Comments on: The Mind-Brain Problem – A Creationist Rebuttal

By: tattva

tattva — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 04:43:13 +0000

I am curious what you would accept as a proof of sentience or subjective awareness being other than brain function.

By: Ian Wardell

Ian Wardell — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:14:36 +0000

Dear Steven,

Science does not remotely require materialism. Otherwise science would not be possible.

By: Bay of Fundie » Blog Archive » Discovery Institute Howler

Bay of Fundie » Blog Archive » Discovery Institute Howler — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:39:31 +0000

[...] the article quotes Dr. Novella himself: “The materialist hypothesis — that the brain causes consciousness — has made a [...]

By: NeuroLogica Blog » Intelligent Design of the Brain

NeuroLogica Blog » Intelligent Design of the Brain — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:34:05 +0000

[...] response to this statement that I wrote in my previous blog entry on this topic: The materialist hypothesis- that the brain causes consciousness – has made a [...]

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 06:38:22 +0000

Egnor has tried and failed to write a rebuttal to this post.

By: The brain causes the mind. What’s so hard about that? | Geoff Arnold

The brain causes the mind. What’s so hard about that? | Geoff Arnold — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:08:15 +0000

[...] Novella dispatches dualism – whether it be the religious “woo” of Chopra and Egnor, or the philosophical [...]

By: Another Blast of Egnorance « PowerUp

Another Blast of Egnorance « PowerUp — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:34:06 +0000

[...] dualist nonsense in an attempt to refute an essay by fellow New England skeptic and neuroscientist Steve Novella. It all centers around what Egnor thinks is a “fundamental prediction of materialism” [...]

By: nbarrowman

nbarrowman — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:17:10 +0000

It seems I wasn’t very clear: I was questioning Dr Novella’s assertion that it is probably meaningless to ask questions about qualia because these questions can’t be empirically investigated.

My point was that if we use “meaningless” in this way, then many other questions must also be declared meaningless, e.g. questions of aesthetics and morality, and in fact much of the humanities. I certainly don’t think these are meaningless.

The body map work sounds very interesting.

Questions around the evolution of consciousness are rather challenging! I did find this article on the topic:

The evolution of consciousness

By: Adam Safron

Adam Safron — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:52:57 +0000

nbarrowman, I think it’s a bit extreme to say that questions about qualia, aesthetics, and morality are meaningless. Perhaps the qualia problem is frequently phrased in a way that makes the meaning less efficiently expressed, but that does not mean that meaning is lacking. Why do we have feelings of conscious experiences rather than feelingless information processing? I think the answer to that question is fairly clear: we have neural mechanisms for generating those feelings. We can alter qualia through physiological interventions and detect the neural correlates of qualia, therefore, qualia are probably a neural phenomena. We can also answer the question in terms of detailed mechanistic explanations and from a design/evolutionary perspective. We are continuing to work on this by studying how body maps (there are multiple) are implemented in the brain, as well as how they interact with each other, our models of the world, and other processes in the brain/body. So in answer to your question, no we probably couldn’t “chug along doing what we do with no awareness at all.” In theory, maybe you could have built an artificial intelligence that works that way (though maybe not), but you probably couldn’t evolve an organism that works that way.

By: nbarrowman

nbarrowman — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:20:56 +0000

“Philosophers have asked what is probably a meaningless question – why is it that we “feel” that we exist, that we experience ourselves and the world – a phenomenon they refer to as “qualia.” I say this is meaningless because it does not yield any specific predictions or distinctions from a purely materialistic world.”

It is indeed meaningless — in that narrow sense. Just as questions about aesthetics and morality are meaningless. You can scientifically study people’s behavior with regards to aesthetics (e.g. musical preferences) and morality (e.g. adherence to moral codes), but you can’t scientifically study what beauty and ugliness mean or what it means for an action to be right or wrong.

The humanities largely depend on non-scientific methods. And the most basic element of the human condition is our consciousness.

The subjective experience of consciousness remains perhaps the deepest mystery. If our brains are machines (albeit inordinately complex ones), then why are we conscious? Couldn’t humans chug along doing what we do with no awareness at all?