Big Think - Is Your Soul an Information Field in Another Dimension?

[Maaneli]

May be worth making comments on his blog to correct his errors:

Is Your Soul an Information Field in Another Dimension? | Daylight Atheism | Big Think

[Iyace]

Originally Posted by Maaneli

May be worth making comments on his blog to correct his errors:

Is Your Soul an Information Field in Another Dimension? | Daylight Atheism | Big Think

The whole article is kind of dumb, to be honest. First:

Parapsychology need not ' overturn ' neuroscience, much like qm doesn't overturn classical mechanics.

Begs the question of usefulness. We just spent the most money ever on a project to find the higgs boson. Did finding the higgs spark any new inventions or make our lives any more amazing? No, it just confirmed the existence of a field already in the standard model.

I'm growing tired of these false dichotomy tricks that seem popular amongst media skeptics. ' either you agree with us, or you hate science that us being used to cure your grandpa of cancer '. Seems like many people are so willing to put their faith in a 30 year old field at its infancy. If there's any time to makes changes to the prevailing assumptions, its now, when we don't know much.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Maaneli

May be worth making comments on his blog to correct his errors:

Is Your Soul an Information Field in Another Dimension? | Daylight Atheism | Big Think

I emailed the author a few weeks ago regarding his essay "a ghost in the machine". But he never responded.

[mszlazak]

Originally Posted by Iyace

Parapsychology need not ' overturn ' neuroscience, much like qm doesn't overturn classical mechanics.

QM did overturn classical mechanics.

In any case, there is no analogy between QM/Classical-Mechanics and Parapsychology/Neuroscience. Reason being that there is no theory of neuroscience or more specifically the brain or the brain and mind.

Neuroscience is in a pre-theoretic stage as any neuro-scientist will tell you. Parapsychology is also in a pre-theoretic stage. So we don't even know if one overturns the other since don't have theories in either case.

[Maaneli]

Originally Posted by mszlazak

QM did overturn classical mechanics.

In any case, there is no analogy between QM/Classical-Mechanics and Parapsychology/Neuroscience. Reason being that there is no theory of neuroscience or more specifically the brain or the brain and mind.

Neuroscience is in a pre-theoretic stage as any neuro-scientist will tell you. Parapsychology is also in a pre-theoretic stage. So we don't even know if one overturns the other since don't have theories in either case.

We do have theories in both neuroscience and parapsych. The issue is that there are a plethora of theories, and no one theory can be said to account for all the empirical data.

[Maaneli]

Originally Posted by mszlazak

QM did overturn classical mechanics.

In any case, there is no analogy between QM/Classical-Mechanics and Parapsychology/Neuroscience. Reason being that there is no theory of neuroscience or more specifically the brain or the brain and mind.

Neuroscience is in a pre-theoretic stage as any neuro-scientist will tell you. Parapsychology is also in a pre-theoretic stage. So we don't even know if one overturns the other since don't have theories in either case.

Also, we should be precise about the sense in which QM "overturned" classical mechanics. It just showed that the equations of classical mechanics can be regarded as macroscopic approximations to the equations of quantum mechanics in most cases (though it should be appreciated that, even now, this is still not a fully worked out correspondence).

[Maaneli]

Originally Posted by mszlazak

QM did overturn classical mechanics.

In any case, there is no analogy between QM/Classical-Mechanics and Parapsychology/Neuroscience. Reason being that there is no theory of neuroscience or more specifically the brain or the brain and mind.

Neuroscience is in a pre-theoretic stage as any neuro-scientist will tell you. Parapsychology is also in a pre-theoretic stage. So we don't even know if one overturns the other since don't have theories in either case.

I would just amend what you said with the following - Neuroscience is in a proto-theoretic stage as any neuro-scientist will tell you. Parapsychology is also in a proto-theoretic stage.

[Maaneli]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

I emailed the author a few weeks ago regarding his essay "a ghost in the machine". But he never responded.

Lame. Have you tried posting on his blog or under his article?

[Maaneli]

Originally Posted by Iyace

The whole article is kind of dumb, to be honest. First:

Parapsychology need not ' overturn ' neuroscience, much like qm doesn't overturn classical mechanics.

Begs the question of usefulness. We just spent the most money ever on a project to find the higgs boson. Did finding the higgs spark any new inventions or make our lives any more amazing? No, it just confirmed the existence of a field already in the standard model.

I'm growing tired of these false dichotomy tricks that seem popular amongst media skeptics. ' either you agree with us, or you hate science that us being used to cure your grandpa of cancer '. Seems like many people are so willing to put their faith in a 30 year old field at its infancy. If there's any time to makes changes to the prevailing assumptions, its now, when we don't know much.

I feel your frustration. I think it comes out of lazy thinking, which is excused because few people will go through the effort to fact-check false claims about parapsych research, thinking that the conclusion is obvious.

[mszlazak]

Originally Posted by Maaneli

I would just amend what you said with the following - Neuroscience is in a proto-theoretic stage as any neuro-scientist will tell you. Parapsychology is also in a proto-theoretic stage.

That's really the same thing! Whether you've started a race or are running in it does not mean you have or even will finish it.