Response to Skeptics' Guide Host, Dr. Steven Novella (Podcast)

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by skidoo

I've presented the evidence. You guys have tried to rebut it, with no success. Simple.

Skidoo you are now entering denial Novella's confident claim was rebutted by a very simple TV set analogy where the TV broadcast (mind) is not created by the TV set (brain). (Incidentally it is not my analogy, I first heard Interesting Ian use this analogy on the JREF forum many years ago before reading it other places too)

Novella wrote '...all of the predictions that flow from the fact of strict materialism that have been resolved in the favor of materialism and against dualism. ...'

This is nonsense Novella may sound super confident but he is just arguing the fallacy that correlation means causation. It is like arguing skid marks are the cause of car accidents.

Originally posted by Open Mind

If the TV program content is completely the product of the function of the TV circuits then ....

There will be no TV programs without a TV circuit

As the TV set channel, volume, contrast, tuning circuits are altered, the TV viewing content is altered

If the TV circuits are damaged, then the TV viewing content will be damaged

Digital TV development will correlate with TV viewing content development.

We will be able to corrolate TV circuit activity with TV viewing content activity, no matter how we choose to look at it.

In other words Novella's correlation arguments cannot be used as evidence of the brain creating consciousness any more than could be used as evidence of TV circuits creating TV programs.

On top of this, contrary to Novella's claim that advances in knowledge support only materialism and not the brain as a filter of consciousness ....

- No location found for consciousness, nothing like a central processing unit either
- No location of long term memory (although memory is stored/filtered via hippocampus, it is not stored there)
- No location of tacit memory
- No location of freewill choice decisions
- No mechanism known to solve the 'binding problem'
- No reason for unconscious processes to evolve consciousness as a user illusion
- Long term memory survives brain damage and disease better than short term memory

Until these are found or solved, all of these arguably suggest the brain is a filter of a mind whether interactive dualism (or idealism) more so than the physical brain creating the mind.

[skidoo]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Skidoo you are now entering denial Novella confident claim was rebutted by a very simple TV set analogy where the TV broadcast (mind) is not created by the TV set (brain).

Good grief. Did you miss my previous message where I shot this down by adding a built-in DVD player to the TV set?

There is **zero** evidence for a non-physical source of the TV programming, and if the materialist position is supported by ever increasing MOUNTAINS of evidence, then the reasonable default position is that the TV set has a built-in DVD player. Any other non-falsifiable hypotheses are unnecessary.

Novella may sound super confident but he is just arguing the fallacy that correlation means causation. It is like arguing skid marks are the cause of car accidents.

No he is not arguing that correlation equals causation. Please. All he is saying is that there is no reason whatsoever to postulate an immaterial consciousness. There is no evidence for it. There is no need for it. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence supporting the position that the brain creates the mind.

On top of this, contrary to Novella's claim that advances in knowledge support only materialism and not the brain as a filter of consciousness ....

Jeeze Louise. You're running in circles.

- No location found for consciousness, nothing like a central processing unit either

I already covered this. Consciousness of the gaps. Argument from ignorance. You can't disprove the existence of those psychedelically flatulent ponies either, not until we have the technology to search every square inch of the universe simultaneously, and even then...we might all live in the Matrix!

Until these are found or solved, all of these arguably suggest the brain is a filter of a mind whether interactive dualism (or idealism) more so than the physical brain creating the mind.

Right. And until every last transitional fossil is found, and every mechanism of evolution explained, the creationists are more likely to be correct. Come on.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by skidoo

Good grief. Did you miss my previous message where I shot this down by adding a built-in DVD player to the TV set?

So a person with a DVD player attached to a TV set, proves TV programmes are not being broadcast? You and Novella are the ones confidently stating evidence exists by implying correlations means causations.

the materialist position is supported by ever increasing MOUNTAINS of evidence,

Give me the evidence. I think you are making mountains out of sand castles

then the reasonable default position is that the TV set has a built-in DVD player. Any other non-falsifiable hypotheses are unnecessary.

Since there is no 'default position' outside mindsets, hypotheses are necessary. If information (e.g. like telepathy, remote viewing, etc.) is shared with another TV set (mind-brain interaction) , it suggests something invisible is occurring outside the TV set.

As for claiming 'non-falsifiable', I would abandon the dualist argument *if* a few on the list I supplied was falsified. My position is falsifiable but is yours? You are seem to be arguing anything, by default, must be assumed to be only physical therefore anything non-physical must be assumed false by default ...therefore anything non-physical causing physical effects is judged false until some physical cause is found .... this is a non-falsifiable physicalists stance. Tell me what would falsify physicalism for you?

Right. And until every last transitional fossil is found, and every mechanism of evolution explained, the creationists are more likely to be correct. Come on.

Strawman. I am not religious, not a creationist.

[skidoo]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

So a person with a DVD player attached to a TV set, proves TV programmes are not being broadcast?

No. I'll be charitable and posit that you're being willfully obtuse. If no other source is necessary to explain the TV program, if the DVD player hypothesis is sufficiently supported by the evidence, there's no reason to propose magical "broadcast signals."

Give me the evidence. I think you are making mountains out of sand castles

You've been given the evidence about 900 times already, yet you refuse to acknowledge it. There's nothing more I can do.

Since there is no 'default position' outside mindsets, hypotheses are necessary. If information (e.g. like telepathy, remote viewing, etc.) is shared with another TV set (mind-brain interaction) , it suggests something invisible is occurring outside the TV set.

There is ZERO evidence for telepathy or remote viewing. Zero.

As for claiming 'non-falsifiable', I would abandon the dualist argument *if* a few on the list I supplied was falsified.

That's just your same old argument from ignorance. You merely listed things we don't know yet about brain function. The fact that we can't explain every single detail of consciousness doesn't support dualism. Just as the fact that we can't explain every single detail of evolution doesn't support creationism.

My position is falsifiable but is yours?

Yes. Clearly. If the brain creates mind, then a broken brain breaks the mind, etc. But you seem unwilling to read.

You are seem to be arguing anything, by default, must be assumed to be only physical therefore anything non-physical must be assumed false by default ...

No. Two hypotheses. One's claims are supported by ever increasing mountains of evidence, the other is not supported by any evidence.

therefore anything non-physical causing physical effects is judged false until some physical cause is found .... this is a non-falsifiable physicalists stance. Tell me what would falsify physicalism for you?

There are many claims made by the materialist hypothesis that are falsifiable, as I've already stated repeatedly. This is ridiculous.

Strawman. I am not religious, not a creationist.

Bullcrap. This is not a strawman. It's an analogy, illustrating your argument from ignorance. You say, "Well, science can't explain EVERY detail of consciousness, therefore the proper hypothesis is the dualist hypothesis," just as the creationists say, "Well, science can't explain EVERY detail of evolution, therefore the proper hypothesis is creationism."

As Novella pointed out re Egnor, you argue just like a creationist, refusing to acknowledge the evidence.

Originally Posted by Dr. Novella

If the mind is completely a product of the material function of the brain then:
- There will be no mental phenomena without brain function.
- As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered.
- If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged.
- Brain development will correlate with mental development.
- We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.

All of these predictions have been resolved in favor of materialism. Every single one! Dualism makes predictions too – that some mental function will be documented to exist separate from brain function. The evidence for this? None.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by skidoo

No. I'll be charitable and posit that you're being willfully obtuse. If no other source is necessary to explain the TV program, if the DVD player hypothesis is sufficiently supported by the evidence, there's no reason to propose magical "broadcast signals."

Magical? It seems your paradigm is 'magical'! You cannot point to where consciousness is in the brain, where freewill choice is in the brain, where long term memories are located, where tacit memory is stored, how all this scattered, hiding information unifies to create a coherent sense of consciousness.

There is no working model of how unconscious brain processing can evolve via natural selection to produce the incredibly complex user illusion of consciousness. Nor choice from unconscious (i.e. no choice) responses surviving better. To believe this is occurring without evidence is 'magical' thinking IMHO.

You were the one claiming 'evidence' that materialism was true and dualism was 'slam dunked'. You gave no solid evidence, just displayed faith in Novella's super confident, unsound, opinions. Just like religious people sometimes display super confidence as an act of faith in their belief. Well it isn't scepticism, scepticism means to doubt.

You've been given the evidence about 900 times already, yet you refuse to acknowledge it. There's nothing more I can do.

What I have been given over the years is incredibly confident statements from skeptics who read one side of the debate, usually from a half baked, biased source like on 'skeptics dictionary', they can't be bothered to read the original sources or other side of the debate... thereby maintaining a passionate, misplaced sense of confidence in one's viewpoint.

There is ZERO evidence for telepathy or remote viewing. Zero.

More misplaced confidence from reading biased sources. As Radin points out after over a 1000 controlled lab based trials into psi, the accumulated odds against chance is around 10^104 to 1 (*after taking in account the skeptics claims of file drawer effects , etc.) There is no sound argument to reduce this to chance level, unless you wish to invent a conspiracy theory to explain it away.

Just as the fact that we can't explain every single detail of evolution doesn't support creationism.

How many times do I need to tell you aren't arguing with a creationist. If you want to do so to win an argument, I can perhaps provide links to one

Yes. Clearly. If the brain creates mind, then a broken brain breaks the mind, etc. But you seem unwilling to read.

So you are claiming again that breaking a TV set must destroy the external transmission. Or that a broken car unable to move breaks the driver inside.

Stroke victims who lose language do not report losing clarity of consciousness they report it feels like being in a machine that doesn't work. You may observe this as brain damage but they do not feel they lose the will or clarity to try and communicate they just feel they lose the ability to communicate through words. There is a difference between thinking and expressing it in words. As Professor of Neurology, Antonio Damasio puts it after studying case after case of stroke victims 'In every instance I know, patients with major language impairments remain awake, attentive and can behave purposefully' In other words how do strokes just damage these people in the same way? It also places a big question mark over those who think that sense of consciousness is associated with language.

One's claims are supported by ever increasing mountains of evidence, the other is not supported by any evidence.

So you still refuse to offer evidence that matches your degree of confidence?

There are many claims made by the materialist hypothesis that are falsifiable, as I've already stated repeatedly. This is ridiculous.

None of these falsified the brain as a filter of consciousness, interactive dualism or even idealism, give me something specific that you would accept falsifies your model that the brain creates the mind.

Bullcrap. This is not a strawman. It's an analogy, illustrating your argument from ignorance. You say, "Well, science can't explain EVERY detail of consciousness

Can it explain ANY detail of consciousness?

therefore the proper hypothesis is the dualist hypothesis," just as the creationists say, "Well, science can't explain EVERY detail of evolution, therefore the proper hypothesis is creationism."

Who cares what creationists are arguing. Evolution is not owned by physicalists, you seem to have taken a Physicalist's Evolution VS All Else stance. It is true Darwin didn't support creationism but he didn't think evolution was 100% blind either that belief came later from Neo-Darwinism. Darwin co-discovered Natural Selection with dualist Alfred Russel Wallace who delayed publishing out of respect for Darwin. (Wallace believe it or not also later claimed he had evidence of survival of brain death. ) . In other words your 'default' position isn't a default position, it is a physicalist's reinterpretation, filing in gaps with a theory that the correct miraculous series of random errors somehow survives better and creates unnecessary things to survival like incredibly complex consciousness, .... all from unconscious, blind, random mutations.

I don't share your confidence that Neo-Darwinism is the correct interpretation of evolution, I'd rather leave the gaps open to future evidence than play numberless dot to dot.

As Novella pointed out re Egnor, you argue just like a creationist, refusing to acknowledge the evidence.

Confidence is not evidence, it is sometimes called faith.

[skidoo]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Magical? It seems your paradigm is 'magical'! You cannot point to where consciousness is in the brain,

I can say definitively that if I destroy your brain, I destroy your consciousness. Of course, you'll say, "Oh, but it might live on in [insert unfalsifiable plane of existence here]."

where freewill choice is in the brain, where long term memories are located, where tacit memory is stored, how all this scattered, hiding information unifies to create a coherent sense of consciousness.

They're called neurons. Again, your same old argument from ignorance.

There is no working model of how unconscious brain processing can evolve via natural selection to produce the incredibly complex user illusion of consciousness.

So? We don't know exactly how evolution itself works.

Nor choice from unconscious (i.e. no choice) responses surviving better. To believe this is occurring without evidence is 'magical' thinking IMHO.

There is ample evidence that mind function depends on brain function.

You were the one claiming 'evidence' that materialism was true and dualism was 'slam dunked'.

I never said it was "slam dunked."

You gave no solid evidence, just displayed faith in Novella's super confident, unsound, opinions. Just like religious people sometimes display super confidence as an act of faith in their belief. Well it isn't scepticism, scepticism means to doubt.

No, skepticism does not mean "to doubt." You are wrong. In this context, we're talking about scientific skepticism, which is provisional belief, based on empirical evidence.

More misplaced confidence from reading biased sources. As Radin points out after over a 1000 controlled lab based trials into psi, the accumulated odds against chance is around 10^104 to 1 (*after taking in account the skeptics claims of file drawer effects , etc.) There is no sound argument to reduce this to chance level, unless you wish to invent a conspiracy theory to explain it away.

Which is more likely?

A. Dean Radin (intentional chocolate?!) is full of crap.

B. Dean Radin is self-deluded.

C. Dean Radin's experiments are sloppy and imprecise.

D. The tiny positive effect he alleges is more correctly attributed to noise.

E. Radin is right, and he has proven there is some non-material aspect to our reality that has heretofore escaped the best efforts of some of the greatest scientific minds in history, but he still hasn't received a Nobel Prize?

Hmm. Which makes more sense to believe, based on the evidence? What have 100 years of research into psi given us? Zilch.

How many times do I need to tell you aren't arguing with a creationist. If you want to do so to win an argument, I can perhaps provide links to one.

How many times do I have to tell you that I'm making a perfectly legitimate analogy? One you have yet to refute. When you argue from ignorance, you're arguing like a creationist. "We don't know EVERY detail about consciousness and brain function, so there must be something to dualism!" is equivalent to "We don't know EVERY detail about evolution, so there must be something to creationism!"

So you are claiming again that breaking a TV set must destroy the external transmission. Or that a broken car unable to move breaks the driver inside.

No, I'm clearly claiming that if there is no evidence for an external transmission, while in fact there is ample evidence that the TV program is coming from an internal DVD player, there is no reason to posit that there is an external transmission.

Stroke victims who lose language do not report losing clarity of consciousness they report it feels like being in a machine that doesn't work.

So what? This is a straw man. Obviously the brain is a complex organ, and different structures in it control different cognitive and somatic functions. We've long known that if you manipulate certain regions of the brain, certain abilities are affected. Predictably affected.

You may observe this as brain damage but they do not feel they lose the will or clarity to try and communicate they just feel they lose the ability to communicate through words.

So what? A surgeon can literally go in and turn off your ability to speak without turning off your ability to think. But he can also go in and turn off your ability to think as well. Come on man, this is ridiculous.

There is a difference between thinking and expressing it in words.

No kidding.

As Professor of Neurology, Antonio Damasio puts it after studying case after case of stroke victims 'In every instance I know, patients with major language impairments remain awake, attentive and can behave purposefully'

Duh. Any one of the many of us who have relatives or friends who've suffered brain damage (be it from stroke or whatever) can attest to the persistence of different levels of cognition, often pre-stroke levels. Some people even become savants after suffering brain damage, albeit usually at the expense of some other function.

In other words how do strokes just damage these people in the same way? It also places a big question mark over those who think that sense of consciousness is associated with language.

Language has nothing to do with speech. Nevertheless, this is yet another straw man.

So you still refuse to offer evidence that matches your degree of confidence?

I haven't refused any request for evidence. I've given it REPEATEDLY.

None of these (e.g. development of the brain correlates with development of the mind, etc.) falsified the brain as a filter of consciousness,

Do you realize what you're saying? I never asserted that any of the falsifiable claims of the materialist hypothesis also falsify the dualist hypothesis. That's nonsense.

Here's how it works: There are falsifiable claims made by the materialist hypothesis. If any of these claims proves to be false, the materialist hypothesis is finished. This says nothing about falsifying another hypothesis, such as dualism. But the fact that none of the materialist claims have been falsified, and that all are actually supported by the evidence makes the materialist hypothesis increasingly more likely. Dualism, on the other hand, has never had a single claim supported by evidence.

interactive dualism or even idealism, give me something specific that you would accept falsifies your model that the brain creates the mind.

I've already given this to you 901 times. For example, there will be no mental phenomena without brain function. If someone showed empirical evidence of mental phenomena without brain function, this would absolutely falsify the materialist hypothesis.

Who cares what creationists are arguing.

Jesus, man. Do you not understand the definition of the term analogy?

Confidence is not evidence, it is sometimes called faith.

Faith is belief without evidence. I have mountains of evidence on my side. You have none.

I would say this discussion has become humorous if I didn't have any capacity for pity. Because you seem to actually believe what you're saying, to the point that you're willing to be intellectually dishonest and remain willfully uninformed.

I have nothing more to say on the subject, unless you actually have something new to add. I'm confident that any critical thinker who carefully reads these posts will see through your disingenuousness and intellectual cartwheels.

If I have been trolled, mark it down as a success.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by skidoo

A. Dean Radin (intentional chocolate?!) is full of crap.

Oh, myyyyyyy Goooooodddd.

Did he really made that study? I wanna read the paper.

[skidoo]

Originally Posted by Venom

Oh, myyyyyyy Goooooodddd.

Did he really made that study? I wanna read the paper.

Oh yeah. Well, he says he did. It was a "scientific adventure!" Entangled minds indeed.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by skidoo

Jesus, man. Do you not understand the definition of the term analogy?

What? When you say that somebody is running around like a chicken with its head cut off you don't literally mean that they are headless chickens? What a concept! Analogies!

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by skidoo

I can say definitively that if I destroy your brain, I destroy your consciousness.

Unless you can also describe how the brain can generate consciousness, you cannot definitively say destroying the brain, destroys consciousness.

They're called neurons. Again, your same old argument from ignorance.

There is ample evidence that mind function depends on brain function.

... I, like other scientists have struggled to prove that the brain accounts for the mind. But now, perhaps, the time has come when we may profitably consider the evidence as it stands ......how I came to take seriously, even to believe, that the consciousness of man, the mind, is not something to be reduced to the brain-mechanism....' - Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, famous for mapping the functions of various regions of the brain. (Few have attempted to repeat some of Penfield's experiments)

I never said it was "slam dunked."

Here is what you wrote 'I think that's a succinct slam-dunk of dualism'.

No, skepticism does not mean "to doubt." You are wrong. In this context, we're talking about scientific skepticism, which is provisional belief, based on empirical evidence.

I do not rate Paul Kurtz's political type of scepticism, there is little scientific about it IMHO.

The origin of the word scepticism is consideration or doubt.

Which is more likely?

A. Dean Radin (intentional chocolate?!) is full of crap.

B. Dean Radin is self-deluded.

C. Dean Radin's experiments are sloppy and imprecise.

D. The tiny positive effect he alleges is more correctly attributed to noise.

E. Radin is right, and he has proven there is some non-material aspect to our reality that has heretofore escaped the best efforts of some of the greatest scientific minds in history, but he still hasn't received a Nobel Prize?

All of these prove that you have not read Radin's work. Radin has never attempted to prove 'some non-material aspect to our reality' Like you, Radin for many years has stated he thinks consciousness (and psi) is probably brain generated. But unlike you he is willing to consider it might not be.

I haven't refused any request for evidence. I've given it REPEATEDLY.

Are you referring to Novella's list? Is that it?

Do you realize what you're saying? I never asserted that any of the falsifiable claims of the materialist hypothesis also falsify the dualist hypothesis. That's nonsense.

So what did you mean by 'I think that's a succinct slam-dunk of dualism'.

Here's how it works: There are falsifiable claims made by the materialist hypothesis. If any of these claims proves to be false, the materialist hypothesis is finished.

Where were these published before as predictions, if not, it is ad hoc.

Dualism, on the other hand, has never had a single claim supported by evidence.

How do you know this, are you making psychic claim here to know the unknowable?

For example, there will be no mental phenomena without brain function. If someone showed empirical evidence of mental phenomena without brain function, this would absolutely falsify the materialist hypothesis.

Very difficult to falsify as you will claim any mental effect not measured physically did not really occur. However I referred to Libet reference that it could be occurring. As I previously mentioned Near Death Experiences are suggestive evidence of this, which are much harder to debunk than you might think

I have nothing more to say on the subject, unless you actually have something new to add. I'm confident that any critical thinker who carefully reads these posts will see through your disingenuousness and intellectual cartwheels.

What we fundamentally disagree on is .......you are saying the mind=brain with what sounds 100% certainty, I am saying there is not sufficient evidence to be so confident that the mind and brain are the same thing..... at least yet.