Michael Egnor is to "argument from analogy" as a fish is to __________.
A. Fire
B. Victorian Literature
C. Mathematics
D. Water
Imagine scientists living on an isolated island who have developed sophisticated science and culture, with one exception: they deny that telecommunication is possible. For assorted reasons, they deny that the human voice can be transmitted through space, except as vibrations in air. We'll call this civilization the 'Verizon Deniers.'
One day, they find a cell phone (it dropped from a plane or something). They turn it on, and they hear things. They hear hissing, cracking, and what sounds like voices!
The Verizon deniers are amazed! So it's off to the lab, and soon the Verizon denier scientists have the answer. They show that all kinds of things -- chemicals, mechanical impacts, electrical interference -- can change or ablate the voices. They find that certain sounds the voices make are consistently associated with patterns of activation in the cell phone circuits. They found that some aspects of the voices -- tone, amplitude, etc. -- are localized within the cell phone. They conclude that the voices are simply an emergent property of the cell phone circuits!
However, one of the scientists, a Verizon accepter, isn't so sure. He says:
"What if the cell phone is necessary for all of the noises, but only sufficient for some? What if some of the noises in the phone are actual voices of living people, and are merely transmitted through the phone, but not caused by it?"
The Verizon deniers say: "How can you prove it?"
So the Verizon accepter goes to work. He studies the properties of all of the noises the phone made. Some of the noises, like the hiss or the cracks, he can explain as an emergent property of the phone -- just oscillations from the circuitry transmitted through the speaker to the air.
But the voices are different. The sound of the voices certainly has some properties like those of the circuit -- frequency, amplitude, power, etc -- but there's more to them. They have meaning. These 'voice' noises express anger, love, purpose, judgment -- all properties that are not inherent to electrical components.
...
Too simple? I propose that any credible theory of the mind must at least provide a basis for discerning that a voice from a cell phone is generated by a person, not the phone. It's a kind of inverse Turing test -- it tests the theory, not the machine. As I see it, none of the materialistic theories of the mind would provide a clear basis for identifying the voice in a cell phone as a person and not as an emergent property of the phone. If a theory can't get a cell phone right, I don't trust it with the mind.
When are these guys going to learn you can't undo real science with a bunch of poorly argued analogies that aren't even apt?
And am I imagining things or is he suggesting our expressed thoughts, words and emotions are coming from the ether? The brain is just like a cell phone receiver for the soul? This guy's a neurosurgeon, surely he knows about things like aphasia?
I guess aphasia resulting from stroke or injury is just damage to our cell phone-like "circuitry" in our brain that's receiving signals from the soul. It's either that or he's seen "Being John Malkovitch" too many times.
Paging Dr. Chopra, you're needed in the neuro ward.
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Let me see if I understand this. Engor is saying that some of my thoughts are caused by my brain being p[art of my body, these would be thoughts like "I need to piss" and "meatloaf, again?" For other thoughts, my brain is merely a transmitter receiving messages from elsewhere, say a government agency near Langley, Virginia or the Devil. These would be thoughts like "I need to scream" and "as soon as he turns his back, pick up the knife." Since he's a brain doctor, he must know what he's talking about. Those other doctors were wrong. I don't need to take my pills any more. Now, where did I put the aluminum foil?
And am I imagining things or is he suggesting our expressed thoughts, words and emotions are coming from the ether? The brain is just like a cell phone receiver for the soul?
Sadly, I don't think you are imagining things (or is that, "recieving imaginings from your ascended soul?"). I think that is precisely what he means.
Egnor sez:
...and that, right there, is where his argument fails the test. He assumes that meaning cannot arise out of matter, and must arise "outside" it. You can't assume something like that; you have to prove it. You have to prove that emergent properties cannot account for such phenomena as "awareness" or "assigned meaning".
He's rehashing the dualism argument of centuries ago as if it were a given. Bad. Bad.
---Makes me really worry about how much influence he still has on any students.
Physician heal thyself.
Mind you, if happen to be a brain surgeon it might be best to ask someone else to give it a go first.
Egnor has never been good at this logical argument stuff. Before his recent adventures with creationism he was involved in the debate about Terry Schiavo where, if I recall correctly, he used some similarly disingenuous argumentative points (in that case he latched onto a statement about Terry Schiavo being blind - her physical movements were thought by some to indicate that she was responding to something she could see and thus was conscious on some level). He used the statement that she was actually blind and couldnt have been responding to stimuli as a means of argueing that people were trying to end her life for the simple reason that she was blind, and that alone, rather than the actual point that she was brain dead and had expressed a wish to be allowed to die if she was ever in that state.
Just when you think Dr. Egnor can't go any lower, he get's out a backhoe and starts digging even deeper.
Ooops. Wrong link (the same one you were discussing).
Let's try it again.
We can test the hypothesis that there's nothing to the phone except the phone components themselves. We can build our own copies of the pieces — resistors, transistors, speakers, microphones, etc. — and see how they work in other, simpler situations. We can look for external influences upon the phone, since there'll probably be more than one way to detect any given signal. We can put the phone in a Faraday cage to see if the noises change. Using empirical, scientific methods, we could easily tell if the phone is receiving messages from The Beyond (otherwise known as the phone owner's mother).
"If a theory can't get a cell phone right," Egnor says, "I don't trust it with the mind." Strangely enough, I agree exactly: his understanding of science doesn't cover what we could find out about a cell phone, so we shouldn't trust what he says about the mind.
Hand Egnor a common office stapler, and he'd see the hand of god in it.
He could take apart the stapler and discover how it functioned, and would admire the stack of staples stuck together, perfectly suited to the task. But, as would be obvious to him, the stapler lacked a means of producing the staples itself, so the only possible origin of the staples would be the divine hand of the sky fairy.
He has honed self-delusion to a fine art.
What a dick.
I expanded on my earlier remarks here.
Re: Too simple? I propose that any credible theory of the mind must at least provide a basis for discerning that a voice from a cell phone is generated by a person, not the phone.
Easy to do with the cellphone - just travel to a place with no signal. Or perhaps put it inside a faraday cage, or a steel box - something that is impervious to radio waves.
So why not try that with the person? Find a box that you can put the human in where his mind stops working and we'll talk.
Easy to do with the cellphone - just travel to a place with no signal. Or perhaps put it inside a faraday cage, or a steel box - something that is impervious to radio waves.
Egnor seems to believe in a supernatural entity that interacts with the human brain but is completely invisible to every physical experiment. He wants to have his supernatural cake and eat it too.
Egnor sounds like a first year philosophy student that has just discovered dualism. Can someone submit his "essay" to a philosophy 101 class?
Find a box that you can put the human in where his mind stops working and we'll talk.
The Big Brother House?
Or, you could demonstrate that it's possible to talk to the same person on different cellphones... If Egnor can conclusively demonstrate that with the mind / brain, I'll believe him.
As a complete aside, does anyone else get this persistent urge to drop the "n" from his name?
Well, to be fair, the analogy only works if the cell phone is being studied by people who have just a basic knowledge of electricity and no knowledge at all of radio waves. So we can't expect them to come up with the Faraday cage experiment.
But I can think of a bunch of easy experiments off the top of my head. The question is, "Is this box intelligent, or does it just allow communication with an intelligent being elsewhere?"
Experiment 1: Take the battery out of the phone and leave it out overnight. A person on a cellphone would be able to talk about things that happened to him while the phone was disabled. An intelligent box would be "asleep" the whole time and have no knowledge of what was happening.
Experiment 2: It's been established that "chemicals, mechanical impacts, and electrical interference" can change the voice. Apply one of those effects, and then ask the voice how it feels. A person on a cellphone would say "I'm fine; I was thinking clearly but I had trouble talking to you." An intelligent box would say: "I'm OK now, but I wasn't thinking clearly a minute ago. It's like I was drunk or something."
Egnor's analogy is pretty good, because it's detailed enough to contain the seeds of it's own rebuttal.