…and this is a 
Egnor's machine is uninhabited by any ghost
Category: Kooks • Neurobiology • Religion
Posted on: June 4, 2007 11:14 AM, by PZ Myers
Egnor, the smug creationist neurosurgeon, is babbling again, but this time, it's on a subject that he might be expected to have some credibility: the brain (he has one, and operates on them) and the mind (this might be a problem for him). It's an interesting example of the religious pathology that's going to be afflicting us for probably the next century — you see, creationism is only one symptom. We're seeing an ongoing acceleration in scientific understanding that challenge the traditional truisms of the right wing religious culture warriors, and represent three fronts in our future battles.
Evolution. Evolutionary biology gives us an explanation of where we came from and our relationship to other organisms in the world that directly contradicts traditional explanations. It was a first strike against truth by dogma, and we've been fighting this one for over a century.
Reproductive and developmental biology. These fields are blurring our biological identity and eroding the old tribalisms. They challenge old beliefs about what being human means and who we are; they also open up radical possibilities for modifying ourselves. We've been struggling with this conflict for decades on a very crude level, abortion rights. Stem cells are an early harbinger of future changes—it's going to get scary and fierce when cloning organs and human individuals becomes feasible, and just wait until gene therapy and radical body repair and modification become possible.
Neuroscience. Neuroscience is building up a detailed picture of our minds, our consciousness, our selves as the products of purely material agents. It's mostly been under the radar, but I've seen some signs of the religious right quivering in trepidation (or perhaps, anger): neuroscience is going to blow away concepts of the soul and the afterlife, root our thoughts in material processes, and as we're seeing now, open up the mind to pharmacological manipulation.
The evolution-creation wars are only the first line of defense. I've sometimes been accused of putting too high a priority on other issues, like the conflict between religion and science, at the expense of the immediate tactical needs of keeping creationism at bay. I will agree, up to a point: we absolutely must not let the creationists get their way in our public schools, and losing that fight would cost us the rest, but at the same time we can't lose sight of the fact that even if we were to overcome creationism decisively, we still have to face other reactionary forces. And if the way we overcome creationism is to compromise with religion, we're only going to strengthen our opponent for the next front. It's our job now to bleed them heavily, in addition to preventing them from making inroads into education and greater government influence.
What has all this got to do with Egnor? His latest missive is a feeble stab at the third front, neuroscience. I'm not seeing a lot of effort by the DI in this direction yet — they do have another fellow, Jeffrey Schwartz, who's been talking in this direction with little fanfare or attention — but I'm keeping an eye on it. I'll also mention that in my last conversation with Paul Nelson, he was also worked up over the idea that he couldn't see a physical connection between intent and action in the operation of the human body, so I'm fairly sure this kind of belief is taken for granted in the phantasmagorical halls of the Discovery Institute.
Egnor's hangup is similar—he thinks that thoughts are in a different class from other physical states—that an idea cannot be embodied in a pattern of neuronal activity. His example is altruism.
Altruism, in contrast, has no matter or energy. It has no 'location', no weight, no dimension, no temperature. It has no properties of matter. Altruism entails things like purpose and judgment, which aren't material. Altruism has no parts, in the sense that there is a 'left-side' of altruism and a 'right side' of altruism. There are, of course, left sided and right sided parts of the brain, which may be associated with acts of altruism, but there is no 'left' or 'right' to altruism itself. Of course, objects (like human brains or bodies) that have location, weight, etc. can mediate or carry out altruistic acts, but the altruism itself doesn't have a location. Altruism isn't spatial. 'My altruism is three inches from the edge of the table' is a nonsensical statement.
That's extraordinarily weak. He's a neurosurgeon—you can't possibly become a neurosurgeon without having read about the case of Phineas Gage, the railroad worker who had a frontal lobe lesion and lost self-control and sociability and became noticeably less altruistic. The denialism blog makes a similar argument: people intentionally modify the way their brains work with psychoactive drugs, but how does that work if thoughts and ideas are immaterial? He could argue that "personality" also has no location, weight, dimension, or temperature, that it is this strange, pure abstraction that has no discrete connection to the brain, but he'd be wrong: it's clearly a product of the ordered connections and pattern of activity in the brain, and that disrupting those physical elements changes the expression of that instance of the abstraction.
His altruism does have a location. It's the product of activity in his brain. Where else would it be, floating in the air, in his left foot, or nonexistent? You know where he wants to trace its source: to the supernatural. He'd like to pretend something like altruism (or lust or intent or wonder or anything else he can assign to an abstraction) is the product of a supernatural agent. A soul. Of course, he can't say that—he's following the creationist paradigm of not saying anything specific about his hypothesis, and instead skirts about the issue, arguing what it is not.
Yet many things in the world, including our ideas and even our theories about the world, are not matter or energy. Altruism is obviously something very real; many people's lives depend on it. We don't know exactly what it is, but we know, by its properties, what it's not. It's not material. It shares no properties in common with matter. It can't be caused by a piece of the brain.
Of course it is caused by a piece of the brain—Phineas Gage, remember? We also know that a sense of altruism is generated by patterns of electrical and chemical activity in a material brain; modify the patterns, change the feeling or action. If he wants to argue for some other agent outside the material body that is adjusting those patterns, he's going to have to make a case for the agent's existence, rather than just stupidly asserting the brain isn't the source of feelings.
But…uh-oh. This is rather like one of those cartoons where the character is out on a tree limb, sawing it away. He's already refuted his own argument!
For one process to cause another there must be a point of contact, in the sense that the processes linked in cause and effect must share properties in common. In biology, the liver contains molecules of enzymes and bilirubin and cholesterol, which cause the secretion of molecules of bile. In physics, a moving billiard ball collides with another billiard ball, causing each to change course. Each billiard ball starts with momentum, and momentum is exchanged when they collide. The transfer of momentum mediates the cause and effect. 'Cause and effect' presupposes commonality of at least one property- enzymes or bilirubin or cholesterol or momentum. Without commonality, there is no link through which cause can give rise to effect.
So we need some causal link, hmmm? Where is the causal link, equivalent to the action of an enzyme mediating the chemistry of two reactants, between a burst of action potentials traveling down an effector neuron and his invisible, immaterial, zero-energy spirit, soul, or ghost? Does his soul carefully reach in and change the conformation of a g-protein, phosphorylate CREB, or open an ion channel? If he's going to postulate a supernatural agent outside the material brain, by his own reasoning, he's also going to have provide a link through which that magical cause can give rise to a mundane effect. No such link exists — and its proponents will quickly backpedal away from any consideration about how that link would work, because that makes their ghost a material and testable presence in the world.
Brace yourselves, people. These cranks and religious weirdos are not going to provide better, smarter, more interesting arguments as they work their way through the three fronts I mentioned at the beginning. What we're going to get is ever more stupid, illogical, and fact-free rationalizations for their religious presuppositions. We have to wrestle with them as they come up — that is the rationalist's obligation — but we also have to address the root cause directly. And you all know what that is, boys and girls…
The damned curse of supernatural and religious thinking.
Comments
"...open up the mind to pharmacological manipulation"
I think I had some friends in college who majored in "pharmacological manipulation". None of them graduated, however.
Posted by: Tony P. | June 4, 2007 11:23 AM
I'd recently been thinking about how to counter those bozos (like CS Lewis) who say that us having morals is proof that there's a god. I couldn't think of any good reply to this. I know there are lots of replies to it, but i can never remember them. I can just use the Phineas Gage thing. I'm so ashamed i didn't remember that sooner. Thanks for reminding me.
Posted by: Brian W. | June 4, 2007 11:31 AM
I thought Phineas Gage was a miner...
Hmmmm...
Still, this is exactly the lousy argument I expect from someone who tries to refute Evolutionary Biology by claiming that a brain tumor is the body's attempt at growing a new and better brain.
Posted by: Stanton | June 4, 2007 11:31 AM
It is a fundamental point that always sticks in the craw of the supernaturalists.
So, my soul is immaterial, supernatural.
Well, then how does it affect my body. How does the immaterial thought that I want to slap PZ make my arm move.
The fact that there has never been a good answer to this fundamental question speaks volumes about the validity of metaphysical naturalism.
And not just an accurate answer, just any logically conceivable answer would do.
Sadly not forthcoming.
Oh well, as a greater man than I once said, so it goes.
Mystic (oh so very Mystic) Oli,
Posted by: Mystic Olly | June 4, 2007 11:38 AM
Hah! Tony P.
I spent many a merry weekend in pharmacological paradise and
a) didn't start believing in "chi" or "energetic vibrations"
b) got a respectable 2:1
c) though it was in English Literature which required (quite literally) very little work.
d) damn you scientists!!
love
Mystic (oh so very Mystic) Oli,
Posted by: Mystic Olly | June 4, 2007 11:43 AM
Once again, Egnor chooses a topic that has already been refuted by (gasp!) science:
Source of Altruism Found in the Brain
Posted by: Chuck Morrison | June 4, 2007 11:43 AM
Engor's argument seems really silly to me, because his discussion of 'altruism' could equally be applied to many definitions of everyday objects. For instance, the object I'm sitting in right now is a chair, but I can't isolate the location of its 'chairness', the properties that make me call it a chair. 'Chairness' is a state of the system, a particular arrangement of the atoms of the system that give it a useful functionality. Or, to use Engor's words,
"Of course, objects (like sofas or stools) that have location, weight, etc. can mediate or carry out chairlike functions, but the 'chairness' itself doesn't have a location. 'Chairness' isn't spatial. 'The property that makes this chair a chair is three inches from the edge of the cushion' is a nonsensical statement."
2500 years ago, Engor would evidently have been a big fan of Plato's forms...
Posted by: gg | June 4, 2007 11:44 AM
Pure altruism is as non-existant as the soul. The person engaging in altruism always gets something out of it, a feeling of well-being, moral superiority, expiation of guilt, etc.
Posted by: breakerslion | June 4, 2007 11:46 AM
Oooh, here's another one:
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
I'd like to see the look on Egnor's face when he reads that.
Posted by: Chuck Morrison | June 4, 2007 11:51 AM
I wonder what the Discovery Institute types will do with scientific evidence that supports the claims of non-christian religions.
For example:
Buddhists 'really are happier'
Posted by: Mark Plus | June 4, 2007 11:52 AM
There should never be any compromise away from science, because in that one would corrupt the whole idea of science, then it can include everything. This is esspecially true with evolution, with it being one of the biggest foundations of science.
This is not a mere battle, but it is the heart of the war.
Posted by: Dutch vigilante | June 4, 2007 11:56 AM
Good grief, is it possible for Egnor to get any more confused?
In addition to the fallacies pointed out by you and Denialism, he's got this basic ontological misconception: he seems to think that all "natural" entities must possess physical properties like mass, extension and location (one of his buddies was blathering similar nonsense about "information" a couple of months back). Emotion and cognition (like life itself) is a process taking place in a physical substrate, and while it is localisable to the substrate, you can't "point to it" in the way Egnor's crude "objectism" demands. As an analogy, think of the "flow" of a river. The substrate is the water, and it is localised in the riverbed, but the "flow" is not identifiable as either of those entities -- but I doubt even Egnor would claim that "flow" is some supernatural substance that changes a long skinny puddle into a river.
Posted by: Eamon Knight | June 4, 2007 11:59 AM
One other related area that needs watching and may cause some grief to the religious is when a machine is built that passes the Turing Test, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
Current estimates are 2020 to 2029 but given the pace of expoential growth in this area it may be as early as 2012.
Posted by: Denis Castaing | June 4, 2007 12:05 PM
Main Entry: al·tru·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈal-trü-ˌi-zəm\
Etymology: French altruisme, from autrui other people, from Old French, oblique case form of autre other, from Latin alter
Date: 1853
It looks like Egnor wouldn't be writing about altruism if it weren't for the French. And, prior to 1853, there was no altruism.
Posted by: Sonja | June 4, 2007 12:08 PM
Ohfer...
By these arguments, this "logic", memory is also not a property of the brain. How on earth can a neurosurgeon get away with that?
By his arguments, "honesty" and "social inhibition" and such things are also not connected to the brain. But when my father had major strokes affecting the right hemisphere, this extremely, meticulously honest man lost the sense that lying was wrong, and would lie (not just confabulate, but knowingly lie) whenever it became convenient for him. If that wasn't a function of brain damage, where did it come from? And there are at least a few thousand studies charting similar effects.
Speaking of brain damage, my mother, formerly reasonably skeptical, had a series of seizures some years ago which also left her with brain deficits -- and also turned her into a True Believer(tm) with a tendency to believe anything anyone told her and a vastly decreased facility to evaluate evidence as to the truth of any given proposition. I wonder if Egnor has had some similar experience....
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | June 4, 2007 12:15 PM
Given a lack of scientific understanding so far of human consciousness, including the ability to scientifically define it, the proper scientific response isn't, "Well, I guess it's okay to make up magical stuff about it."
A proper scientific response, and an honest one, is that it's still mysterious, we do not yet understand very much at all about it, and therefore we can come to no definitive conclusions about the phenomenon, much less posit that it is outside the realm of scientific understanding or has magical properties.
Posted by: El Cid | June 4, 2007 12:21 PM
the web browser i am using to type this message has no matter or energy; it has no location, weight, dimension, or temperature. it must be supernatural then, right?
Posted by: snex | June 4, 2007 12:30 PM
Well done for pointing this out, PZ. I have thought about it before, but have never said it, even to the sciencebloggers who keep trying to convince us that "Christianity and Science are fully compatible".
That is an obvious lie. What will the theistic evolutionists do when (or a small "if", to be fair) the evolutionary history of humanity is worked out with sufficient detail to make it clear that at no point were souols imbued into hominids by a god?
What will they do when neuroscience advances to the point where it becomes clear that there is no intersection between the physical brain and a supposed "soul"?
How will they react when it beocmes possible to create "revelations" and "deep, emotionally fulfilling, spiritual experiences" at the flick of a switch?
What mechanism could Christians possibly use to accomodate findings such as these? What could they do to stop themselves from becoming denialists, apart from simple deconversion?
Theistic scientists are a time bomb; and, since they are on the inside, their explosion will be orders of magnitude more damaging than anything the anti-scientists can do.
Posted by: valhar2000 | June 4, 2007 12:32 PM
I love the way creationists flail about when trying to discuss non-theistic understandings of the world. The fact that they simply cannot grasp the idea that abstract concepts and relationships might have meaning while not having material form in themselves shows just how flimsy their ontology is. It's always goddidit for them. Always.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | June 4, 2007 12:38 PM
It's an attractive argument in some ways, because it seems to attack the simplistic reductionism that says "damage to this set of cells prevents access to that set of memories or behaviors, hence they must reside in those cells". But for anyone who's heard of emergence it does seem kinda stupid.
(Plenty of people, of course, manage to act like Gage without his particular lesion, or like untroubled utilitarians without obvious defect in their ventromedial prefrontal cortex.)
Posted by: paul | June 4, 2007 12:39 PM
Thinking meat. Who'da thunk it?
This piece below has been circulating for years on the Internet, but it's still wonderful:
http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/1994/1994ABL.html
Posted by: Doc Bill | June 4, 2007 12:40 PM
By his logic, perception is a bust as well. Our perception of the world is a collection of thoughts. Since thoughts are apparently immaterial, they can't interact with the outside world. That means the light hitting my retina has no way of affecting what my mind sees.
Posted by: Aaron | June 4, 2007 12:47 PM
Read Egnor's piece at Evolution News & Views. This sort of dimestore BS would likely get a failing grade in any undergrad philosophy course.
Yet there is a kernel of truth. Egnor says: "But there is no material link between our ideas and our brains, because ideas aren't material." Indeed, I think we can all agree Egnor's ideas aren't material.
Posted by: Jud | June 4, 2007 1:03 PM
he thinks that thoughts are in a different class from other physical states--that an idea cannot be embodied in a pattern of neuronal activity. His example is altruism.
LOL. It's like he took a page from Francis Collins' book, and ignored entire fields like behavioral ecology in the process.
I'd almost feel sorry for the twit.
almost.
Posted by: Icthyic | June 4, 2007 1:08 PM
Oh, come on, let's go easy on the bloke. After all, he's only twenty-four hundred years out of date.
Thank you, PZ, for raising the issue of creationism and neuroscience. I've been meaning to write about this, but nothing had spurred me into activity until this drivel from Egnor, and now I see that you've said what I had planned to say.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | June 4, 2007 1:15 PM
Erm... Being a Good Xtian, Monsewer Egnor must also have some thoughts on Free Will, no? Where is the Free Will part of the brain? Or is Free Will a supernatural sort of a thing as well? And if it is controlled by their God, is it really 'Free?' Of course, I am quite dense when it comes to these sorts of things, just as Egnor and his ilk seem to be impervious to the concept of selection by consequences. I wonder, though, which imperviousness is more detrimental to an understanding of the way things really work? No, I don't really, that was just put there for gratuitous grins.
Posted by: bybelknap, FCD | June 4, 2007 1:15 PM
It is completely true that Buddhists are happier. The meditating they do produces NO in their brains, and that NO makes them happier and healthier.
All "truly" spiritual persons are spiritual only because of the high NO levels in their brains. That is why spiritual people are much like the Dalai Lama, thin, happy, active, intelligent, and have no heart disease, no Alzheimer's, no degenerative diseases at all.
Falwell was not spiritual. You can't be "spiritual" and be mean spirited the way he was. That he was obese and had CHD, is just another sign of how non-spiritual he really was.
Posted by: daedalus2u | June 4, 2007 1:17 PM
"Ideas must be caused by substances that have properties common to ideas- such as purpose and judgment."
Purpose and judgment are substances? Ookay...
Posted by: windy | June 4, 2007 1:20 PM
Obviously, Egnor is not unaware of Phineas Gage, and I think he anticipated this objection with his assertion that neurobiologists are confusing "association" with "causation." His argument is still fatally flawed, as PZ and others have noted, by his refusal to offer any alternate hypothesis as to the actual cause of alleged immaterial mental phenomena. (And the contradiction that PZ noted -- that there must, following Egnor's reasoning, be some "connection" between the immaterial and the material -- was very nice.)
Finally, for anyone who is hearing about Phineas Gage for the first time, the "lesion" in his brain was the result of a railroad spike that entered his cheek and exited through the top of his frontal lobe. Search for "the experience of Phineas Gage" in Google images for an excellent illustration. (Of course, since I live in San Francisco, I would not look twice at a guy like that.)
Posted by: mgarelick | June 4, 2007 1:26 PM
Together with neuroscientists computer models these are some of the fronts. I would list cosmology, theoretical physics and astrobiology (extraterrestrial planets and their life signs) as other fronts.
But here it is perhaps only the later that is currently moving at the same pace. Seems biology in the larger sense rules, at least for now. (Did I really say that?! :-o)
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | June 4, 2007 1:30 PM
OK I am not a physician, nor a bona fide working scientist; heck I don't even play one on TV (but to be fair I do try to stay at cost-effective motels). So my comments are subject to correction on specifics, but BASICALLY:
We developed (via evolution) an ability to read another person(such as a facial expression) and empathize with that person because this gave us a leg-up on avoiding danger and/or stalking prey. So (FOR EXAMPLE) if we "see fear" we ACTUALLY feel fear ourself (brain studies show this is wired in the brain this rudimentary empathy). Again --- enhances quick decisive action - motivates action etc.. Going from empathy to altruism is not a major leap ... if we can internalize another's fear ... we can the other's pain, etc. We "feel bad for them" because we actuallly do "feel their pain. Now there are dampeners and amplifiers (external and internal) that make all this more or less pronounced in individuals. But basically we evolved a way of quickly assessing situations via others for very mundane reasons, and it evolved into something more noble. All this is brain related ... but not because I say it is... but because many experiments point to it in spades.
This guy Egnor is dispicable .. really really -- he knows damn well he is spreading lies... he canNOT be that dumb... again even me knows the truth!!
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | June 4, 2007 1:33 PM
valhar2k: Theistic scientists are a time bomb; and, since they are on the inside, their explosion will be orders of magnitude more damaging than anything the anti-scientists can do.
It may be more in the other direction. Theistic science depends [at least somewhat] on the God of the Gaps. The gaps will shrink like an asymptote, but will always be there for some, while many others will take a small step across the shrinking gap. A few might freak out and embrace a greater supernaturalism and it's only those that one must be careful with,
Posted by: natural cynic | June 4, 2007 1:45 PM
"One other related area that needs watching and may cause some grief to the religious is when a machine is built that passes the Turing Test, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
Current estimates are 2020 to 2029 but given the pace of expoential growth in this area it may be as early as 2012."
It won't do anything to the religious. They will simply say the machine has no soul or that the Turing test proves nothing, a la Searle's Chinese Room argument. To be fair though, Searle isn't a dualist as far as I know, but you know the dualists will be using this argument to undermine any claim to artificial intelligence.
Posted by: AL | June 4, 2007 1:48 PM
...but there is no 'left' or 'right' to altruism itself.
It seema that Egnor has forgotten the important lessons from cartoons. Remember when a character has a moral conundrum? A little angel always pops up on one shoulder and a little devil on the other. The side of altruism is always on the side with the angel. So simple...
Posted by: natural cynic | June 4, 2007 1:56 PM
"It's not material. It shares no properties in common with matter. It can't be caused by a piece of the brain."
Good grief! By analogous reasoning, my CDs must have souls, since music doesn't have physical properties either.
It worries me that this man is cutting up people. Egnor might be a good surgeon, but what happens when his religious beliefs conflict with the interests of his patients? Something that might happen all too frequently, considering how silly his beliefs are.
Posted by: Flaky | June 4, 2007 2:00 PM
While Egnor is mistaken in using this argument to suggest that the brain might not be "the sufficient cause of the mind" he poses the general question in the right way. In fact, it's one of the core questions in the philosophy of mind (see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on mental causation).
The question really boils down to "can the properties of mental events be adequately reduced to the properties of physical events" and it's not clear that they can.
It's therefore quite acceptable to question whether a mind-level concept (such as 'altruism') can play a causal role in models of physical action (e.g. altruistic acts).
What Egnor misses, is that this is really a problem of conceptual mapping.
Some people (like the Churchlands) argue that this can't be done and, therefore, advocate that all talk of mind-level explanations be rejected in favour of solely relying on brain-level explanations (known as eliminative materialism).
The most widely accepted approach, however, is known as property dualism which argues that there is only one sort of material 'stuff', but that not all mind- and brain-level properties are conceptually compatible.
Modern cognitive science aims for a sort of "patchy reductionism" which tries to make pragmatic connections between the conceptual levels where they have the most explanatory power in causal models.
However, Egnor makes 'Descartes error' in coming to the conclusion that because mind- and brain-level concepts are not completely coherent with each other, they must be different substances. In effect, he confuses the map with the territory.
Despite his conclusion, his point about the oversimplification of causal models in neuroscience is a good one, while all the commentary I've seen attacks a simplified straw man of Egnor's argument (largely based on exactly the sort of category error that Ryle warned against when he coined the phrase 'ghost in the machine') with a side helping of ad hominem.
We really need to do better than this if we want to defend materialism, otherwise we risk making ourselves look as dogmatic as the creationists.
[I originally posted a reply of a similar nature to the post on Denialism but it has not appeared yet]
Posted by: Vaughan | June 4, 2007 2:01 PM
To Vaughan: I don't see how pointing out obvious flaws in Egnor's or others' reasoning could be mistaken for dogmatism. While it's true, that there's a reasonable point behind Egnors misconceptions, it's rather pointless to argue against an argument he didn't actually make.
It might be a decent thing to do to point Egnor and other creationists to better arguments, if for no other reason than to increase the entertainment value of conversations with them, even if similar courtesy could not be expected from the ID-crowd.
Posted by: Flaky | June 4, 2007 2:26 PM
As I see it, Christians and most other religious people claim that your soul is the true source of your conscience, your decisions, your actions, your free will, and indeed any other intellectual capacity you possess. Your brain and the rest of your body are mere vessels for your soul. If you suffer damage to the brain, it just means that the brain becomes a bad conduit for your soul, explaining differences in behaviour.
Assuming the soul is spiritual, and as such immaterial, this raises the question of whether an immaterial entity can possibly interact with the material world. This would seem to be a real obstacle, but probably only to a materialist. I'm sure religious people will brush it off with arguments like "spiritual power", "divine energy", and such. They'll never even consider the problem.
Although I have hardly any knowledge of it, I predict that the field of neuroscience will carry absolutely no weight whatsoever with religious followers. It's just too easy to get around, always assuming some underlying immeasurable spiritual property. Christians and others will get around any argument by more or less stating the same spiritual claims they always have been.
Which doesn't mean they wont push their version of the truth, of course. Probably using loads of pseudo-science as well.
Posted by: trj | June 4, 2007 2:36 PM
The trouble is, most commentators suggested Egnor was foolish for asking the question, based on equally poor reasoning.
This is where the dogma comes in because, in fact, the question is quite reasonable and is widely asked in cognitive science.
Debate needs to be made in an informed and respectful way. This is something that is not currently done by creationists. We should not be dragged down to their level.
Posted by: Vaughan | June 4, 2007 2:38 PM
There seems to be a really important point that is being under-utilized here and Sonja touches on it in #14. "Altruism" is a name we invented that encompasses many much more specific behaviors. Those behaviors, by themselves, are probably not as mysterious as a broad abstraction like altruism or personality. In fact I would hesitate to even argue about altruism or personality. Rather I would ask what specific actions are being referred to when those words are used. To me, it's the difference between slippery and untestable and an actual debatable point.
Posted by: Vitis | June 4, 2007 2:47 PM
I agree with Vaughan, in that this sort of argument is not a "more stupid, illogical, and fact-free rationalizations for ... religious presuppositions." On the contrary, I think it cuts much more deeply into the common intuitions which form the basis for supernaturalism in the first place. We're getting closer to the bone here. We're getting deeper than the God-idea, and into what distinguishes naturalism from spirituality. It will certainly draw a line between theistic evolution and just plain evolution.
Mind vs. matter -- it's not just the sophisticated, neurological, philosophical conundrums at issue here. Normal human beings seem to have an innate tendency to reify abstractions. Thoughts, values, concepts are all seen as somehow "above" matter, but still as things in themselves. The subjective/objective distinction throws folks for a loop, and supernaturalism, which posits that mental properties somehow precede, ground, or integrate all of nature, seems to make sense. If intelligence is reducible to material processes, then God disappears -- so it isn't, which is what we all intuitively "knew" all along. How nice to have a neurologist confirm it.
I think gg, in post #7, nailed it pretty well -- it doesn't have to be altruism, or even anything having to do with the mind. You can't hold, see, or measure "chair-iness" or liberty, or love, or softness, or hardness, or or or. Abstraction is a process of pulling out similar aspects --qualities or behaviors -- from concrete particulars, but our minds tend to confuse categories. If it's not material, it must be "beyond matter" --and therefore naturalism is false. This is so easy a child can see it (which is why a scientist should know better.)
The fact that there are different versions of materialism and naturalism which take abstractions and mind into account is usually ignored. Nuances are not as satisfying as magic, and the only valid form of reduction supernaturalists seem to acknowledge is Greedy Reductionism -- which they accuse the naturalists of using so they can knock it down.
It's an interesting problem, but it needs to be approached scientifically. I like where Ramachandra seems to be going, ,yself. When theists like Egnor try to use it to justify God's existence through neuroscience it simply turns into a more sophisticated version of PZ's old favorite:
"Ya, so try to find LOVE with your microscope, Mr. Smarty-Pants-Scientist!"
Posted by: Sastra | June 4, 2007 3:07 PM
Re #9: "I'd like to see the look on Egnor's face when he reads that."
That assumes that Egnor would read anything like that. I suspect he will ignore it like everything else people have told him. If it's outside his religion, it doesn't exist.
Curious about this mind bit, though. When clearing my HuffPo feed (yeah, I know, not sure why I keep it around), I saw that Deepak was up to his old tricks - saw him talking about a "mind-field" around our bodies and promptly went to another site. Can we hope for a fisking at scienceblogs on his latest (or is it oldest) idiocy?
Posted by: Badger3k | June 4, 2007 3:28 PM
Maybe I am stupid, but it seems that Egnor (I love that name) also does not believe that thoughts come from the brain. There is no right side or left side to thoughts. My thoughts have no matter. Maybe I am missing something, but that argument seems idiotic to me.
Posted by: Olivier Huebscher | June 4, 2007 3:40 PM
"To be fair though, Searle isn't a dualist as far as I know, but you know the dualists will be using this argument to undermine any claim to artificial intelligence"
Searle would vehemently deny being a dualist, but he might as well be if you ask me. He admits that thoughts aren't made up of special mindstuff, but he replaces that with special brainstuff. In otherwords, even if we were to simulate a brain precisely, with all the neuronal connections and action potentials and hormone washes and so on, the result would not be conscious.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | June 4, 2007 3:47 PM
The question really boils down to "can the properties of mental events be adequately reduced to the properties of physical events" and it's not clear that they can.
except for all the examples of anomalies and direct injuries that suggest otherwise, or perhaps you would prefer analogies in the world of animal behavior that have been studied ad nauseum?
I ever say how much i hate philosophers that forget to check their blather against real-world data?
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 4, 2007 3:58 PM
To be clear, even if we grant Egnor his claim for the immateriality of concepts, and then take the huge, unjustified leap to some sort of substance dualism, that still doesn't get him God. Even if there is a non-physical world in which thoughts, ideas, numbers, etc. reside, the existance of that world does not require a god to explain it, as it evidenced by the academic disciplines that study such things (such as mathematics, logic, semiotics, certain areas of linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science).
Egnor is right to some extent: things like numbers, concepts, and thoughts are not physical. Yet we are able to talk about math without invoking god. Funny that.
And if Egnor's point is simply that we don't understand how immaterial things like concepts and numbers and thoughts interact with the material world, especially the brain, well, I'll grant him that. But saying "goddidit" is no more a solution here than it is for the Big Bang or the appearance of life, and with much less justification, since unlike those historical questions we can actually see that changes in brain produce changes in mind (and vice-versa).
Posted by: Tulse | June 4, 2007 3:59 PM
To be clear, even if we grant Egnor his claim for the immateriality of concepts, and then take the huge, unjustified leap to some sort of substance dualism, that still doesn't get him God. Even if there is a non-physical world in which thoughts, ideas, numbers, etc. reside, the existance of that world does not require a god to explain it, as it evidenced by the academic disciplines that study such things (such as mathematics, logic, semiotics, certain areas of linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science).
to summarize:
Even if we grant Egnor his preconceptions and assumptions not based on evidence, his argument becomes indistinguishable from a standard god-of-the-gaps argument.
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 4, 2007 4:03 PM
My favorite dig at dualism is, "The personality survives death the way 60 MPH survives the car crash." Mind--the avitivities of the brain that include memory, intention, experience and the rest--are like that 60 MPH. It doesn't have a right or left, either, because it is the name we give to the quality of an action. That doesn't make it dependent on spooks.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | June 4, 2007 4:09 PM
Bilirubin and cholesterol are bile. Maybe he meant bile salts. In any case, any first year intern would have to know that, let alone a neurosurgeon.
Posted by: Brian | June 4, 2007 4:30 PM
If Egnor were sitting alone in a room thinking, would we say that his thoughts are taking place outside of the room?
Posted by: Bob (a.k.a. AustinAtheist) | June 4, 2007 4:30 PM
To be clear, I think there are indeed profound questions about how objective matter produces subjective experience (it may be the hardest philosophical problem out there), and there are interesting philosophical issues involved in characterizing the nature of entities like numbers and concepts. But Egnor doesn't really address those issues in any new or interesting way, and, as Ichthyic deftly summarizes, his arguments don't get beyond the standard god-of-the-gaps.
Posted by: Tulse | June 4, 2007 4:36 PM
Tulse (#51):
The production of subjective experience by objective matter "may be the hardest philosophical problem out there" because neither the answers nor the questions lie wholly or even primarily within the realm of philosophy. You can't attack the problem without knowing biology — and, probably, big blocks of mathematics.
One problem with creationists, besides their difficulties with truth and evidence, is that they're not very compatible with subtlety. As soon as they can find a seeming contradiction, they shout "Godddidit!" and the conversation is over — whereas contradictions between preconceptions and reality are just where the conversation should begin. There's wonderful debate to be had explaining how mind comes from matter and soul from flesh, but people like Egnor who obfuscate at the very first step of the discussion are not helping.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | June 4, 2007 4:57 PM
Another question I'd like to ask Egnor, given the opportunity: If it's quite impossible for purpose, intent, memory, etc. to arise from physical structures within the brain, where do "lower animals" get theirs from? Is he willing to grant souls to chimpanzees, dolphins, housecats, chickadees, crickets, tapeworms, anything at all with any nervous system? If not, how does he account for their apparent purpose and memory?
And, if he suggests that the soul is tied to the nervous system somehow, does that mean an embryo/fetus has no soul until the nervous system develops enough to start conveying intent and purpose? And abortion up until this time is fine with him? (I don't know whether he's pro-/anti-choice, but I'll take a guess he's anti.)
Posted by: Randy Owens | June 4, 2007 4:57 PM
Blake, I have to respectfully disagree -- no amount of biological knowledge is going to get you to subjective experience, because such subjective experience is completely unnecessary to fully physically describe an organism's actions. No amount of neuroscience is going to tell you what "red" looks like to me -- you may know what pattern of neuronal firing is evoked in my brain by certain wavelengths of light, and that I say things like "that's red!" when I see them, but no objective study will give you my experience. Subjective experiences and qualia are irrelevant for a complete description of my actions. (Imagine an alien biologist who did not believe humans had subjective experience, and whose own brains were made of green slime -- what biological fact about humans could convince them that humans were conscious, and not just mindless robots?)
So yes, consciousness, or at least how matter produced subjective experience, is a primarily philosophical problem, and no amount of fMRIs and neuroanatomy will provide any final answer.
Posted by: Tulse | June 4, 2007 5:11 PM
Um, okay, if my brain is not producing abstract concepts, who (or what) is?
Would the culprit please stop implanting the phrase "Egnor is a demented fuckwit" into my head?
It's getting so that I don't want to think about that twerp anymore.
Posted by: CalGeorge | June 4, 2007 5:17 PM
My apologies for being unclear. I didn't want to say that philosophy is irrelevant; I did want to state that the interesting philosophical questions are informed by and to some extent reliant upon physical, chemical, biological and mathematical knowledge. Sure, fMRIs won't give a "final answer," but they and similar tools are sure helpful in finding good questions to ask.
People who try to short-circuit the entire discussion — and, incidentally, deny the very means of gaining new factual knowledge — get on my nerves. I qualia at the thought of what they're trying to do to my civilization.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | June 4, 2007 5:30 PM
I wonder if Egnor thinks the gods are responsible for computer viruses. They have no 'location', no weight, no dimension, no temperature. They have no properties of matter, and entail things like purpose and judgment.
Seriously, it's just another example of how scientists do science, and ID charlatans play pedantic word games.
Posted by: Science Avenger | June 4, 2007 5:35 PM
Human biology, I do not claim to know, but Christian Biology goes like this:
Agree/Disagree
Man consists of three things.
1) Body
2) Spirit
3) Soul
The Body has a brain and a heart ect..
The brain contains our consciousness which is our spirit. All living things have spirit, only humans have souls. The soul communicates to body by the spirit. Choices, free will and all that come from the spirit. Instincts come from the flesh, or DNA if you like, when the flesh comes in oposition to the soul the spirit warns the flesh.
This is where feelings of guilt come from. Alter either the brain or the spirit, the communication becomes ragged at best. So in this argument one can become messed up by altering the brain and have no moral conscience or become completely alturistic.
The brain gives us control over the body, but once it is messed up it may tell the body to go do anything.
Those who reject the spirit are those who would be in judgement according to this biology. So, if you know something is wrong (sin) because the spirit is telling you it is wrong and you reject the spirit then you come under judgement.
Short version.
Posted by: The Physicist | June 4, 2007 5:45 PM
Tulse,
If biology (or science more broadly) can't solve the problem of how physical processes can give rise to subjective experience, how can philosophy solve it?
Posted by: Jason | June 4, 2007 5:48 PM
Wow -- I am really glad I'm not as schooled as many of you above. You're blowin my mind man!!
Let a simple person ask you philosophy brainiacs a simple question (others above have also suggested such in various forms above - but I'll add my version):
Has anyone experimentally in verifiable way ever seen a thought manifest itself independent from a brain? I know the question is akward (sorry). I mean has anyone witnessed in a verifiable way a thought emmanate from a person without a brain or a dead person. I mean when you do .. I'll believe there is something more to ponder here. Until such time .. there is no human-ness without a brain ... but a brain (functioning as required) is sufficient for human-ness. That does it for me. I don't need a god - nor anything else. The rest is just counting angels on the head of a pin. And to Egnor and those that need to have this discussion as if there is a real question here I say "a brain is a terrible thing to waste"
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | June 4, 2007 6:02 PM
Discussions of the "reality" of abstract concepts like this always bring me
back to William Calvin's
"The Fate of the Soul":
That reminds on the importance of irony and ridicule for maintaining sanity in
the face of politics and religion. Mark Twain did it best -- we need him more
than ever. Even Molly's gone...
Posted by: Don Olivier | June 4, 2007 6:04 PM
The Physicist: OK, I must confess, this is one area I've been trying to work out sometimes, but still just don't get. What's the distinction between the spirit and the soul? Why is (according to the theology) the soul apparently held responsible (punished in Hell or rewarded in Heaven) for the actions/thoughts of the spirit, if they're separate and disconnected? If they are connected, that introduces another layer of interaction that should need to be explained, just what influence the soul has over the spirit (or vice versa?). And where do spirits without souls, i.e. "mere animals", get their corresponding influences from? Or if they don't have corresponding influences, why is a soul necessary? (Besides the more pragmatic explanation of making us feel superior to other animals, and offering us a special place after death.) If it'd be more convenient to offer me a link instead of an explanation, by all means do. I've been looking for something of the sort.
Posted by: Randy Owens | June 4, 2007 6:36 PM
P.S. I am reading Don Olivier's link above; I'll see what I take away from that. Any more links or explanation would still be appreciated, though.
Posted by: Randy Owens | June 4, 2007 6:44 PM
Randy,
FWIW
* Spirit = the breath, the animating force
* Soul = eternal "self" (consciousness)
Google/wiki etc for more detail.
Posted by: Kseniya | June 4, 2007 6:45 PM
The question you brought up was "understanding how material phenemena give rise to subjective experiences," not "giving you my experience." The former is manifestly an empirical question; the latter is admittedly not. They are not the same question.
Posted by: Azkyroth | June 4, 2007 6:46 PM
thoughts have no location exactly like a specific part of a computer PROGRAM doesn't necessarily have an exact location in the hardware.
Posted by: carmelian | June 4, 2007 6:46 PM
"Neuroscience is building up a detailed picture of our minds, our consciousness, our selves as the products of purely material agents"
You're a little behind the times here PZ. This picture of the mind gets progressivly more problematic unless you are a priori commited to the conclusion at the outset.
Why do you keep acting in the same ways you accuse YEC's of acting ?
Posted by: The Sci Phi Show | June 4, 2007 6:55 PM
carmelian wrote:
That's true, but you're implying there is no location when there is one. Programs and even parts of programs (like C functions) can be located in both RAM and on the harddisk file -- they actually do have physical locations. But so do the neurons that make up specific functions in the brain. That's why both brains (like in "The Man who Mistook his wife for a Hat") and computers can start behaving weirdly if those physical locations are damaged.
You don't want to imply there is no physical location or else you'll get Deepak Chopra claiming the mind is outside the body.
Posted by: Norman Doering | June 4, 2007 6:56 PM
"What we're going to get is ever more stupid, illogical, and fact-free rationalizations for their religious presuppositions"
Well yeah, but if you'd catch on the philosophy of mind you'd stop doing it while pushing your religion PZ.
Posted by: The Sci Phi Show | June 4, 2007 6:59 PM
The Sci Phi Show wrote:
Says who?
Are you aware of the Blue Brain project, an attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain? They're creating a biologically accurate, functional model of the brain using IB