Here we go again – in an article that would make Deepak Chopra proud, Robert Lanza over at the HuffPo has written a mystery-mongering piece about biocentrism. Lanza asks the question – Why are you here? This is one of those cosmological questions that borders on metaphysics, like why is there something rather than nothing? These are interesting questions, but one needs to tread carefully along a tightrope of logic amid a chasm of philosophy and ideology. Lanza dives right off the cliff into the chasm. He sets up the question:

Even setting aside the issue of being here and now, the probability of random physical laws and events leading to this point is less than 1 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, equivalent to winning every lottery there ever was.

The lottery reference is appropriate, because Lanza is committing the lottery fallacy. In fact, his entire article is one giant lottery fallacy. This fallacy comes from reasoning backwards about probability and asking the wrong question. If John Smith wins the superball lottery with odds of 100 million to one against, this should not be considered a cosmically unlikely event that requires a special explanation. The wrong question to ask is – what were the odds of John Smith winning? The correct question is – what were the odds of anyone winning (pretty good, it turns out).

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Writing for the Huffington Post, Deepak Chopra and Robert Lanza promote the notion of “biocentrism” – “that an accurate understanding of the world requires putting observers firmly into the equation, and that life may not be the accident of physics and chemistry that evolution suggests.”

This idea is really nothing new – it is a transparent abuse and misunderstanding of modern physics and quantum mechanics in order to insert mysticism into science.

They begin with what is known as the anthropic principle:

Why, for instance, are the laws of nature exactly balanced for life to exist? There are over 200 physical parameters within the solar system and universe so exact that it strains credulity to propose that they are random — even if that is exactly what contemporary physics baldly suggests. These fundamental constants (like the strength of gravity) are not predicted by any theory — all seem to be carefully chosen, often with great precision, to allow for existence of life. Tweak any of them and you never existed.

We currently have no idea why the laws of the universe are the way they are. We also don’t know if they have to be the way they are, or if there are many, perhaps infinite, variations and the universe we know is just one. Is the mass of an electron always the same? Is the gravitational constant different in every universe? Are there even other universes?

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NPR finally aired the segment they recorded with me last month. The segment is called Doubting Darwin: Debate Over The Mind’s Evolution, and features interviews with me and Dr. Egnor. The interviews were recorded separately – it was not a discussion or debate. Of course we are each very familiar with the other’s arguments, and readers of this blog will recognize most of the points made.

The segment was well produced and fair (at least from my perspective, I can’t speak for Dr. Egnor) – they used my points in context, chose reasonably representative segments, and did not sandbag me with counterpoints I was not aware of. (These are all risks when being interviewed, especially by lower quality outlets.)

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Michael Egnor, the creationist neurosurgeon who blogs over at the Discovery Institute, has been a busy beaver lately. He has written several entries on his side of the materialism vs dualism debate we’ve been having. I have been reading them, waiting for him to say something new I need to respond to, but mostly he is just reiterating the same points I have already refuted. Putting an old argument in a new form, or citing a new source, does not change the argument nor is it a response to refutation.

But now he has specifically responded to my previous post on the topic (although still not really addressing my points), and so a response from me is in order.

In a post titled, “It’s Time for Me to Unshatter My “Three Pillars of Neuroscience Denial,” Egnor tried and failed to refute my summary of his core logical fallacies.

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Yesterday I wrote about the Wedge strategy of the intelligent design (ID) movement – namely to undermine and replace the materialist basis of modern science with something that conforms to their ideological spiritual beliefs. This anti-materialist agenda has been primarily targeted against evolution, but now seems to be shifting its attention to neuroscience.

An Unholy Alliance

The Wedge strategy of the Discovery Institute (DI) and other ID proponents is largely a Christian movement. It is interesting that they have found common ground with others who have a very different ideology but share in common a distaste for strict materialism because it is inconvenient to their spiritual agenda.

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Previously I have discussed, largely in the context of an ongoing debate, the notion of cartesian dualism – the belief that consciousness is due, in part or whole, to a non-physical cause separate from the brain. (I hold the neuroscientific view that consciousness is brain function.) This form of cartesian dualism seems to be favored by Western dualists, like Michael Egnor from the Discovery Institute.

There are other forms of dualism as well. David Chalmers, a philosopher of consciousness, holds what he calls naturalistic dualism – that the brain causes mind but consciousness cannot be reduced to brain function. There therefore must be some higher-order (but still entirely naturalistic) process going on. This view is opposed by other philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, who believe no such higher order process need be invoked. Consciousness can be understood as an emergent property of brain function (the position I find most compelling).

Today I want to discuss the dualism of B. Alan Wallace, a former Buddhist monk. I interviewed Alan about a year ago for the SGU podcast and it was an interesting discussion. He is quite a prolific writer on the topic of science, Buddhism, and dualism – so in addition to the interview there is no shortage of material explaining his views.

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My favorite creationist neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Egnor, has written a rebuttal to my previous post criticizing the dualism of Deepak Chopra. His rebuttal is very revealing about the disconnect between dualists – those who think that the mind is something more than and separate from the brain, and materialist neuroscientists – those who think that the functioning of the brain is an adequate explanation for the phenomenon of mind. Egnor illustrates, although it seems inadvertently, that the real difference is that between science and philosophy.

In my original post I stated:

Deepak then plays the “false controversy” gambit. He wants us to keep an open mind “until the argument is resolved.” But there is actually nothing left unresolved. Deepak has presented no mysteries that cannot comfortably be explained within the completely material paradigm of neuroscience. His “invisible will” is nothing more than a trick of semantics – not an established phenomenon; not a genuine mystery to be solved. He says the material paradigm is “untenable” but has presented nothing that makes it so.

To which Dr. Egnor responds:

Is there genuinely “nothing left unresolved’ in our understanding of the mind-body problem? Are there “no mysteries that cannot comfortably be explained within the completely material paradigm of neuroscience?” The truth is that there remain enormous mysteries, and virtually nothing about these mysteries is resolved. The mind-body problem is perhaps the most active and contentious area of modern philosophy, and there is very little “resolved”. Of the many issues raised by philosophers, perhaps the most important is the “hard problem of consciousness” formulated by philosopher David Chalmers.

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Michael Egnor is slowly working his way through all the bogus and discredited arguments for dualism – the notion that the mind is separate from the physical brain. He just won’t stop. I think it’s a good skeptical exercise to go through these arguments and expose their fallacious logic. So as long as Egnor keeps setting them up, I’ll keep knocking them down.

His latest entries are thought experiments (and I use the term lightly). In the first he imagines scientists on an island finding a cell phone and whether or not they could discover if the voices coming from the phone were created by the phone for were merely being received by the phone. Get it – the phone is the human brain. He is recycling the argument that the brain is a receiver for the mind, not the generator of the mind. This is a way to explain all of the evidence that links the brain to the mind by saying that the brain is necessary, just as a phone is necessary to have a phone conversation. But the brain does not create the mind just as a phone does not create the voices that come out of it.

Orac has done a nice job of destroying this bit of nonsense from Egnor.  I will just summarize the main points, which Orac hit nicely, and extend them a bit.

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