Rebuttal Of Sebastin's Review Of The Irreducible Mind Book

First he says

Sebastin: This book was increasingly being presented, in woo woo land, as a sort of upcoming revolution in the humdrum universe of sheepishly mainstream psychologists and neuroscientists (who are mainly materialists by default, obviously not realizing the inconsistencies of such an obsolete position, stupid as they are). You see, mainstream scientists (i.e. not crackpots) have failed to provide evidence that the brain is at all involved in the production of consciousness and mental states. What IM shows however, through more than 800 pages of marshalling irrefutable evidence, is that the brain merely transmits consciousness. Or filters it (whatever that means). So there is a conflict, you see, a controversy between the productive theory, and the transmissive theory of mind-brain relationships. Isn't that great? Every side of the debate has something to bring to the table, and boy, do scientists love a cool controversy to resolve!


Leo: Here he says he has no idea what the transmission theory is. This is coming from someone who appears to know a lot about parapsychology but never came across the two objections to immortality by William James. How convenient is that?.

Sebastin: Well, that's the message, folks, there's nothing else in there. The authors of IM are simply deep into the explanatory gap, up to their neck, and they have no idea of how to get out. Nor do they really want to, of course, for it really feels good down there, it's all cozy and warm, bathing in your own tedious imaginary world, full of ignorance and smugness, without actually accomplishing anything of value in the real world. Mental causation, yeah, that's the problem we're told, that's the real issue. You cannot explain it without woo, and, well, you cannot explain woo without more woo. That's all there is in the book, and it can be formalized as follows:

Leo: You should read two supposed objectives to the doctrine of immortality by William James to find out what the theory entails. Also their mention about the transmission theory here by Michael Grosso

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=9&pageid=86&pgtype=1

Then he mentions how the transmission theory is implausible because it violates Occams Razor, which is a cop out because that objection can be used against the many world interpretation too well we thought so but many physicists believe they have found strong evidence for parellel universes. So it clearly is a cop out, because Occam's Razor isn't really about how complex the theory is, but if the data support the theory or not.


Another commenter Keith mentions

At the most basic level, though, the issue isn't an issue of mere simplicity, at least in the sense of saying production only postulates a brain, whereas transmission postulates a brain and immaterial mind, and so is less simple (i.e., two things are less simple than one). It's not simply that the immaterial soul is an unnecessarily entity, like the car engine demon, that one needn't invoke to explain how minds or cars work. It's that the immaterial soul couldn't even explain how minds work even if we did postulate it.


Leo: I disagree that is what makes the transmission theory more plausible is that it can account for all of the data from all fields of research. If you think all research and experiments in parapsychology and psychical research is a absolute waste of time then the production theory looks more plausible.


Keith: Their solution is basically, yes, the brain does all of these things when alive, but perhaps "the soul" comes to use some other brain after death. As I said, you might as well postulate bodily resurrection at that point. The whole point of the soul hypothesis is to explain how it is that we have the minds that we know directly, here and now. When proponents give up on that and postulate some other kind of mind we might have postmortem, they are in essence conceding that the soul is not only unnecessary to explain our "embodied" minds but that it can't explain them even if we grant that there is such a thing. They are conceding that the brain in necessary for the minds we know about! What more is there to say at that point? Postulating some secondary brain that takes over what the "organic" brain has done all along is the equivalent, in my view, of postulating aliens that direct the behavior of the humans who make crop circles. Sure, it's logically possible, but it certainly isn't a very plausible view to hold.


Leo: We never said any such thing, we said that our in our physical world, the physical body and brain receives our mind. That is that the soul, is connected to the embodied mind and the brain. Really? isn't if dualism is right everything is dual in nature?. So why couldn't their be a double brain if their is a double body?. So what is a plausible view for us dualists who postulate a soul, breathe of life [vitalism]. Clearly that would not be much of a soul their at all. Neither would by saying the soul is just energy because who we are is clearly memories, personality etc. The only one i can think of is a double body that is almost a duplicate copy of a physical body, so yes it would have a etheric brain. The view that the soul is very similiar to the physical body but in a slightly different form is very consistent with the survival hypothesis. Where the view, that the soul is energy is not so consistent with the evidence we have to date, neither is the view that the soul is the breathe of life.