Neuroscience is showing there is 'no ghost in the machine'

[robbiehouston]

Neuroscience and the soul


This article claims that materialist neuroscience is making great strides in showing that there is no "ghost in the machine."

Any takes on this.

[FallingLeaf]

Originally Posted by robbiehouston

Neuroscience and the soul


This article claims that materialist neuroscience is making great strides in showing that there is no "ghost in the machine."

Any takes on this.

It says a bit more than that. The philosophical arguments here are far from new. What is new, relatively speaking, is physicalism. To be sure, there were ideologies in the past (Lucretian atomism, for instance) that were similar to physicalism but physicalism is very much a 20th century position, so traditional monotheistic conceptions of the soul were not physicalist - for instance, Christianity especially emphasises the resurrection of the body.

However, the authors are very interesting and have a great deal of interest to say but the article says little that is new and not terribly interesting to people who have been taking a strong interest in the area.

And I don't know what "materialist neuroscience" means. Is this opposed to, say, Vedantic idealist neuroscience? Or dialectical chemistry?

[robbiehouston]

As opposed to the non-materialist neuroscientific view of the likes of highly credentialed scientists such as Dr. Melvin Morse, Dr. Pim van Lommel, Dr. Eben Alexander III, etc....

[FallingLeaf]

Originally Posted by robbiehouston

As opposed to the non-materialist neuroscientific view of the likes of highly credentialed scientists such as Dr. Melvin Morse, Dr. Pim van Lommel, Dr. Eben Alexander III, etc....

Ah, I see. Still detest the term(s).

And you don't need to sell their qualifications to me.

[robbiehouston]

haha well that's good I can spare you the sales pitch :P haha

I just feel the need to through that in sometimes so people don't forget that these individuals are just as qualified (and often more so) than their stubborn materialist counterparts.

But I've seen you on here for a while so I'm sure you know that

[Craig Weiler]

As far as I can tell, it's the same old argument with the same old pronouncements and the same old disregard for inconvenient evidence.

[Iyace]

The problem is, neuroscience as a whole right now is a very new field. Take bernardos shroom comments.

Neuroscience goes on about the tight correlation between brain and mind. However, where there's a bad blip on the radar, it is dismissed away. Radins new experiment will provide some fairly strong evidence that the mind is capable of acting on matter.

[robbiehouston]

Iyace which of Radin's experiments are you referring to? And is the implication that since mind can act upon matter that it must thus not be confined solely within the firing of neurons?

[Open Mind]

The ghost isn't in the the machine .... the machine is in the ghost ....our classical mechanical material realism is not fundamental.

[happyknownothing]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

The ghost isn't in the the machine .... the machine is in the ghost ....our classical mechanical material realism is not fundamental.

I like what you did there!