I’m Not a Neuroscientist (And Neither is Michael Egnor)

I promise, I do not intend for this blog to become “The Michael Egnor Show”, but the creationist neurosurgeon keeps writing stuff about me to which I feel compelled to respond. His latest missive, via the Discovery Institute’s “Mind Matters” blog, can be found here. (My earlier articles in this discussion can be found through this link.)

I will admit that he identifies a point on which I could easily be misunderstood, so this allows me the opportunity to clarify. In response to Egnor’s claim that “intellectual seizures” do not occur, I cited a case report in which a woman was described as having seizures that consisted of the thought “I forgot something that I should do”, accompanied by a feeling of anxiety. Part of the problem here is that “intellectual seizure” is not a standard medical term with a strict definition. In the immediate context of my example, Egnor was using the term to refer to seizures that induce an abstract thought. Well, in my opinion,”I have something that I must do,” is an example of an abstract thought, albeit a rather simple one. It refers to no specific concrete object. A thought like “I forgot my keys at the office” or “I forgot my appointment with the dentist today” would be concrete. But “I forgot something that I should do” is not. It is abstract. If you have any doubts, then try drawing a picture of “something that I should do.” It cannot be done. In any event, this is a minor issue and if someone want to argue that this is not an example of abstract thought, I won’t quibble.

Michael Egnor also uses the term “intellectual seizure” to refer to more complex mental tasks. For instance, there have been no observed instances of seizures in which the patient solves a math problem, or composes a string quartet, or makes an argument in favour of the flat tax. On this, I agree that no such “intellectual seizures” occur. This is also irrelevant to the question of whether such mental tasks are the result of “immaterial” processes, as I have already argued in my earlier articles in this discussion.

So hopefully that clarifies why it may have appeared that I had contradicted myself.

Egnor continues to refer to me as a materialist. I thought I had explained adequately why that is not correct, but it appears Egnor needs it clarified further. His use of the label “materialist” is based on the fact that I do not accept his claim that the functions of the mind cannot be accounted for without accepting the existence of “immaterial” forces or entities.

Now, suppose one were to ask Michael Egnor to consider the situation in which he holds a rock in his hand, lets it go, and it falls to the ground. I think we can safely presume that he would state that this is the result of the physical force called “gravity” and that there is no reason to invoke additional “immaterial” forces to explain this phenomenon. Would it be accurate to conclude from this that Egnor is a materialist? Of course not. He can still believe in any number of “immaterial” forces or beings that, nonetheless, are not required to account for the fact that the rock falls to the ground, as indeed he does. (The question of how gravity comes to exist in the first place, of course, may well be one for which Egnor favours an answer involving the immaterial, but that is a different question.)

By the same token, the fact that I do not believe the immaterial is required to account for mental functions does not commit me to the position of materialism (or, as it is more accurately termed, physicalism). I am agnostic on the question of whether non-physical entities with causal properties exist, though I see no compelling reason to believe they do.

You may have noticed that Egnor is using another term to refer to me, which is equally inaccurate. In the title of his article he calls me a “neuroscientist.” This, I also am not. Perhaps Egnor considers himself to be a neuroscientist. Certainly, to my knowledge, he has not corrected others who refer to him as such. If he does so consider himself, then I hate to break the news, but he is also not a neuroscientist. Moreover, he does not even seem to be aware of the major trends and directions of the last twenty-odd years of neuroscientific research. If you have been following this discussion, it cannot have escaped your notice that Egnor has not so much as acknowledged the references I have made to some of the latest research in cognitive neuroscience. If all he has to offer in response are picayune complaints about apparent contradictions in some of what I have written, with no sincere and informed attempt to engage with the extant research on this subject, then it would appear this discussion is close to having run its course