…and this is a 
Michael Egnor wants to know where altruism is
Category: Kooks
Posted on: June 14, 2007 6:28 PM, by PZ Myers
Michael Egnor, tiresome little lackey of the DI that he is, is asking his readers to help me find out where altruism is located. I'm not going to link back to him—sorry, but I'm afraid it would only encourage him, and I don't want to be an enabler—but I will try to address his flawed question.
He wants to know precisely where altruism resides, and he bizarrely illustrates his question with this diagram.
That makes the answer easy.
Are we done now?
Of course not. We must plumb the depths of lunacy … because it is there! Especially since Michael Egnor gives the worst rationalization for dualism ever. Trust me. This is really bad.
Brace yourself. Here is his argument that altruism cannot be located in the brain.
If altruism is located in the brain, then some changes in location of the brain must, to use a mathematical term, 'map' to changes in altruism. That is, if you move your brain, you move your altruism in some discernable way. And 'moving' altruism means changing its properties. It won't do to say that moving altruism changes its property of 'location,' because 'location' of altruism is the issue. That begs the question.
Does altruism have location? The brain does; it can move in space by moving in any of six degrees of freedom: in a Cartesian system, it can move in the x, y, or z direction, or it can pitch, yaw, or roll. These are the movements possible for a material body.
Now moving your brain through 'x,y,z' or 'pitch, yaw, or roll' does change its material properties, which are located in the brain. The pulse pressure in your brain tissue is greater when you're recumbent than when you're standing (pitch). The venous pressure is lower when you're standing than when you're recumbent. Tilting your head to the left (roll) tilts the vector of carotid arterial blood flow to the left. Even material things that are less tangible, like neuronal action potentials, change with brain movement. Action potentials have direction, and can be described using spatial vectors. When you tilt your head, you tilt the vectors along which your axons transmit action potentials. When you turn your head 30 degrees to the left (yaw), you turn the direction of propagation of action potentials 30 degrees to the left too. In this sense, material changes in the brain can map to changes in location of the brain.
But how does moving your brain change your altruism? Do properties of altruism, like benevolence, have pitch, yaw or roll? Is generosity measurably and reproducibly different when you (and your brain) are on the north, rather than the south, side of the room? Are you measurably more or less charitable if you tilt your head 30 degrees to the left? If you walk around the room does your altruism change in a reproducible way? If you stand up, is your altruism different that when you're sitting?
For altruism to be located in the brain, changes in altruism must map, in some reproducible way, to changes in brain location. But it's obvious that no property of altruism maps to brain location. If no property of altruism maps to brain location, then altruism is independent of brain location, and it's nonsense to say that altruism is located in the brain. Altruism is completely independent of location, so it can't be located in the brain, or anywhere. It can't be 'located' at all.
I read the first paragraph and thought he must be building to something clever and subtle; no one could possibly be making an argument that stupid. I read on, and I realized I was being far too charitable, and yes, he really is making an argument that stupid. Because my altruistic feelings are not left behind in my chair when I get up and walk across the room, they must not be located in my brain. In Egnor's mind (which is safely situated in a remote location, far, far away from the entity doing the typing), if properties of the mind do not have an absolute location in coordinates of latitude, longitude, and altitude, they cannot possibly exist in your brain.
I'm typing this on my laptop, on my text editor. I'd better not pick up my laptop, swivel around on my office chair, and move it to the other desk behind me, because I might leave the text editor floating in space above my computer desk. Or worse, maybe the text editor will change properties and become a spreadsheet, or one of those programs that control a nuclear missile, or the software interface to a microwave oven. Alternatively, the fact that the text editor still works when I move my laptop must mean that the program actually doesn't reside in my computer — it's being beamed in from the Software Soul Sanctuary located somewhere in another supernatural universe.
Here's another concern. One of the many functions of my liver is to regulate glucose metabolism. Where is the regulation of glucose metabolism located? Well, I'd have to wave my hand vaguely over this great big spongy, bloody organ in my guts, and I'd also have to admit that it's a property of many interacting systems—the circulatory system is essential, of course, as are peripheral tissues, glands and hormonal regulators, even the brain. Does the fact that it is currently located at 45° 35' 19" N, 95° 54' 6" W have anything at all to do with its function? Does the fact that changes in glucose metabolism do not map in any reproducible way to the absolute physical location of my liver in any way imply that my physiology must be off-site somewhere?
Of course, to normal people, the idea that the properties of the brain, a computer, or a liver are associated with those objects is not contingent on whether I'm in my chair or on the other side of the room, because when I move around I bring my brain and liver and (usually) my laptop with me. I would agree that my concept of altruism would change if getting up meant my brain would slither out of my cranium to plop onto my chair when I got up — but again, that reinforces the notion that properties of the mind are associated with the brain.
Ultimately, his argument rests on this deeply and obviously faulty analogy, and simple assertion.
Myers makes a category error. Matter and ideas share no properties. Ideas like altruism aren't material, so they can't have a location. Altruism has no yaw or pitch or roll. Location is a property of matter, not ideas. Benevolence is a property of ideas, not matter. Matter can't be benevolent, and ideas can't have location. And matter can't, by itself, cause ideas, because they share no properties.
Of course they can share properties. We know that chemicals and the physical integrity of the brain can affect your thoughts, and vice versa. These material agents can change your personality, your perceptions, your behavior—they can make you less benevolent or more benevolent. For a neurosurgeon to claim that the mind shares absolutely no properties with that gelatinous blob he operates on is rather frightening; is he even aware of the consequences to his patient's mental state if he tears through it? Does he think he's working on a ball of phlegm, and that he mainly has to worry about those delicate arteries running through it?
Now what I really want to see Egnor do is return to his little diagram. I've said where altruism and mind are located, and done so fairly unambiguously, I think. Now it's his turn to tell me where the satellites and transmission towers and central transmitter of the soul are located.
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Comments
Does helping someone with an undesireable task fall under Egnor's definition of altruism? If so, it's definitely affected by the physical state of the brain - either that, or our souls get drunk as easily as our bodies do.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&list_uids=3981391&cmd=Retrieve&indexed=google
"In Study 1, a mild dose of alcohol increased helping among high-conflict subjects pressured to help with a task they did not like, but did not increase helping among low-conflict subjects who either liked the task or were weakly pressured to help. In Study 2, a somewhat stronger dose of alcohol increased helping among all high-conflict subjects pressured to help with an undesirable task, yet again had no effect among low-conflict subjects weakly pressured to help."
Posted by: Viscount | June 14, 2007 6:39 PM
Lunacy is the only word for that level of argument.
Posted by: Numad | June 14, 2007 6:40 PM
If Michael Egnor REALLY wished to learn about altruism, he could simply buy and read vols. I, II, and III, Narrow roads to Gene land-- the collected papers of Dr. W. D. Hamilton. But no, that requires both acumen and mathematics.
Posted by: mothra | June 14, 2007 6:40 PM
Ouch. Now my brain hurts.
Posted by: Theda | June 14, 2007 6:41 PM
*jaw agape* Huh?!
Sometimes, I think Egnor is the perfect evidence for evolution. No merciful designer would ever have created such a quivering mass of idiocy and allowed it to make an ass of itself like that.
Posted by: AtheistAcolyte | June 14, 2007 6:43 PM
Upon further thought, I guess you could make the case that the alcohol study just shows greater susceptibility to social pressure when drunk, so altruism doesn't necessarily enter into it. Depends how you define the word I suppose.
Posted by: Viscount | June 14, 2007 6:43 PM
Everything which Egnor says about altruism apply equally well to, say, grammar and punctuation skills. Is my ability to conjugate verbs, split infinitives and put two spaces after every period my connection to the plane of spirit, eternity and God?
Carl Sagan would never call someone a demented fuckwit, but I know myself, and I, sir, am no Carl Sagan!
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | June 14, 2007 6:43 PM
Concepts have locations? This guy's a neurosurgeon?
Posted by: ron richardson | June 14, 2007 6:44 PM
"Ouch. Now my brain hurts." --Theda
No problem, just move to a different chair. :P
Posted by: EMR | June 14, 2007 6:45 PM
Does that mean that if I were to move to Minnesota, I won't be able to remember ever having lived in Massachusetts?
Welp. Egnor's the brain surgeon, I'm just a silly little undergrad. I guess the fact that I'm no longer living in Atlantis is the reason why I can't remember my past lives there. Mystery solved!
Wow. I thought, at first, that he was leading up to this: "We haven't figured out where, in the brain, 'altruism' resides, therefore it doesn't reside there." But no. I read it a couple of times to make sure. It hurts my brain when I try to grasp that he actually is arguing that because my altruistic personality traits don't change when I tilt my head, that those traits don't reside in my head.
Posted by: Kseniya | June 14, 2007 6:46 PM
Actually, a few of the things he says there are nicely testable. ARE people more altruistic when they're tipped over this way or that? Give me a day or so to design the experiment, a lot of rope, and two dozen college students, and I'll tell you.
My initial hypothesis is that people are going to be a lot less altruistic when they're hanging upside down from their feet, 'cos they'll all have miserable headaches after two minutes in that position.
Posted by: mjfgates | June 14, 2007 6:47 PM
I think reading that just made me a little dumber. You said a neurosurgeon wrote that? That's...pretty frightening. I wonder where he went to grad school, so I can make sure not to go there.
Posted by: Jennifurret | June 14, 2007 6:48 PM
Where, in the United States, is the presidential election located?
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | June 14, 2007 6:48 PM
This kind of stuff makes me seriously glad I don't have him as my neurosurgeon, and wonder whether he's actually qualified to be a surgeon.
Because if he really believes that mental functions don't physically reside within the brain, then he has no business being allowed to cut into people's heads. Brain surgery involves tragic but necessary sacrifices of neural function, but if Egnor doesn't acknowledge that things like declarative memory, spatiokinetic skills, or linguistic ability are tied to specific brain regions and pathways, unneeded and gratuitous losses will be inevitable.
Posted by: Caledonian | June 14, 2007 6:50 PM
You'd be surprised how dippy some practitioners of neuroscience can be. A friend of mine has epilepsy, and one neurosurgeon suggested she try past-life regression therapy. I shit you not.
Posted by: Martin Wagner | June 14, 2007 6:50 PM
I was under the impression that Christianity holds things liker altruism is just pure human selfishness, you know, that whole "humanity is utterly depraved" thing in their TULIP thing. So Egnor is asking you to locate something he doesn't even believe exists. That's nice and trollish of him.
Posted by: Bob L | June 14, 2007 6:53 PM
We know that chemicals and the physical integrity of the brain can affect your thoughts, and vice versa.
Right there. Physical integrity implies that the various parts of the brain (Egnor, as a neurosurgeon, is aware that the brain is not a homogeneous sphere, right?) maintain their RELATIVE posititions to each other.
I expect my altruism may actually get altered should (for example) my left temporal lobe's spatial relationship with my cerebellum change by a centimeter or two.
The stupidity of Egnor's statement is painful to read. Why do you torture us so, PZ?
Posted by: TheBrummell | June 14, 2007 6:54 PM
Amazing. A neurosurgeon who apparently doesn't understand the idea of emergent behaviour in complex systems. I apparently have a better grasp of cognitive theory than he does, and that scares the shit out of me. Please don't let the guy operate on me.
Posted by: Interrobang | June 14, 2007 6:55 PM
At some level most arguments for the supernatural turn out to be category errors (which they ironically accuse us of!) Egnor is reifying abstractions, and turning them into immaterial, supernatural, spooky "objects." Liberty, Love, Mind, Beauty, and, in this case, "Altruism."
Egnor should do another chart and start us working on the hard problem of where the 'speed' goes when the car stops. If it didn't drop off by the side of the road, it must be part of the spirit realm.
Posted by: Sastra | June 14, 2007 6:55 PM
Way out in the water, I see it swimming. Egnor's starting to reach Chopra level.
Posted by: Rey Fox | June 14, 2007 6:55 PM
One question: If you stab Egnor's brain, do you have to dig out your own and place it in the chest and sail the seas of stupidity for ever?
Posted by: daenku32 | June 14, 2007 7:00 PM
Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it
Posted by: Frodo | June 14, 2007 7:02 PM
You know, for a moment, I could see exactly what he meant...
Then I moved.
Oh well.
Posted by: AJ Milne | June 14, 2007 7:05 PM
"My initial hypothesis is that people are going to be a lot less altruistic when they're hanging upside down from their feet, 'cos they'll all have miserable headaches after two minutes in that position."
Dammit mjfgates you got there before me - I was going to have a bunch of pirates hang them upside down in the rigging. Sure changes you altruism. Unless of course you are an old-style movie star - but then that is easy, the stunt man hangs upside down.
Posted by: sailor | June 14, 2007 7:06 PM
Posted by: llewelly | June 14, 2007 7:09 PM
He's a brain surgeon???
Posted by: M.H. | June 14, 2007 7:09 PM
Egnor can't possibly think anybody's going to find that drivel convincing... can he?
Posted by: Zombie | June 14, 2007 7:10 PM
What do you want to bet that Egnor owns at least one mobile phone, but never wonders why he can move it about without changing the number that activates it?
Posted by: Caledonian | June 14, 2007 7:15 PM
PZ's question about the location of the satellites is actually dancing around a real problem for dualists - how does an immaterial, nonphysical soul cause the material, physical body to do things? Is there an interface point in the brain?
If Egnor can be goaded into answering this question, 20 bucks says he either admits he doesn't know, causing the universe to collapse into an irony singularity, or pulls a Descartes and claims it's the pineal gland, in which case I will probably die laughing.
Posted by: Viscount | June 14, 2007 7:19 PM
I roomed with a future brain surgeon in college. Brilliant twisted bastard. Liked to tell his girlfriend he was considering suicide because he liked to hear her get upset. And now he's cutting into people's brains. Really.
He and Egnor have me thinking maybe we are expecting too much of brain surgeons. It's not brilliance that defines them, and it surely isn't empathy. Perhaps social dispassion, apathy to the shock of cutting into someone else's head, is what most seperates them from the rest of us. Think undertakers. Both are jobs most of us wouldn't do.
Posted by: Science Avenger | June 14, 2007 7:19 PM
Is Egnor and the gang hanging out in the basement of the Discovery Institute passing a bong around?
I could just imagine Egnor explaining this to his bong-buddies in the basement and they're all, "Dude, that's awesome!" or "You're blowing my mind, Man!"
Posted by: Dinzer | June 14, 2007 7:20 PM
"Scalpel."
"Scalpel."
"Bone saw."
"Bone saw."
"Ice cream scoop."
"Ice cream scoop?!"
"Dammit, Smithers! This isn't rocket science - it's brain surgery!"
Posted by: Caledonian | June 14, 2007 7:21 PM
If ideas don't have a location, where does an unspoken idea go when you die? With you into the grave, or off into never never land to fly around on its own?
Posted by: Silence | June 14, 2007 7:22 PM
@mjfgates- (#11)
Actually, that would only go to prove his point. What must be established is that altruism, or any similar concept, is not independent of mental state. So we must then go from the dualistic assumption that our altruism exists outside of the brain, and thus exists despite of our mental states, then prove that mental state has a profound impact on altruism.
This is easily proven with a bottle of Jack Daniels, which I intend to use later on tonight.
Of course, this opens us up to the counterclaim that the mind is the lens through which we experience our dualistic nature. Which of course is unfounded, baseless, untestable (at the moment) bullshit.
Posted by: AtheistAcolyte | June 14, 2007 7:24 PM
I'm actually kind of curious about how things like altitude and rotation could affect the actions of, say, your brain and liver. It's certainly conceivable that being upside down might subtly affect your thought patterns.
In fact, I've been conducting a decades-long experiment in which I spend approximately 8 hours a day in a prone or recumbant position, during which I have observed a substantial decrease in altruistic activity. Although I have not published results, this experiment has been replicated extensively, consistently supporting my findings.
Posted by: Spaulding | June 14, 2007 7:24 PM
I want to print out copies of Egnor's essay and leave them around his waiting room. His patients have a right to know.
Posted by: K. Signal Eingang | June 14, 2007 7:25 PM
"Dammit, Smithers! This isn't rocket science - it's brain surgery!"
lol
why is it that indeed the simpsons appear to be the quintessential reference that comes to mind when creobots speak?
It's like it was designed for the purpose...
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 14, 2007 7:34 PM
While the Egnor quotes were on my screen, the stupidity was so powerful, it pinned me against the closet door behind me. I was lucky my cat came along and pawed at the PgDn key.
I never seriously thought Egnor would end up surpassing his master, Deepak Chopra.
It does whatever dreams deferred do.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | June 14, 2007 7:44 PM
I think what he's trying to say is changes in the brain (blood flow, chemicals, nutrients) would have to change altruism and then he assumes it is obvious that they don't.
Well, I don't know about you, but if someone trips me so my brain falls to the floor I tend to feel less altruistic.
Um, I'd expect tilting my head 30% (and thus changing my blood flow) to effect my altruism in more or less the same degree I'd expect it to effect my intellect, my sense of well being, my paranoia, my grammar, lust, etc. i.e. not very much. Likewise I'd expect a bullet through the brain, or less dramatict a severe head injury and two weeks in a coma, to effect my sense of altruism more or less the same as it does the same list. i.e. A lot!
Uh, how has he demonstrated it in any way that it wouldn't?
No matter how you look at it, it's an astoundingly stupid argument.
Posted by: woozy | June 14, 2007 7:45 PM
Hmmm...self experiement.
Checking for the presence of alturism, by moving my brain in various ways:
X - Check - still feel nice to others.
y - Check
z - Check
Pitch - Check
Roll - Check
Yaw: - Made me a Republican
Yaw is, apparently, the way to evil.
Posted by: Fides | June 14, 2007 7:48 PM
"Where, in the United States, is the presidential election located?"
Easy: in the office of Katherine Harris.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | June 14, 2007 7:50 PM
wouldn't altruism, ideas, etc be properties of the brain? a property of the light bulb is that it emits light under certain circumstances...a property of the brain is that it comes up with the dumb idea it would be fun to help someone move for a whole goddamn saturday.
Posted by: garth | June 14, 2007 7:52 PM
I need volunteers for my candy bar flavor experiments. Volunteers will eat candy bars holding them in different positions, and in different locations too. If the bars taste always the same, that'll be an evidence for my hypothesis that flavor is not material, is not a property of candy bars and can't be said to have a location either.
Posted by: Andrés Diplotti | June 14, 2007 7:52 PM
Purely from the way logic argument goes, isnt all this example proving is that hopping up and down 3 times, spinning and doing a cartwheel just not cause a physical reaction big enough to affect altruism in your brain or whatever? It doesn't prove its not there, just proves there's no change. Um, lots of things don't change measurably with too small a stimulant.
Thanks for warning me to brace myself, but I still wasn't prepared.
Posted by: Karey | June 14, 2007 7:52 PM
Wow. Just... wWOOOw...
Is Egnor capable of rational, sane behaviour when he's not blogging? For the sake of his patients, I hope so.
It makes me think of my father, who is one of the best educated, traveled and observant people I know... and still thinks Rush Limbaugh is one of the great social commentators of our time.
Posted by: wright | June 14, 2007 7:58 PM
Egnor really, really needs to look up reification. That's all that needs to be said, really. He's elaborating on a whole lot of nothing.
Posted by: AL | June 14, 2007 8:01 PM
Oh, yeah, right - The Simpsons were intelligently designed. Suuuuure! Next you'll be expecting me to believe in the Great Groening, who suffers for the sins of humanity by being contractually obligated to attend storyboard sessions for the show He once loved and watched wither with the passage of time.
Posted by: Caledonian | June 14, 2007 8:12 PM
On a slightly orthogonal topic... How many people went here?
Posted by: Shishberg | June 14, 2007 8:12 PM
But where does collossal stupidity reside?
Posted by: Siamang | June 14, 2007 8:14 PM
I guess I was mistaken thinking Egnor was a brain surgeon! I thought I might be able to counter his arguments with a reference to this article,
"Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements"
Michael Koenigs, Liane Young, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Fiery Cushman, Marc Hauser & Antonio Damasio
Nature 446, 908-911 (19 April 2007)
doi.org/10.1038/nature05631
... but, danged, he's being way too stupid for that. I think he needs his tinfoil hat repaired.
Posted by: Anna Z | June 14, 2007 8:19 PM
Please tell me this demented fuckwit is no longer practicing. At least slice-and-dice can be reduced to cookbook.
Myersus, this guy scares me (for his patients).
Posted by: Jeb, FCD | June 14, 2007 8:21 PM
I had to read his article more than once. This guy just keeps getting better and better. Question is, when did his writings start being more than just an April fools joke? To non-ID people, this would have been some time prior to April 1st. For the Disco institute, it will probably become one when they need to sever their ties to him and they need a convenient excuse.
Posted by: Hawks | June 14, 2007 8:22 PM
That is, if you move your brain, you move your altruism in some discernable way. And 'moving' altruism means changing its properties. It won't do to say that moving altruism changes its property of 'location,' because 'location' of altruism is the issue. That begs the question.
This goes way beyond stupid. Since location is the property at issue, then of course it will do to say that moving your altruism changes its property of location -- no other property is relevant! Try this:
Uh, yeah, right.
Of course the difference is between a concrete thing like your neurons, and an abstraction like "neurons" or "altruism" in general, but Egnor can't even keep track of his own point, since he refers to "your altruism" in the first sentence. Yes, of course, "Altruism is completely independent of location, so it can't be located in the brain, or anywhere. It can't be 'located' at all" -- the same is true of all abstractions; that's what it means to be abstract. This isn't metaphysics, its linguistics. "neurons" as a general concept has no location, but specific neurons do have a location. Yeesh.
Posted by: truth machine | June 14, 2007 8:25 PM
Okay, there is no "altruism" in the brain.
There's just brain in the brain.
I kinda get what he's trying to say.
But I disagree with him entirely that matter can't cause ideas. It's the only thing that can cause ideas. And the gooshie matter inside of our heads is especialy good at this game.
Time to take ownership of your ideas, Egnor. They originate with you, they change as you do, you pass them along, and they die with you.
Posted by: CalGeorge | June 14, 2007 8:27 PM
There was an article on Slashdot yesterday about altruism in PLANTS:
"Researchers at McMaster University have found that plants get fiercely competitive when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but they're accommodating when potted with their siblings. [...] Though they lack cognition and memory, the study shows plants are capable of complex social behaviours such as altruism towards relatives, says Dudley. Like humans, the most interesting behaviours occur beneath the surface."
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/13/191227
Of course, it is Slashdot after all.
Posted by: craig | June 14, 2007 8:28 PM
Seriously, does this mean if you're walking down the street your intelligence is still at your starting point? Seems cartoonish.
Morris looks sweet from space. If I caome visit, I have dibs on the couch (just keep Skatje off me!).
Posted by: Jeb, FCD | June 14, 2007 8:28 PM
The Egnorant One reminds me of myself and my cronies when we were undergraduates and drunk on Saturday night.
You know, before we learned anything about science or learned how to control ourselves.
The Egnorant One's writings, as was pointed out by K. Signal Eingang, should be bound and made available in his waiting room.
Posted by: waldteufel | June 14, 2007 8:28 PM
Let's face the facts: the April Fool's day joke about Michael Egnor being a fictitious character was true - he is a fictitious character because *no one*, not even the Discovery Institute could possibly be this dumb. And to claim that he's a neurosurgeon? Please. Oh, and here's a link to Egnor's screed (I actually found it on google because I had a hard time believing PZ Myer's wasn't pulling our leg).
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/06/please_help_pz_meyers_find_alt.html
Posted by: tinyfrog | June 14, 2007 8:32 PM
-- neurosurgeon Buckaroo Bonzai in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Posted by: ekzept | June 14, 2007 8:33 PM
The only thing which comforts me in this is knowing that anyone who goes to Egnor for brain surgery is probably one of his 'true believers' and therefore deserves what they get as a result - good and hard.
Jim D
Posted by: Jim D | June 14, 2007 8:38 PM
This is a truly impressive display of Egnorance.
If this term has yet to be coined, then I claim origin.
Posted by: Robster, FCD | June 14, 2007 8:39 PM
PZ, you must be amazingly generous and patient to have actually bothered to address his "argument".
I spend a fair chunk of time reading early and classical and Neoplatonic philosophy (which I love), but Egnor's writings sound like the very very very worst of their semantic catergory-shifting play-trickery. Like someone took Proclus and lobotomised him. With an ice-cream scoop.
I can't believe an educated person, a scientist, can actually fool themselves into believing the claims he's making. What he's writing about is stuff that 14 year old kids sort out after quarter of an hour of reasonable thinking. Sastra and AL knocked it totally on the head - he's taking an abstraction and trying to locate it. Physically. WTF? And he's an educated person? He's a scientist? He's a neurosurgeon?????
He's gonna be so embarrassed a few years from now.
It's almost as though creationists like this are publically disembowelling themselves, and the pendulum is about to swing back to common sense, because, surely, they can't write anymore stupid than this and still expect people to bother to read them. It's just getting too stupid to bother! It reminds me of that South Park episode where the concerned parents protest, and die, by catapulting their bodies against a building.
Posted by: Karen | June 14, 2007 8:47 PM
Rapid acceleration of the head of 30 degrees to the left, caused by a hammer upside the head, can put a serious crimp in the location of altruism.
Invite him to try it and see how altruistic he feels afterwards.
Posted by: RamblinDude | June 14, 2007 8:49 PM
Does this mean that if I go to Egnor for brain surgery, I can leave my anxiety at home?
Posted by: CalGeorge | June 14, 2007 8:51 PM
Has the great brain surgeon been practicing on himself again? Bad idea, that.
Posted by: Susannah | June 14, 2007 8:56 PM
If ideas don't have a location, where does an unspoken idea go when you die? With you into the grave, or off into never never land to fly around on its own?
Um, if ideas don't have a location, then of course they don't go anywhere -- you seem to have forgotten the premise immediately after you proposed it. And indeed, ideas don't have a location, clearly, since a thousand other people, some of them in other galaxies, could have the same idea that you never spoke. It is indeed a category mistake to conflate material objects with abstractions. But Egnor's argument is a strawman, because when biologists talk about altruism, they are talking about actual concrete altruistic behavior, not altruism in the abstract. When they talk about people having an idea, they are talking about a concrete instance of a person engaging in a particular cognitive function. And so is Egnor, except when he changes the subject to the abstraction in order to make a false claim about the concrete. And that's his category mistake, and it's the one that matters. It is the capacity to act altruistically that is located in the brain, and there is a casual connection between the state of a person's brain and their actions, including altruistic actions. To confuse a capacity to act altruistically, or altruistic actions, with altruism in the abstract is a severe category mistake, and to employ that mistake to argue that brains don't produce altruism is dishonest wordplay: "Egnor's brain produces dishonesty" is about his dishonesty, specific dishonest acts; it doesn't assert that Egnor's brain is responsible for all dishonesty everywhere throughout all of history and even dishonesty that has never or will never occur.
Posted by: truth machine | June 14, 2007 8:57 PM
You know, when I see arguments that I disagree with from intelligent, accomplished people, they usually make me stop and think. For example, when Dembski puts out an argument, I need to ponder it for a while. So far, I've decided that the argument is incorrect, but I can certainly see how a rational person might construct it and think it makes sense.
This is not one of those cases. This isn't even one of those cases where a philosopher is saying something that appears nonsensical because he's playing with axioms that I find silly. It appears to be the sort of nuttery you'd expect from an elementary school kid who is a bit advanced for his age and wants to engage in thought experiments about the physical sciences.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | June 14, 2007 8:58 PM
I thought Michael Egnor was a parody.
Posted by: Great White Wonder | June 14, 2007 8:59 PM
Blake Stacey for Order of the Molly. Again.
Scratch that. Ginger Yellow for Order of the Molly.
Posted by: David Marjanović | June 14, 2007 8:59 PM
"Egnor really, really needs to look up reification. That's all that needs to be said, really. He's elaborating on a whole lot of nothing."
Posted by: AL
Absolutely correct. At no place in his writing does Egnor (what a Freudian name) define what altruism is, or demonstrate it is in a functional category like memory, vision or hunger.
Altuism can be shown to have evolutionary benefits. Organisms can be encoded with genes that promote altruism. But nobody has the slightest idea yet what that implies for the small scale structure of the rain; it seems unlikely that it means there is an "altruism area" of the brain.
Egnor is not just reifying, he is reifying a concept he can't even begin to describe & define.
Posted by: Jaycubed | June 14, 2007 9:03 PM
Wait wait, I thought Michael Egnor was an extended April Fools joke? Or did I miss something?
Posted by: Cyde Weys | June 14, 2007 9:04 PM
Google.
Posted by: David Marjanović | June 14, 2007 9:05 PM
I read those quoted Michael Egnor paragraphs, and when I had finished reading my eyes were completely wide, my mouth half open. I then laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Then I wrote this post about it.
Posted by: Grax | June 14, 2007 9:11 PM
I thought Michael Egnor was a parody.
there were rumors...
it's just so damn hard to tell by looking at their writing any more, ain't it?
I know you know there really is a Michael Egnor, but I know what you mean, and do recall there being some posting on the issue a while back; that maybe all these posts are parody, if not the man himself.
Still, it's not like we haven't seen extremely similar arguments from other creobots before, so if they ARE all parody, the joke ends up still being on the DI anyway.
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 14, 2007 9:13 PM
My Dad used to bring up an old classic vaudeville gag whenever he heard someone talking nonsense:
First man: "I understand you're an expert in how the brain works. Can you tell me where altruism resides?"
Second man: "Well, now - do you know anything about how the brain works?"
First man: "No."
Second man: "Oh good! Then I can speak freely..."
Posted by: jexter | June 14, 2007 9:15 PM
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I got the impression that Egnor was asserting that IF altruism resided in the brain, then change in brain location would change altruism - and since it doesn't, altruism must come from. . .well. . .god? Soul? Spiritual GPSes? If you reduce it to the basics, I think he's saying what creationists and IDiots say all the time - we can't explain it, therefore goddidit. Of course, using this argument, one could assume that it naturally follows that any change in the location of god would have serious impact on altruism worldwide. I hope he never gets a really itchy spot on his back where he can't reach it. . .
Posted by: Alison | June 14, 2007 9:16 PM
Egnor's brain is responsible for all dishonesty everywhere throughout all of history and even dishonesty that has never or will never occur.
sorry, i like the idea the quotemine of your statement represents so much I just had to.
forgive me.
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 14, 2007 9:17 PM
The creationists have figured out that the stupider their arguments are, the more functioning gray matter their readers lose. And the less gray matter their readers have, the less able their readers are to defend themselves. Their goal is to write an argument so astonishingly stupid that PZ will fall into a coma, Greg Laden will suffer a stroke, and Larry Moran's head will explode (killing an innocent bystander, no less) . They are certain they will win by this means ...
Posted by: llewelly | June 14, 2007 9:17 PM
Ha! Gullible Pharyngula readers. Egnor has once again pulled the wool over your eyes, just as he did with his April Fool's prank a few months ago. Obviously nobody of the intellectual calibre of Egnor could be so stupid and arrogant to seriously believe that the proposed altruism 'argument' provides any reason at all to believe in dualism. Far more sophisticated arguments were dismissed by philosophers decades ago.
Rather than critiquing Egnor, we should all be laughing along at his merry little prank. Well done Egnor, well done.
Posted by: Alex | June 14, 2007 9:18 PM
Seriously, does this mean if you're walking down the street your intelligence is still at your starting point? Seems cartoonish.
Sorry, but it's PZ's cartoon, not Egnor's. If you're going to be serious, then at least try to understand what Egnor is saying. He said that altruism has no location -- so of course he isn't saying that it's still at your starting point, he's saying it isn't anywhere. And he's right, altruism, as an abstraction, isn't anywhere. But when we ask "What causes altruism?" we aren't using the word in an abstract sense. What we really mean is "What causes the specific instances of altruistic behavior we observe?". There isn't much need to be careful about the distinction until someone like Egnor comes along and intentionally mixes them up, employing a category mistake to make a bogus metaphysical argument. (This bogosity is not new with Egnor; it goes back at least to Plato, and is very common among professional philosophers. Unfortunately, philosophy, unlike science, doesn't have a learning mechanism that rewards correct theses and punishes incorrect theses.)
Posted by: truth machine | June 14, 2007 9:23 PM
This explains when I'm sitting down I want to help the wife with the chores, but when I stand up, I make a cup of tea instead.
Posted by: tk | June 14, 2007 9:24 PM
Have we doublechecked to be sure he's a brain surgeon, not a brain patient?
Posted by: QrazyQat | June 14, 2007 9:25 PM
I think he's saying what creationists and IDiots say all the time - we can't explain it, therefore goddidit.
except, in this case, altruistic behavior has a very long record of testing and investigation in the realm of both animal behavior and human physiology.
hence the argument from egnorance mentioned many times.
hell, I thought Francis Collins did a better job of making shit up in his most recent book, where he tried to use altruism to argue for a larger issue of "moral law" that in his mind was the prime evidence for special creation.
It wasn't a much more reasoned argument, but at least it was slightly more fleshed out.
there was a decent analysis of where Collins went wrong with his moral law argument (and right with his genetics argument in support of the ToE) here:
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Theistic.cfm
scroll down and read the section titled:
The Irreducibly Complex Moral Law
if you want to skip the genetics part (but do go back to it later, as there is good stuff there too).
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 14, 2007 9:28 PM