?

First, find a better reason for adopting any sort of view on any aspect of reality whatsoever.     Then, if the better reason you found is actually better enough, then we might have time to talk to you.

[Pat Mustard]

I found this absolutely fascinating, and thought the various members would also love to hear this and talk about their own views. 




As a Christian, I am a mind-body dualist, and I am not a materialist.

What do you think?

He's one of the few experts* who appeared in Expelled: No "Intelligence" Allowed without being lied to as to what the film was about, so his ability to intelligently comment on scientific matters is questionable at best.

PS Dualism is pretty much debunked at this stage. With brain scanning techniques and technology we can know how well our brains work and have a good idea as to the processes and feedback loops which cause consciousness. We have absolutely no evidence of a non-corporeal soul, and it's centrality to christianity is better explained by accepting that Boethius' partial translation of Aristotle's works (he translated the earliest books, a full translation would have destroyed the christan concept of souls) caused christians to adopt a false ideology than that they exist in actuality.

*Though as a neurosurgeon his scientific expertise doesn't necessarily have to be all that great.

[vulcanlogician]

1. If the intellect were situated in the brain, we would expect people to have intellectual seizures.
2. People do not have intellectual seizures.
Therefore, the intellect is not situated in the brain.

There are all kinds of problems with this argument. First, it's a non sequitur.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the logic in this argument is sound. The non sequitur is actually that the conclusion of the argument indicates any kind of immaterial soul. And premise 2 as well. IDK, the argument is shit as I see it. But perhaps it isn't shit for the reasons I initially thought it was.

[SenseMaker007]

It's a priori impossible to provide material evidence of immaterialism because that would be a contradiction in terms. Immaterialism is auto-debunked from the outset. There not only isn't a such thing as immaterial evidence: there can't be... because we are material beings. Only immaterial beings could receive immaterial evidence.

Unless, of course, it was discovered that we are immaterial beings from the beginning. We're all part of God's mind or something. But how could we discover that we are immaterial beings? If we are, what's a material being? Nothing is meaningfully immaterial if nothing is meaningfully material. There has to be a distinction there for either to mean anything at all.

The whole idea of immaterialism is completely doomed from the beginning.

Call it material, call it immaterial, there's one stuff. It doesn't actually matter what you call it. Monism is true and dualism is bogus, and that's that.

[ColdComfort]

I enjoyed that. The part about Lipset's [ sp?] experiments being misrepresented was informative. As an additional reference he didn't mention I would include E. Anscombe's book " Intention". The one problem I see is that you don't get to an overall governing mind, that is God, from teleology alone. Further arguments are needed. I also don't like the term dualist as it suggests Descartes  

But his position can be easily proved and you can do this at home all by yourself. Imagine any sensation or thought you might have. Now I'll concede the point for arguments sake that these sensations correspond to or are even caused by measurable activities in the brain. Still the sensation or thought you experience is something very different from the brain activity. No? Qualia the eggheads call them. This is obvious to me. 

Now this doesn't get us to the Christian idea of the soul. Further arguments are needed. But the kind of crazy stuff Dennett is peddling is just incoherent.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that people like Dennet might ask you whether or not you expected for brain activity to feel the same as it operated.  In AST, an attempt at a mechanistic explanation of consciousness, it's pointed out that not all of the information about what your brain is doing would be useful to your awareness.  Perhaps you don't need to know about neural connections firing in your head individually, so that information isn't included in the model based control system.  

IOW, your brain is always doing something you aren't feeling, alot of things.  Things that don't rise to the level of your awareness.  
Heres a link if you ever want to grind a few minutes down reading crazy shit. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....00500/full

The whole read is worth it just for this bit-

Based on the information contained in this simplified model, brain B would conclude that it possesses a phenomenon with all of the most salient aspects of attention – the ability to take mental possession of an object, focus one’s resources on it, and, ultimately, act on it – but without any of the mechanisms that make this process physically possible. It would conclude that it possesses a magical, non-physical essence, but one which can nevertheless act and exert causal control over behavior, a mysterious conclusion indeed.

[ColdComfort]

Based on the information contained in this simplified model, brain B would conclude that it possesses a phenomenon with all of the most salient aspects of attention – the ability to take mental possession of an object, focus one’s resources on it, and, ultimately, act on it – but without any of the mechanisms that make this process physically possible. It would conclude that it possesses a magical, non-physical essence, but one which can nevertheless act and exert causal control over behavior, a mysterious conclusion indeed.

I read part of the article but professor-speak is tiresome. It's not mysterious that a non-physical essence can control behavior. Not to me anyway. It may be for Cartesians but from a hylomorphic view it makes perfect sense. Besides you can conduct this experiment in the comfort of your own home to prove the authors are wrong. Decide that in ten minutes you will do the chicken dance. Set the alarm. Unless you change your mind, or something like a fatal stroke intervenes, in ten minutes you will do the chicken dance. You could probably get the results published.

From what I read the authors are saying that when my attention is focused on an apple the brain 'computes' a 'schema' that I am aware my attention is on the apple. What insight! But that doesn't mean my experience of looking at an apple or being aware I'm looking at an apple is the same thing as whatever brain stuff the authors imagine is going on here. In fact they are very different things. The two things may correspond but they are not the same.

[Amarok]

Still the sensation or thought you experience is something very different from the brain activity

No it isn't

---

. In fact they are very different things. The two things may correspond but they are not the same.

Simply false

[ColdComfort]

Still the sensation or thought you experience is something very different from the brain activity

No it isn't

---

. In fact they are very different things. The two things may correspond but they are not the same.

Simply false

A person is depressed. Clinically depressed. He/she has thoughts of suicide, can't sleep, can't concentrate, has trouble interacting with people and of course feels terrible about themselves and the world. Doctors have pills for this sort of thing now and let's say in this case it's the persons serotonin levels in the brain. The pills adjust the serotonin levels and the person is no longer depressed. 

Are you saying that serotonin levels  are the same thing as the person's experience of depression. Now that is simply false.