Let's try to be rational about this.
Yes, I know. Not him again. But I’ll make it quick this time. Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon and apologist for the creationist Discovery Institute, has taken umbrage with Jerry Coyne’s interpretation of split brain research. On the DI’s “Mind Matters”blog, Egnor writes:
Continue reading “Michael Egnor gets neuroscience wrong again.”
Substance dualism is the philosophical position that the mind is composed of a fundamentally different substance than is the body, and therefore the functioning of the mind cannot be explained or understood in terms of physical entities and processes. While it has roots going as least as far back as classical philosophers like Plato, it is probably most strongly associated with Rene Descartes. Today, the position is a decidedly minority one among philosophers of mind and neuroscientists. In large part, this is simply a reflection of the prevailing attitude, particularly in intellectual and academic circles, which does not take seriously claims of the immaterial and supernatural. But there are also specific problems with substance dualism that, while long recognized, remain insuperable.
Continue reading “An Attempt to Solve the Dualist Problem of Interaction.”
Over on the Discovery Institute’s “Mind Matters” website, my arch-nemesis ( 🙂 ) Michael Egnor recently posted a lecture which he describes as “a fascinating overview of neuroscience and the philosophy of mind (which) explains the fallacies of materialism and the logical and scientific strengths of dualism”. I thought I would give it a look and see if I agreed. The lecture is by Dr. Sharon Dirckx, who holds the positions of “senior tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA) and… RZIM (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries) apologist.”
Continue reading “Another Failed Attempt to Promote Supernatural Neuroscience”
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.)
Continue reading “I’m Not a Neuroscientist (And Neither is Michael Egnor)”
There is a rumor going around the internet that I am a “materialist”. This seems to have started with David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow with the creationist organization the Discovery Institute. On their website “Evolution News” (which generally contains very little actual news about evolution), he writes in reference to my ongoing debate with Michael Egnor, “(T)he question before the (sic) Faizal Ali and Michael Egnor is whether the mind, with its power of abstract thought, can be fully accounted for just with reference to a physical organ, the brain. Ali thinks so — as a materialist, he would have to do so….” And in a more recent article he continues to imply that my disagreement with Egnor is motivated by a prior commitment to “materialism” (though I will say that his analysis of the reasoning behind my choice of banner art is bang on.)
Continue reading “Why I Am Not a Materialist”
I’ve been having an interesting discussion with Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon and member of the creationist organization the Discovery Institute, over the question of whether the mind can be explained as arising purely from physical processes of the brain. Egnor does not believe it can be, and claims that neuroscientific research supports his position. My position has been that he fails to understand this research and there remains no evidence that some functions of the mind can only be explained by “immaterial” processes or entities. The most recent of my articles on this subject, as well as links to the first two, can be found here. Egnor has now responded to my articles via the Discovery Institute’s “Mind Matters” blog, so let’s have a look at what he has to say.
Continue reading “A Primer on Brain Connectivity: My (latest) Response to Michael Egnor”This is my final post discussing creationist neurosurgeon Michael Egnor’s attempts to demonstrate that certain mental functions cannot be accounted for solely by the brain and, instead, indicate the involvement of some unspecified “immaterial” processes or entities. The first two posts in the series can be found here and here.
As before, I am including the video in which he makes his arguments, but it should not be necessary to watch the entire video in order to understand this post.
This is the second in a series of posts discussing claims by Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon and member of the creationist organization the Discovery Institute, that recent (and not so recent) neuroscientific research demonstrates that some mental functions cannot be accounted for by physical brain processes and, instead, point to the existence of some immaterial forces or processes at work. The first post can be found here.
Continue reading “A Neurosurgeon Argues That Mind Functions Are Immaterial. Badly. (Pt. 2)”Michael Egnor is a pediatric neurosurgeon who is also affiliated with the Discovery Institute, an organization which promotes the form of creationism that goes under the name of “Intelligent Design” (ID). I suspect most of the people reading this are already at least partially familiar with the history and origins of the ID movement. But for those who are not, a useful summary can be found on the website of the National Center for Science Education.
One of Egnor’s roles with the DI is to serve as a Senior Fellow for what is called the Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence. That sounds very impressive, until one discovers that the function of this Center seems to be largely limited to writing blog posts promoting religion.