That Egnor fellow believes that if minds are material, than “all of humanity’s notions of moral value and culpability are nonsense”—like most creationists, his arguments collapse into a rather pointless fallacy, the argument from consequences. It’s enough for me to just say that if I’m correct, then Egnor is the one who believes his morality is gone, not me. It’s a theme running through his latest bloviation, that truth is irrelevant if ideas are a product of the brain, to which I have to say, “so what?”
Anyway, I’m pleased to say that I don’t need to waste time with the babbling Egnor, since ck at Arbitrary Marks has taken him down for me, in a
three
part
series on “iron spikes and materialism.”
Now I want the rest of you to get cracking and slay a few creationists for me. I like this business of sitting back with a kind of imperial hauteur while the knights go out and skewer the dragons.
It’s the Mech Warrior chair.
I think it befits ye!
Actually, if you did want to bother, couldn’t you dig up your old posts on Deepak Chopra? Wasn’t he making very similar arguments a long while back?
By the way, if anyone is interested, Chopra is now digging up evidence from parapsychology:
More Chopra woo-woo
Chopra woo-woo
Egnor never noticed that his mind follows the exact same laws of physics that his brain does? That it never slips loose, even a little, as he makes left turns? Or that when he rolls out of bed in the morning, the mind and brain remain perfectly colocated?
Hmm. Maybe not. Maybe he never really pays attention to anything. That would explain a lot.
Actually, I think Egnor’s mind is way out in the water, I see it swimming.
Doc Bill,
Everything does exist in a vacuum. It’s called space.
We all know we there are consequences for our actions.
I am embarrassed for you, since you think you’re post was so clever.
*takes another sip of bourbon*
Doc Bill, I hope you don’t get deleted. You may be funny in a new and original way! “fallacy of no consequence”? What the heck is that? I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time studying formal logic and that’s a new one on me! Google is no help either; the phrase “fallacy of no consequence” yields no hits. What exactly are you trying to say here?
Doc Bill claims:
When did PZ say that? Are you talking about this line:
Truth is still relevant even if the mind is material. What you believe still influences how you behave, if your beliefs don’t reflect reality, then your actions/behavior could endanger you.
“Everything does exist in a vacuum.”
Yep nothing has a cause. Everything just went poof, and there it was.
You know what in light of this, I need a sip of bourbon.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Greg Egan’s Oracle
Doc Bill,
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Ape, not monkey. Oooh, if the Librarian were here you’d be in for such a kicking.
Oh, and I don’t really think you need slaying. You slay a dragon. You step on a fly. Note the difference?
Doc Bill,
Why does anything have to have a cause?
Slay them when you must, ruthlessly and efficiently, but, the real energy expenditure must be research and teaching. Who would willingly spend a career on the treadmill with the “Hamsters?”
Everything just went poof, and there it was.
I thought the ID/crationists believed in poofing – like IC enzymes or Adam
Our thoughts about “the truth” do have some antecedant action or thought to bring it into our consciousness. Most things do have causes, but everything doesn’t have to have a cause. Like what caused the Designer.
People: this “Doc Bill” is the contemptible Kansas troll. He has now taken to using other people’s username to post his lies here. Please don’t respond to him — his comments will be deleted on sight.
“Please don’t respond to him — his comments will be deleted on sight.”
OMG DARWINIST HEGEMONY
(I kid)
“…if minds are material, all of humanity’s notions of moral value and culpability are nonsense”
It should be pointed out that, even if Egnor was right, it would have no bearing on the question of whether or not the possible material basis of mind should be plumbed to its depths. True descriptions of the universe are the goal, whether it discomfits us, or not.
SH
Sadly, the creationists have nothing so impressive as a dragon – all they have are toy dinosaurs with saddles.
I made a simple comment about the Mech Warrior chair, which I’d really like to have, by the way, and I was astounded to read all the comments about apes and stuff.
I’ll have you know, all of you scurvy deckhands, that I was a pirate when most of ye were still sucking barnicles. I’m so ancient a cur that I knew the last common ancestor and she was quite a beaut! Banana fit in ‘er hand like it was made for it. The banana that is. Or was it the hand? Whatever.
I drink to the memory of each and every ancestor who had the good fortune to survive the slings and arrows of Nature and especially to Gerk who was nearly snuffed by a starving raptor. Here’s to you, Gerk!
Thank you, PZ, for keeping the decks clean of the wharf rats and since it’s possible that you might be a relative of me and Gerk, here’s to you! Grog all around, I’m buyin’!
Regards,
The Real Doc Bill
How, exactly, is calling minds ‘immaterial’ supposed to change what they are capable of? What evidence does he offer that human moral codes transcend the limits of computation?
None. He just believes in magic, is all.
Unfortunately it’s not just the Radical Religious Right crazies pulling arguments like this. A philosophy professor of a Metaphysical idealism bent/New Age astrology buff that posts at a message board I frequent constantly pulls out the Argument by Consequences fallacy when ever he goes on a screed against philosophical materialism (which he ignorantly associates with economic materialism/consumerism).
Okay! To start, I’m going to send the anti-impeachment, religious-nut-in-training Nancy Pelosi a note about this:
“Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, arguing for the bill’s passage. “And that is the embryonic stem cell research.”
the arbitrary marks series is well worth the read and slaps Egnor upside the head in a subtle but unarguable manner. I like the cut of this blogger’s jib.
Ta for the link PZ
Bonus points to Rey Fox for inserting a Pixies reference into the thread.
PZ, a king Arthur you are not.
A slimy, ogle-eyed invertebrate king-of-the-seas-and-lord-of-the-pirates more probably. [Ducks quickly from the milling multitude of arms, then prepares to walk the plank.]
PZ, a king Arthur you are not.
A slimy, ogle-eyed invertebrate king-of-the-seas-and-lord-of-the-pirates more probably. [Ducks quickly from the milling multitude of arms, then prepares to walk the plank.]
A very exact description of Creationism: A deity randomly pops out of nothing and randomly creates the universe for no reason. For the believers in Divine Command Theory, he also assigns morality randomly, having no basis.
I’d rather stick with science. When the Creationists get with the perpetual motion crowd and actually produce something from nothing, thereby falsifying the laws of thermodynamics, I’ll take them seriously.
It’s interesting that Egnor has struck on two concerns I would classify as aspects of the normative side of things, ethics and truth. He seems to be demanding some kind of dualist metaphysics, without which these norms are doomed to be empty. But metaphysics is just more description, or so I would urge: It can never provide a satisfactory account of the normative. Still, norms are peculiar things indeed. (A normative theory is none the worse even when its requirements aren’t actually met–something a descriptive theory would have trouble with!) But Doctor Egnor needs to learn a little subtlety– even his religious metaphysics won’t do anything to make ethics and truth into descriptive concepts. Norms aren’t in the same business as descriptions, though they are linked all the same: a complete descriptive history should account for why we’ve come to adopt the normative concepts and standards we have, in its causal/descriptive way– and a complete normative theory should provide a normative justification of our considered choices and beliefs…or lead us to change our minds about them.
It amazes me that a neurosurgeon (or any rational person, frankly) accepts the notion that the mind and consciousness exist outside the body, and are independent of the brain.
I can only suppose that no person who accepts this notion has ever known someone who sustained a significant head injury or who suffered from a stroke, from Alzheimer’s, or from a brain tumor. Nor, apparently, have they even for a moment contemplated the effects that psychotropic drugs, hallucinogens, anti-psychotic or mood-stabilizing drugs have on the conscious mind.
The only possible explanation (aside from the obvious materialistic explanation) would be that the brain is nothing more than a complex soul-antenna made of neurons.
I’d say this question is a “no-brainer” but that particular phrase might cast my comments in the wrong light.
Egnor has nothing to contribute to science. Why do you waste your time and considerable talents arguing with a moron?
Just because Egnor is probably a good brain mechanic doesn’t mean that he has any credibility as a scientist. Let him publish some real work in a peer-reviewed journal, then let’s have an argument with his findings and predictions.
Otherwise, he’s just another DI hack like Casey Luskin or Anika Smith, or John West . . or any of the other dim creationist lights . . . . . .
CalGeorge, three things:
1) Impeaching Bush is bad because then Cheney – who wants to nuke Iran – becomes president in name as well as in fact.
2) Call me when there are twenty Republican Senators willing to join the Democrats to vote to impeach Bush or Cheney.
3) Pelosi probably got your letter and thought along the following lines: “What a wild-eyed whackjob. He’s the sort of guy FOX News would invite on just to give everyone the idea that all atheists are scary wild-eyed whackjobs with impulse control disorder.” Then she’d show your picture around to building security, just in case.
“I can only suppose that no person who accepts this notion has ever known someone who sustained a significant head injury or who suffered from a stroke, from Alzheimer’s, or from a brain tumor.”
Exactly. I know my mind is mere machinery because I’ve experienced a break-down.
I had a severe head injury and had amnesia for a two or three weeks. I was talking and interacting with people, but was unable to form new memories. (See the movie “Memento” to get the idea.)
The mechanism (whatever it is) that causes new memories to form, to “stick,” wasn’t working. So if you were in my eyesight, stepped out of my eyesight, and then back into my eyesight, it was as if I were seeing you for the first time.
The result of this was that there was no timeline to me. I could interact with other people but my behavior was strange… and from my perspective, well there was no perspective.
From my perspective I didn’t exist. It was only after whatever mechanism it is that stores memories started working again that I “came back,” in little snatches of time… a second or two here or there, until one day I was more or less functional, there was a timeline again, I was “back” but confused, and had to have people explain to me what the hell had just happened to me.
I had been alive and interacting, but my brain was not functioning properly, and what I experienced was complete nothingness.
I got to hear fun stories of all of the strange things I had been saying during the time that from my own perspective I didn’t exist.
So I know that when I die and that mechanism is again not working (along with any others) I will experience the same thing. Or rather I will have the same non-experience.
Whenever I see someone making this sort of argument, I always want them to answer one question: why do you think an immaterial mind would be any less deterministic than a material one? Even if we do have a
soulsuper-special etherial mind thiny that is totally not religious, we had as little say in how it got put together as we did with our brain. It seems like six of one, half a dozen of the other to me.Well, PZ, at least Egnor was nice enough to spell your name correctly on the first try. (Never mind the ten subsequent tries…)
Skewer the Hovind dragons!
http://thestubborncurmudgeon.blogspot.com
Out of curiosity, are you a functionalist, computationalist, identity theorist, or eliminative materialist (or so fourth) on the mind?
Personally, I think it’s redundant to include non-physical entities to explain what neurophysiology will soon be able to; hence I am an identity theorist and will write an essay on the matter shortly for my own enjoyment.
Oh pleeezzzzeee not this shit again! (Not getting on PZ for the post – just that the BS continues to sell)
I ask these nut jobs why do I have any need to ASSUME (since there is NO test that could falsify it thus it cannot be validated – and there is NO evidence to begin with) that there is something never seen nor touched nor operated on involved in my thoughts, actions, and personality? Why?? — when it is SO obvious what the prime organ involved is.
And Egnor or other woo-woo players don’t say “well have you ever touched love, blah, blah, blah” … NO I haven’t and nor have I ever caged an idea either… but I know the brain caused them!! And I know that if I played with the brain I play with the ethereal things that stem from it. Been shown a zillion times!! Want f’n neurosurgeon doesn’t know that for a fact?!?!? “God!” where are the Medical Boards when you need them!
Like I said, if one of these nut jobs found themself with their kid lying on the floor with a bullet in the head – alive but unconscious – would they call 911 and shout: “help my child’s been shot in the soul; quick get a priest over here!”? Well would they?!?!?
I may only have a small sharp pointy stick; but I would love to stake a small stab at the dragon through the soft spot on his underbelly: Contrary evidence to Egnor’s Non-Material Altruism (and from the vantage point of child development, I am surprised that I have not seen this brought up prior to now.)
1. A neurosurgeon must have taken at least one class in Developmental Psychology. I learned both in high school Developmental Psych. and from Dr. Stephen Ceci while at the Uni of North Dakota, that children can only learn in stages because of the fact that the brain continues to grow after birth and it takes time for children to learn such abstracts as “altruism.”
You can’t expect a newborn, or even a 2-year old to be altruistic until the physical process of neurological development provide a neural capacity. Think back to this name: Dr. Jean Piaget.
2. Think back to your classes on Behavioralism and B.F. Skinner’s experiments with Operant Conditioning and how this process was able to create dramatic changes in behavior and learning through systematic approaches. This even includes inducing altruistic behavior.
3. Altruism is a learned behavior, and like the process of tying one’s shoes (or in these days slapping Velcro together,) or learning how express creativity, it depends on the brain being ready. It is observed in nature and in primitive cultures without “God.” There is nothing magical in altruism that necessitates a non-material explanation. If it were outside of the brain, then babies would be born with it, and if it were a matter of requiring a soul, then why do chimps and bonobos, lions, tigers and bears (oh, my) and dogs fight to protect their babies even at the risk of death?
And here is the broader implication: If altruism were a non-material function that is not learned, where would that leave the “moral necessity” argument of religion? We would not need churches, mosques nor synagogues, religious instruction or any instruction for our children to grow up to be “moral persons,” and altruism and morality would be imbued in them by the magical process.
As the ID’ers muddle through philosophy and theology to make religion equal with science, they twist themselves so tightly in knots that we really have no idea what they are trying to prove. Egnor is again trying to nail Jell-O to a wall, and if I can see the holes in his argument, how much value can it possibly have?
This argument is more properly directed not against evolution, but if it has any relevance at all, against reproduction. It is an argument for Scientific Storkism.
(Or its partner, Storkism without the Stork, “intelligent delivery”.)
Or maybe against development, or biochemistry. Or, if someone wants to stretch the point, it is against “micro”evolution, evolution within “mankind”.
I can’t even imagine how it has any relevance to the origins of the bacterial flagellum, or any of the other things which are supposed to be “intelligently designed”.
No, it’s not.
Although that kind of belief explains a lot about the political beliefs of the people here.
3) Pelosi probably got your letter and thought along the following lines: “What a wild-eyed whackjob. He’s the sort of guy FOX News would invite on just to give everyone the idea that all atheists are scary wild-eyed whackjobs with impulse control disorder.” Then she’d show your picture around to building security, just in case.
I like Pelosi, but she never should have taken impeachment “off the table.” I’m a big John Nichols (the Nation) fan. She probably thinks he’s a whackjob too.
According to Common Dreams:
More than 70 cities and 14 state Democratic parties have urged impeachment or investigations that could lead to impeachment. The most common charge is that Bush manipulated intelligence to lead the country into the Iraq war. Other charges include spying on Americans and torturing suspected terrorists in violation of U.S. and international law.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/29/1516/
All those whackjobs!
So, through what “rational process” do the libertarians propose that altruism comes from? Come on, Caledonian, you are smarter than anyone else that posts here, enlighten us. Do it as a favor, as I realize that explaining yourself would gain you nothing.
Sorry CalGeorge, It’s true, you have to deal with political expediency. It’s fine to urge impeachment in a town, or state if you know you have the numbers to back it up, but it would be suicide to do it on the national level when you know you don’t. I’m a former Marine, and hate the Bush as much as anyone, but you still have to reckon with all those elected senators, etc that wouldn’t give an inch. Remember when the Right wing nut jobs impeached Clinton? They didn’t have the numbers either, and Clinton’s numbers WENT UP when they did it. Same thing would happen. Don’t cast this dolt in a light that makes him look like a set-upon man who’s just trying to do his job. Americans love that crap.
Altruism, like cruelty, is an innate human propensity that is acquired naturally during development once certain neurological systems are both operative and developed enough for empathy to take place. I don’t know what “libertarians” believe about neurodevelopment, but I am familiar with what cognitive psychologists and developmental neurologists say, and your arguments are only a crude parody of their findings.
If you’re going to start referencing Piagetian ideas, you’d better make sure you understand what they are first.
Dahan, I urge you to listen to the May 17 Radio Open Source show with Glenn Greenwald, Laurence Tribe, and Bruce Fein.
Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, stated:
What we have here is a systematic set of high crimes and misdemeanors, clear criminal acts in violation of valid acts of Congress, much more serious than President Clinton’s perjury, much more serious than most of what President Nixon was almost impeached for doing.
And a little later:
We have a President who has committed impeachable offenses….
http://www.radioopensource.org/comeys-dissent-at-justice/
craig: If I may ask, how long term is long term? Could you hold a conversation?
D.R.M.: I know you were likely asking PZ, but – I happen to be all of the above, amazingly. See my paper on the relevance of neuroscience to philosophy. I mention this only because I regard the usual divisions as false.
I’d be happy to rid you of these troublesome priests, my liege.
Is empathy learned, or developed? Is compassion learned, or developed? Is conscience learned, or developed? Is altruism learned, or developed?
Developed.
Developed.
Learned.
Developed.
Although obviously sufficient development to permit learning must take place, first.
Antidote for immaterialism: 200 mics of LSD, see where your “mind” goes.
“craig: If I may ask, how long term is long term? Could you hold a conversation?”
I only know what people have told me, of course, but from that its seems that the most I could really do is express what was in my mind at the moment… I apparently did a lot of pleading and begging to be untied (I kept pulling my IV out). When the drainage tube blocked up and my stomach swelled I was telling people to “get the baby out.” Stuff like that. If I conversed with anyone it was pretty nonsensical.
When I “came back,” it was pretty fast, clicked in within a day or two… and the process of remembering who I was and my relationships to other people and the general bookmark of where I was in my life before the accident was strange, and kind of incomplete – my pre-accident memories are a bit foggy and feel more like memories of memories.
The post-accident recovery feels like a sort of birth, like the beginning of the timeline I’m on now. That may be an artifact of an injury to a different part of the brain containing my old memories though, for all I know about it.
I saw a documentary once about a man with a severe brain injury from a motorcycle accident who had the same problem only permanently. Each time his wife stepped into his view he greeted her like he hadn’t seen her in years. He kept a diary but would adamantly deny having written the entries, even ones from earlier that day. Strange stuff.
Craig:
“I was talking and interacting with people, but was unable to form new memories.
I had been alive and interacting, but my brain was not functioning properly, and what I experienced was complete nothingness.”
I think it may be more corrrect to say you remembered complete nothingness. Since you seemed to be operating on some sort of conscious level at the time, you certainly were experiencing quite a lot, but you just could not remember it.
But your point is well taken; we are bichemical machines. There are lots of illegal drugs that mess with neuro-transmitters which can demonstrate what happens when you play with the mechanism.
“I think it may be more corrrect to say you remembered complete nothingness. Since you seemed to be operating on some sort of conscious level at the time, you certainly were experiencing quite a lot, but you just could not remember it.”
Well, sure… but since I was only able to experience the moment with no memory of the moment before, the end result is pretty much the same. I didn’t have a stream of consciousness, no line, just a point on the line… one point after another, with no connection.
That way I think of it (right or wrong) is that my functioning during that time was the result of programmed response – the stuff that my brain had previously stored was reacting but not being modified. That may not the reality of the situation, but its a handy way to understand the way it feels to me. A goldfish had a better long-term memory than I had.
At any rate, there were no long brightly lit hallways, no voices saying “go back, its not your time,” no ancestors to commune with.
er, short-term memory, I mean.
CalGeorge,
The question isn’t about IF there have been impeachable offenses. There have been. It’s that there isn’t much you can do without having the numbers on your side. You can try to toss a judge (president) out, but if local law enforcement and prosecutors (Senate) aren’t willing to take them into custody or force them to trial, you’re not going to get anywhere. The Dems don’t have the numbers to make it go. They know that and so do the Republicans. The far Right would LOVE to have the Dems try for impeachment. What a pulpit we would give them! They could bluster and yell away about divisive behaviour, going back on promises, hatred of Bush (as opposed to his policies), distraction from the war, etc, all the while knowing that the Dems don’t have enough seats to take it all the way to impeachment when the truth would come out. It would be a total win for them if the Senate tried to impeach Bush. Our Fearful Leader, I’m afraid, is still largely untouchable until out of office.
What is the mind comprised of? Why are we able to “hear” the mind even though it makes no audible sound? What are we “hearing” and what is doing the “hearing”. First we have to see that there are at very least 2 phenomena going on when we are thinking (in actuality there is more e.g memory). First is the phenomena of the thought “sound” itself, then secondly is the phenomena of the “listener” of the the thought “sound”. These 2 phenomena are interconnected but they are distinct at the same time. So the question is: What is the thought sound comprised of and what is the listening device comprised of and how do they work?
Regular types of sound are heard by ears because the ear is being hit with sound waves. Regular sound is produced by waves interacting with matter in various ways. But our thoughts which we hear are not the result of nor heard like regular sound. Is thought non material? Is our ability to hear thought being done through a non material technology? By non material I mean non 3 dimensional.
The argument that thought is created by the brain is not easily proven. The type of thought that we as humans have requires a database of words, grammar instructions, encyclopedic knowledge on what words and concepts mean etc. For an example we can look at a computer program that is made for voice interaction. What does it need to be able to talk to us? If our brain is causing the human mind to function the way it does then it would need no less then a computer program for voice interaction and actually will need much more in terms of databases, software for organization of information, search and recover software for needed information, language software that enables language to be understood, word database, etc.
So the question is: Does the brain have those things? If so where are they and how do they work?
I write on this at Mystery of the mind
DH:
And what evidence would you offer that the analogy between awareness of our own thoughts and “hearing” sounds has any validity or utility?
Sure looks like it.
With many of them we have a pretty good idea, but the picture is by no means complete.
We’re working on it. What would you offer in place of science?
He’s begging the question in assuming that opinions in the form of “reshuffled brain matter” cannot be true, but never shows why.
Consider a sentence typed on paper: “John is a man.” It’s truth value has nothing to do with its instantiation as ink shuffled on paper, but its correspondence with the world (if John is a man, it is true; if he’s not, it’s false). In the same way, the instantiation of a person’s opinions–whether reshuffled brain matter or reshuffled soul matter–have no bearing on their truth or falsity.
Egnor’s rhetorical trick is the word “just”, as in “just reshuffled brain matter.” By using “just”, he is excluding reshuffled brain matter as a candidate for instantiation of true opinions. But he gives no reason why it should be excluded.
Another problem with Egnor’s piece is his imprecise use of the world “real” or “true” in reference to Phineas Gage before and after the tamping rod accident. If he had instead simply asserted that Gage did not have the same character before and after the accident, it’s clear that the cause of that change in character was the destruction of Gage’s frontal lobes. Gage’s judgments, utterances, temper, comportment–everything that can be said using common conceptions of what it is to be a person–were radically altered by a physical change. It is remarkable that Egnor somehow interprets this as evidence for an immaterial basis for personhood.
(Sorry, that should have said “the word ‘real’…” and not “the world ‘real’…”.)