For most of history, the question “What makes a mind?” belonged to philosophers. And then one day, machines started talking back.
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The universe contradicts the eliminativist point of view. The laws that govern it are not physical things but they are real.
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Materialism in neuroscience is not a finding, it is a tenet. It does not need to be true. It simply needs to be enforced.
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Consciousness is an immaterial creation given only to human beings to enable us to have a relationship with a higher power and to understand our universe better.
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Overall, Jonny Thomson’s effort to keep Dennett’s eliminative materialism alive unintentionally points up how fragile it has actually become.
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If the mind is an illusion of the brain, the pursuit of science is illusory too. If the mind is real but immaterial, science is saved — but materialism is dead.
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Panpsychism is very much a materialist theory. It avoids absurdity by admitting that human consciousness is real — but then tries to make it part of nature.
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Riccardo Manzotti and Paulo Moderato set out the dilemma: The human mind makes no sense apart from the forbidden dualist perspective.
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Just what will neuroscientists do if — even in their own minds — they do not succeed in showing that the mind is merely what the brain does?
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If materialism collapses — and this episode seems like an early warning — what will science look like? Will the same people continue to dominate?
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Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor reviews the mind-brain theories for East Meets West: Theology Unleashed. He thinks dualism makes the best sense of the evidence.
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In last week’s podcast, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed Concordia University philosopher Angus Menuge on the difficult mind–body problem: What, exactly, is the connection between wanting a drink of milk and carrying out the actions that produce one? Wants are immaterial but they connect with material things. How? In an earlier post, we looked at Dr. Menuge’s account of how various philosophers have approached this problem. Dr. Marks then asked him, What is your take? Where do you fall in these different models? https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-133-Angus-Menuge.mp3 This portion begins at 22:31 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Angus Menuge (pictured): I think there is some truth to substance dualism, although I don’t myself entirely like Read More ›
Over the past century there have been several paradigms or patterns of explanation by which philosophers and neuroscientists have tried to understand the mind. Behaviorism was the view that the input to and output from the nervous system was all that mattered. The ‘mind’ was deemed irrelevant to science. Behaviorism was eclipsed by reality—it was more or less demolished in the 1960’s by Noam Chomsky (1928–), who pointed out that language could not be understood in behaviorist terms. The study of the mind is indispensable to linguistics, neuroscience and philosophy. That this needed to be said is a scandal in itself. Identity theory — the view that mental states are identical to brain states — was the rage for several Read More ›
Philosopher Roger Scruton (1944–2020) defined neuroscience thus (I paraphrase): Neuroscience is a huge collection of answers with no memory of the questions. Over the past century, neuroscientists have amassed vast libraries of data. But their interpretation of their data on the mind-brain question shows no meaningful understanding of the genuine questions their research is tasked to answer. These questions are ancient: What is the relationship between the soul (or mind) and the body (or brain)? How is it that matter can think? How is it that third-person stuff gives rise to first-person experience? Answers to such questions from the neuroscience community show little evidence of the profound and subtle nature of the questions. Thus, neuroscientists provide answers to questions they Read More ›
How can you have a proposition that the mind doesn’t exist? That means propositions don’t exist and that means, in turn, that you don’t have a proposition.
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