I have come across this book by authors Keith Augustine and the late Michael Martin. The book argues that the mind is completely dependent on the brain. Therefore, when the brain dies the mind dies. This is just a partial review of the book as it would take a lot of time to review this book and it's because it's a lot of the same stuff that dualist's already know about. I would just like to refute certain things that have taken my attention. One of the argument's in the book comes from the physics part of it. That it violates known physical laws however those laws are often violated regularly. The problems with the casual closure argument is that number one it has never been shown to be scientifically true. Number two a lot of scientists disagree with this argument and state the universe is actually open. Keith Augustine obviously has no clue what substance dualism actually entails. My view of the soul is that it's an etheric like substance that is made up of a different kind of matter. This etheric body vibrates at a higher frequency than normal matter.
The etheric body (soul) does not get effected by just things as brain damage only the the mind which is largely information based. The split brain experiments doesn't help Keith's case whatsoever as the recent data show no split consciousnesses. On top of that Multiple Personality disorder has been largely discredited.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170125093823.htm
What is in question is the degree of the dependency between mind and brain. It doesn't seem as strong as what many of the scientists let on it is. Keith also mentions in the book if the brain is a mere receiver of the mind then why is the brain so complexed?. Has Keith ever heard of the view of a complex receiver. If the brain is a producer or generator of the mind/consciousness than it would equally have to be complexed to do that as well. What evidence Keith states would show that substance dualism is probably false?. I have actually mentioned that strong AI would deliver such strong evidence as how could are mind and consciousness be replicated in a machine if it's destined to go to the afterlife?. However, unfortunately for Keith, Strong AI is looking less and less likely as more and more false predictions come out about when it will happen. So we keep moving forward in time making it less likely. Keith just uses excuses as to why the evidence for an afterlife doesn't work. He is fixated on an agenda to push his view along with the authors and scientists in this book without giving a neutral view on this subject which is rightfully deserves. No dualist denies the fact of interaction between the mind and brain, their is no one way casual street however like Keith Augustine would like readers to believe. Instead we have strong evidence that the mind can also effect the brain.
One of the evidence's that Materialist's use as evidence for dependency of the mind and brain. Is that bigger brains make better minds. That however is not true instead often brain size has nothing to do with intelligence which is one of the key aspect of the mind. If the production theory was true you would actually expect bigger brains to make better minds that is not the case. I know many people with smaller brains than some of my other friends who have bigger brains but those friends of mine with the smaller brains actually are smarter than them they have a high IQ. Another evidence that materialist use is that when the brain is damage the mind is also damaged this is the other line of evidence in favored of dependency we are told. Unlike materialist's though we jump to the conclusion that mind is damaged when the brain is. Instead we point out to the fact that their is a strong correlation between the brain and the mind. However that doesn't lead to the conclusion that the brain causes the mind.
There is two compelling reasons putting instead the evidence for survival and psi phenomenon for a second why it's actually not logical to think that the mind/consciousness must cease to exist when the brain/body does.
1. All physical things are subject to death no other way around that. However, consciousness is largely subjective, we know of nothing else that is subjective in nature. How can something that is largely subjective die?. This in of itself would strongly argue for the existence of an afterlife.
2. If their is no end or beginning to the universe and it's like the cyclic model than eventually you would exist again somewhere in the the universe.
Showing posts with label Keith Augustine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keith Augustine. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Friday, November 6, 2009
Is Dualism Testable?
Of course dualism is testable and also falsifiable. The evidence that supports dualism in the form of substance dualism is very very strong, it's hard to see how educated professionals can go on denying the obvious facts. This is what this blog is all about letting the general public along with scientists know that their is overwhelming data for survival of bodily death and psi phenomena.
Keith Augustine's theory that near death experiences that just hallucinations brought on by a dying brain. It has many problems for example how does he theory account for people who blind in life can see when experiencing an out of body experience?. Also people born deaf can hear again when having an out of body experience as well. Also, the physiology of the brain completely works against his theory based on the fact that the cortex of the brain is no longer active in a lot of these cases. For, his case to work he would have to show that lower cortical processes in the brain can somehow take over the function of higher ones in cardiac arrest. However that has never happened. Yes their is no doubt their is undetected brain activity that can't be picked up by EEG however those have not been discovered in deeper areas of the brain that are not of the cortex part of the brain.
I am happy to say that I know some people have found some very good information on this blog of mine. So I will definitely continue this blog. Their has been a lot of things lately happening in my life, such as i went for an interview to get on a job program. Today i took a CAAT test to test my IQ. It was very fun to do.
If i get the job program it looks like i will indeed be much better off than i am now. Which is a very good thing for sure. I have lately been think a lot about the h1n1 vaccine and this shortage problem well i know i will definitely be getting the shot as well as the seasonal flu shot. Starting too see how of the christmas commericals on tv lately it is wonderful. I love christmas time it's my favorite holiday.
Keith Augustine's theory that near death experiences that just hallucinations brought on by a dying brain. It has many problems for example how does he theory account for people who blind in life can see when experiencing an out of body experience?. Also people born deaf can hear again when having an out of body experience as well. Also, the physiology of the brain completely works against his theory based on the fact that the cortex of the brain is no longer active in a lot of these cases. For, his case to work he would have to show that lower cortical processes in the brain can somehow take over the function of higher ones in cardiac arrest. However that has never happened. Yes their is no doubt their is undetected brain activity that can't be picked up by EEG however those have not been discovered in deeper areas of the brain that are not of the cortex part of the brain.
I am happy to say that I know some people have found some very good information on this blog of mine. So I will definitely continue this blog. Their has been a lot of things lately happening in my life, such as i went for an interview to get on a job program. Today i took a CAAT test to test my IQ. It was very fun to do.
If i get the job program it looks like i will indeed be much better off than i am now. Which is a very good thing for sure. I have lately been think a lot about the h1n1 vaccine and this shortage problem well i know i will definitely be getting the shot as well as the seasonal flu shot. Starting too see how of the christmas commericals on tv lately it is wonderful. I love christmas time it's my favorite holiday.
Monday, August 31, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
My Response To Keith Augustine In Michael Prescott Blog Post Called Rover
Keith,
I am sorry i don't remember about you saying how the production theory could be falsified. I have a lot on my mind these days. I have also offered a plausible explanation for the combination key lock experiment
"Apparently, deceased Thouless could remember Oram and other similar facts. Now Keith says even though that is so the simpler explanation would be because he didn't remember the simple keys would be that he didn't survive his death. But their are certainly more explanations then that. One explanation would be that he was not communicating with thouless at all but some other entity and was being deceived by this entity. To me the explanation that another entity who pretended to know Oram is more plausible than the explanation that Thousless didn't survive death. Why? because apparently this entity knew Oram, did Oram ask this entity if he could know anything that thousless would know when he was alive?. According to Oram this entity just knew him. So what we have hear is no confirmation that this was indeed Thousless or some other entity pretending to be Thouless".
Keith says
Ditto when talking about the causes of OBEs and NDEs, as it is anything but clear that something leaves the body during them, given the mismash of nonexistent things seen during them, clear cultural influences on them, and reports of veridical perceptions. It's not as if these experiences are always clearly veridical or just unknown. Sometimes people see things that don't exist, as Charles Tart even notes in the conclusion of his OBE chapter in his recent _The End of Materialism_. Given that the evidence is all over the map with respect to theory, I think we would have to establish conclusively that real target identification happens during OBEs/NDEs, the sort that simply couldn't be explained by overhearing things or any other normal means. And I think that's an entirely rational point of view.
Leo- I totally agree this appears to be what is happening now with positive results already in the pilot study of the Aware study on near death experiences.
Keith says
If you keep personal survival, you will be doing so in blatant contradiction of the findings of physiological psychology, maintaining the pilot-to-ship simple dualism implied by the TV show-to-TV, Mars rover, Predator drone, and so on analogies.
Not if the brain is an advanced tv receiver, Keith is presumming that mind brain dependency is so tight that it can't be conceivable that the mind could survive death.
Keith says
Transmission implies that the brain plays a major part in shaping what the mind is while "inside" a living organism, not simply in allowing that mind to control the physical world. Hence why PCP, or LSD, can directly alter the mind, instead of just cutting off the mind's ability to control the body, or perceive the physical world.
Leo- Wait a second, the transmission isn't the brain it's a medium of somekind, that can only be speculated on. We can alter receivers, so the brain itself is being altered while the mind is also being altered, which is information. The real issue here is whether than is an immaterial soul or not, neuroscience is shown that yes mind exists [information] and the brain exists. But what about soul? which is i call our subjective experiences, inner life. Can the soul tranferred all the information from the brain to this soul, this i saw is very possible.
Keith i will explain to you the weaknesses in the particular case you just mentioned that of Rosemary. If you have cases that are bullet proof and really deliver the evidence for the production theory instead of the the very weak cases such as Phineas Gage, and Rosemary Kennedy. I love to see them .
Now let's look at the doubtful case you mentioned.
1] "Rosemary has been described as being a shy child whose I.Q. tests reportedly indicated a moderate mental retardation, but this is a question of some controversy".
Strike one it appears that their is indeed some controversy over what amount if little mental retardation occur to her I.Q.
Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Her mother, Mrs. Rose Kennedy, remarked that although the lobotomy stopped her daughter's violent behavior.
Verbal skills eh, that is the thing, this is explained by the fact that her soul was restricted and constrained by particular damage to part of her brain.
"Ronald Kessler, author of The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, disagrees with this assessment. He believes that Rosemary's problem was instead mental illness. He says it’s true that Rosemary had always been slower than the other children. But as a teenager, she was able to write endearing letters, dance, and do arithmetic. At the age of nine, Rosemary neatly and correctly multiplied and divided: 428 × 32 = 13696, for example."[7].
So we see that her intelligence was not affected by the lobotomy also her inner subjective character was not affected either .
Keith, sure those five individuals have concluded the same as you, but that doesn't prove your case. As much as me pointing out several neuroscientists who DON'T agree with your position. Such as Dr. Wilder Penfield, Dr. John C Eccles, Karl R. Popper. Keith their is no doubt their is mind brain dependency but how strong is the dependency is the question at stake here. What i am suggesting is yes personality radically changes in many cases, however when the mind brain connection is broken the mind get's immediately restored to an age like 20 years old. It's the soul that get's released from the body and restores all memories, thoughts and feelings after physical death. Also your forgetting that simple dualists know that the mind is information, where the soul is the one that takes over once the body/brain dies.
Perhaps the soul is an abtract entity who uses it's imagination to create an afterlife in the platonic realm.
Would you say that Wilder Penfield's work gave experimental support for mind brain dependency? Wilder Penfield never endorsed this theory, nor did he think that this was the best explanation for his data. Wilder Penfield started out an materialist until he started doing work with epileptic patients.
"For myself, after a professional lifetime spent i trying to discover how the brain accounts for the mind, it comes as a surprise now to discover, during this final examination of the evidence, that the dualist hypothesis seems the more reasonable of the two possible explanations. Mind comes into action and goes out of action with the highest brain-mechanism, it is true. But the mind has energy. The form of that energy is different from that of neuronal potentials that travel the axone pathways. There I must leave it."
You also forget that simple dualism and interaction dualism both propose that the soul is made of a different type of matter, that the soul has a brain too, possibly of dark matter.
I am sorry i don't remember about you saying how the production theory could be falsified. I have a lot on my mind these days. I have also offered a plausible explanation for the combination key lock experiment
"Apparently, deceased Thouless could remember Oram and other similar facts. Now Keith says even though that is so the simpler explanation would be because he didn't remember the simple keys would be that he didn't survive his death. But their are certainly more explanations then that. One explanation would be that he was not communicating with thouless at all but some other entity and was being deceived by this entity. To me the explanation that another entity who pretended to know Oram is more plausible than the explanation that Thousless didn't survive death. Why? because apparently this entity knew Oram, did Oram ask this entity if he could know anything that thousless would know when he was alive?. According to Oram this entity just knew him. So what we have hear is no confirmation that this was indeed Thousless or some other entity pretending to be Thouless".
Keith says
Ditto when talking about the causes of OBEs and NDEs, as it is anything but clear that something leaves the body during them, given the mismash of nonexistent things seen during them, clear cultural influences on them, and reports of veridical perceptions. It's not as if these experiences are always clearly veridical or just unknown. Sometimes people see things that don't exist, as Charles Tart even notes in the conclusion of his OBE chapter in his recent _The End of Materialism_. Given that the evidence is all over the map with respect to theory, I think we would have to establish conclusively that real target identification happens during OBEs/NDEs, the sort that simply couldn't be explained by overhearing things or any other normal means. And I think that's an entirely rational point of view.
Leo- I totally agree this appears to be what is happening now with positive results already in the pilot study of the Aware study on near death experiences.
Keith says
If you keep personal survival, you will be doing so in blatant contradiction of the findings of physiological psychology, maintaining the pilot-to-ship simple dualism implied by the TV show-to-TV, Mars rover, Predator drone, and so on analogies.
Not if the brain is an advanced tv receiver, Keith is presumming that mind brain dependency is so tight that it can't be conceivable that the mind could survive death.
Keith says
Transmission implies that the brain plays a major part in shaping what the mind is while "inside" a living organism, not simply in allowing that mind to control the physical world. Hence why PCP, or LSD, can directly alter the mind, instead of just cutting off the mind's ability to control the body, or perceive the physical world.
Leo- Wait a second, the transmission isn't the brain it's a medium of somekind, that can only be speculated on. We can alter receivers, so the brain itself is being altered while the mind is also being altered, which is information. The real issue here is whether than is an immaterial soul or not, neuroscience is shown that yes mind exists [information] and the brain exists. But what about soul? which is i call our subjective experiences, inner life. Can the soul tranferred all the information from the brain to this soul, this i saw is very possible.
Keith i will explain to you the weaknesses in the particular case you just mentioned that of Rosemary. If you have cases that are bullet proof and really deliver the evidence for the production theory instead of the the very weak cases such as Phineas Gage, and Rosemary Kennedy. I love to see them .
Now let's look at the doubtful case you mentioned.
1] "Rosemary has been described as being a shy child whose I.Q. tests reportedly indicated a moderate mental retardation, but this is a question of some controversy".
Strike one it appears that their is indeed some controversy over what amount if little mental retardation occur to her I.Q.
Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Her mother, Mrs. Rose Kennedy, remarked that although the lobotomy stopped her daughter's violent behavior.
Verbal skills eh, that is the thing, this is explained by the fact that her soul was restricted and constrained by particular damage to part of her brain.
"Ronald Kessler, author of The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, disagrees with this assessment. He believes that Rosemary's problem was instead mental illness. He says it’s true that Rosemary had always been slower than the other children. But as a teenager, she was able to write endearing letters, dance, and do arithmetic. At the age of nine, Rosemary neatly and correctly multiplied and divided: 428 × 32 = 13696, for example."[7].
So we see that her intelligence was not affected by the lobotomy also her inner subjective character was not affected either .
Keith, sure those five individuals have concluded the same as you, but that doesn't prove your case. As much as me pointing out several neuroscientists who DON'T agree with your position. Such as Dr. Wilder Penfield, Dr. John C Eccles, Karl R. Popper. Keith their is no doubt their is mind brain dependency but how strong is the dependency is the question at stake here. What i am suggesting is yes personality radically changes in many cases, however when the mind brain connection is broken the mind get's immediately restored to an age like 20 years old. It's the soul that get's released from the body and restores all memories, thoughts and feelings after physical death. Also your forgetting that simple dualists know that the mind is information, where the soul is the one that takes over once the body/brain dies.
Perhaps the soul is an abtract entity who uses it's imagination to create an afterlife in the platonic realm.
Would you say that Wilder Penfield's work gave experimental support for mind brain dependency? Wilder Penfield never endorsed this theory, nor did he think that this was the best explanation for his data. Wilder Penfield started out an materialist until he started doing work with epileptic patients.
"For myself, after a professional lifetime spent i trying to discover how the brain accounts for the mind, it comes as a surprise now to discover, during this final examination of the evidence, that the dualist hypothesis seems the more reasonable of the two possible explanations. Mind comes into action and goes out of action with the highest brain-mechanism, it is true. But the mind has energy. The form of that energy is different from that of neuronal potentials that travel the axone pathways. There I must leave it."
You also forget that simple dualism and interaction dualism both propose that the soul is made of a different type of matter, that the soul has a brain too, possibly of dark matter.
Monday, June 8, 2009
My Response To Keith Augustine's View That The Production Theory Is The Most Parsimonious Explanation For The Evidence In Neuroscience
Keith,
Who ever said the better the brain, the better the filter?. If you assume that the main source of consciousness and mind is a medium but not the brain. Your saying that from outside observation that what we observe is damage brain equals damage mind and consciousness. But evidence coming from near death experiences and out of body experiences show that the inner subjective consciousness along with mind[information] is not damaged or destroyed, rather restricted by the brain.
Their is another argument for dualism which i have come across from this site
http://www.afterlifedebate.com/for.html
The argument from geometry, this is based on two premises
1. Additional dimensions besides our own
2. A Additional dimension of space and an additional dimension of time would affect our experience, and this conception seems to correlate with dream experience
More about the argument from geometry can
be found here
http://www.afterlifedebate.com/bookshop.html
Keith it depends on what you view mind and consciousness
Mind- Dreams, Thoughts, Memories,
Consciousness- Personality, Inner Subjective experience.
I seen you mentioned Phineas Gage before where he had a spike go through his
head. You probably see this case as supportive of the production hypothesis. Here is why it isn't consistent with the production hypothesis.
- The uncertainty of Harlow's sources for the changes he describes in Gage, combined with the fact that he waited almost twenty years (between his first and second papers) to communicate those changes, constitute one of the central puzzles of the case.
Current Research
- Recently, an advertisement for a previously-unknown public appearance by Gage has been discovered, as have a report of his behavior during his time in Chile and a description of what may have been his daily work routine there as a long-distance coach driver. This new information suggests that the seriously maladapted Gage described by Harlow may have existed for only a limited time after the accident—that Phineas eventually "figured out how to live"[39] despite his injury, and was in later life far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than has been thought.
If this is so then (along with theoretical implications) it "would add to current evidence that rehabilitation can be effective even in difficult and long-standing cases," according to Macmillan. To better understand the question, Macmillan and collaborators are actively seeking additional evidence on Gage's life and behavior.[40]
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
The case above is usually presented to be one of the best cases if not the best evidence that materialists have used based on.
-Harlow's observation which is very questionable based on him taking almost 20 years to communicate changes he saw in Phineas Gage, between his first and second papers. Possible embellishment, could be. However, materialists insists on taking Harlow's account as a trustworthy source. Now with new evidence which i posted above it's even more likely that the personality changes that Harlow's said occur weren't as dramatic as he said they were.
This case based on these facts show that this case is consistent with the filter or transmission theory. It also shows that the mind brain close link to eachother is not as close as what is assumed.
Another piece of evidence which appears to be consistent with the production hypothesis is the split brain experiments, HOWEVER, it appears that two conscious streams of consciousness didn't happen at all.
Due to its inherent private character, an actual co-consciousness is impossible to prove conclusively, and one self with only temporary functional dissociation is even the best explanation as split-brain patients normally show a remarkable psychological and motoric unity that can hardly be reconciled with the somatogenic creation of a new nonphysical subject by commisurectomy.
More here about split brain experiments
http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/Dualismlives.htm
Keith says
We're not talking about mere influence here. We're talking about radical modification. When you strike a tuning fork against a status, that strike influences the statue in barely noticable ways. When you light some dynamite placed in the middle of it, the dynamite radically modifies the statue. The latter is the sort of brain "influence" on mind we're talking about. And it occurs in contradiction to what dualism predicts: that the mind is one thing, the brain another thing, and the two things interact with each other (hence: interactionist substance dualism). Just as I can't modify my body (get a facelift, say, or make myself grow 3 more feet overnight) merely by "willing it," my brain should not be able to turn my personality into that of a totally different sort of person merely by interacting with it. The PCP example does not fit what one would expect if substance dualism were true. Radical brain changes can result in radical changes of one's mind. There is no evidence that the mind can change the body in so radical a way. You can't think "grow muscles" really hard and make it so. Only physical activity can do that. So clearly the mind is far more more dependent on the brain than any converse claim that the brain depends on the mind. Schizophrenics can't just wish their schizophrenia away. This is why the brain is treated as primary and the mind as secondary. If their powers were reversed, and the brain hardly influenced the mind at all, but one could will changes in the physical world and watch them happen (think: changing the channel without a remote control), the mind would be considered primary and the brain secondary. The reason that this is not the case is because that's now how it works in the real world.
My response
Experiments on humans (some of the Buddhist monks under the Dalai Lama’s direction) seem to demonstrate that the physical organ of the brain can be shaped and transformed by choices made by the mind.
Without mind though you can't make goals to acheive arm muscle. Then their is introspection studies down that bring further evidence for dualism. Let's also not forget the failure of behaviorism which goal was to provide evidence that the mind was produced by the brain. Also artifical intelligence main goal was to show the mind can be put into an robot another failure.
Keith says
"It seems inescapable to me that any form of substance dualism is committed to predicting that the mind (the controller) is largely independent from the brain (the drone's transmitter/receiver). The worst you can do to the controller by manipulating the drone's transmitter/receiver is make the controller deaf or blind regarding the drone's environment, or unable to move the drone. You cannot affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces. You cannot get the controller to go into a psychotic rage by manipulating the drone's radio. But you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain. In short, basic neuroscientific facts are simply inexplicable on any variety of substance dualism."
My response
Unless that receiver is very advanced, the maybe a very advanced receiver. Also you seem to be assuming that dualists believe a soul is controlling the physical body, i don't think many dualists hold that view, they hold that this soul is restricted and heavily constrained by the physical body. The brain is a reducing valve to consciousness.
Also i like to quote Keith here when he says
That Phineas Gage's personality changes might not be as dramatic as previously reported does not show that his brain damage resulted in no dramatic personality changes. The Gage example is commonly used in Introduction to Psychology textbooks, and that is why it is typically cited, but numerous other examples could be mentioned.
Here he is begging the question why you ask?. Here is why.
The uncertainty of Harlow's sources for the changes he describes in Gage, combined with the fact that he waited almost twenty years (between his first and second papers) to communicate those changes, constitute one of the central puzzles of the case.
-Harlow's observation which is very questionable based on him taking almost 20 years to communicate changes he saw in Phineas Gage, between his first and second papers. Possible embellishment, could be. However, materialists insists on taking Harlow's account as a trustworthy source. Now with new evidence which i posted above it's even more likely that the personality changes that Harlow's said occur weren't as dramatic as he said they were.
No doubt Phineas Gage that their was some effect on his personality, any theory that looks to Gage for support faces the difficulty that the nature and extent of the injury's effects on his mental state are highly uncertain. In fact, very little is known about what Phineas was like either before or after his injury (almost none of it first-hand),[22] the mental changes described after his death were far more dramatic than anything reported while he was alive, and even those descriptions which seem credible do not tell us the period of his post-accident life to which they are meant to apply.
This shows also that the mind brain linkage often cited by materialists is not as close as what is assumed.
Keith says
First, Leo, I'd recommend you stop pushing the Houdini Code stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ford#The_Three_Houdini_Messages_and_others
Douglas Stokes also says in one of his parapsychological books that the medium Arthur Ford, who "broke" the Houdini code, "was discovered to have kept elaborate files on prospective sitters." So the Wikipedia entry's explanation of how Ford broke it, by reading the solution off of Houdini's wife's engraved ring when he handled it for "psychometry," certainly seems plausible. (That said, I don't know more about this case than that tidbit; and I'm characterizing it from memory, so see the Wikipedia entry itself for the specifics.)
My response
So i am suppose to assume that Arthur Ford was a fraud, because of an anecdote says that may of happened?.
Keith also says
I don't suppose that you'd argue that Rosemary Kennedy's mind was hardly affected by her lobotomy: "Instead of producing the hoped-for result, however, the lobotomy reduced Rosemary to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent and staring blankly at walls for hours. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Her mother, Mrs. Rose Kennedy, remarked that although the lobotomy stopped her daughter's violent behavior, it left her completely incapacitated."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy
Yes her verbal skills were affected, no dualist deny's the face that information[memories, thoughts, verbal skills etc.] get affected by a host of thing such as brain damage, lomotomies etc. But the question is this information being constrained and restricted by the brain or the brain is like a reducing valve, or is that information so dependent that it couldn't survive death?. Certainly this case don't tell us anything about this. It is compatible on both views, it's really about which theory accounts for all of the data. This is what the transmission theory does.
Who ever said the better the brain, the better the filter?. If you assume that the main source of consciousness and mind is a medium but not the brain. Your saying that from outside observation that what we observe is damage brain equals damage mind and consciousness. But evidence coming from near death experiences and out of body experiences show that the inner subjective consciousness along with mind[information] is not damaged or destroyed, rather restricted by the brain.
Their is another argument for dualism which i have come across from this site
http://www.afterlifedebate.com/for.html
The argument from geometry, this is based on two premises
1. Additional dimensions besides our own
2. A Additional dimension of space and an additional dimension of time would affect our experience, and this conception seems to correlate with dream experience
More about the argument from geometry can
be found here
http://www.afterlifedebate.com/bookshop.html
Keith it depends on what you view mind and consciousness
Mind- Dreams, Thoughts, Memories,
Consciousness- Personality, Inner Subjective experience.
I seen you mentioned Phineas Gage before where he had a spike go through his
head. You probably see this case as supportive of the production hypothesis. Here is why it isn't consistent with the production hypothesis.
- The uncertainty of Harlow's sources for the changes he describes in Gage, combined with the fact that he waited almost twenty years (between his first and second papers) to communicate those changes, constitute one of the central puzzles of the case.
Current Research
- Recently, an advertisement for a previously-unknown public appearance by Gage has been discovered, as have a report of his behavior during his time in Chile and a description of what may have been his daily work routine there as a long-distance coach driver. This new information suggests that the seriously maladapted Gage described by Harlow may have existed for only a limited time after the accident—that Phineas eventually "figured out how to live"[39] despite his injury, and was in later life far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than has been thought.
If this is so then (along with theoretical implications) it "would add to current evidence that rehabilitation can be effective even in difficult and long-standing cases," according to Macmillan. To better understand the question, Macmillan and collaborators are actively seeking additional evidence on Gage's life and behavior.[40]
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
The case above is usually presented to be one of the best cases if not the best evidence that materialists have used based on.
-Harlow's observation which is very questionable based on him taking almost 20 years to communicate changes he saw in Phineas Gage, between his first and second papers. Possible embellishment, could be. However, materialists insists on taking Harlow's account as a trustworthy source. Now with new evidence which i posted above it's even more likely that the personality changes that Harlow's said occur weren't as dramatic as he said they were.
This case based on these facts show that this case is consistent with the filter or transmission theory. It also shows that the mind brain close link to eachother is not as close as what is assumed.
Another piece of evidence which appears to be consistent with the production hypothesis is the split brain experiments, HOWEVER, it appears that two conscious streams of consciousness didn't happen at all.
Due to its inherent private character, an actual co-consciousness is impossible to prove conclusively, and one self with only temporary functional dissociation is even the best explanation as split-brain patients normally show a remarkable psychological and motoric unity that can hardly be reconciled with the somatogenic creation of a new nonphysical subject by commisurectomy.
More here about split brain experiments
http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/Dualismlives.htm
Keith says
We're not talking about mere influence here. We're talking about radical modification. When you strike a tuning fork against a status, that strike influences the statue in barely noticable ways. When you light some dynamite placed in the middle of it, the dynamite radically modifies the statue. The latter is the sort of brain "influence" on mind we're talking about. And it occurs in contradiction to what dualism predicts: that the mind is one thing, the brain another thing, and the two things interact with each other (hence: interactionist substance dualism). Just as I can't modify my body (get a facelift, say, or make myself grow 3 more feet overnight) merely by "willing it," my brain should not be able to turn my personality into that of a totally different sort of person merely by interacting with it. The PCP example does not fit what one would expect if substance dualism were true. Radical brain changes can result in radical changes of one's mind. There is no evidence that the mind can change the body in so radical a way. You can't think "grow muscles" really hard and make it so. Only physical activity can do that. So clearly the mind is far more more dependent on the brain than any converse claim that the brain depends on the mind. Schizophrenics can't just wish their schizophrenia away. This is why the brain is treated as primary and the mind as secondary. If their powers were reversed, and the brain hardly influenced the mind at all, but one could will changes in the physical world and watch them happen (think: changing the channel without a remote control), the mind would be considered primary and the brain secondary. The reason that this is not the case is because that's now how it works in the real world.
My response
Experiments on humans (some of the Buddhist monks under the Dalai Lama’s direction) seem to demonstrate that the physical organ of the brain can be shaped and transformed by choices made by the mind.
Without mind though you can't make goals to acheive arm muscle. Then their is introspection studies down that bring further evidence for dualism. Let's also not forget the failure of behaviorism which goal was to provide evidence that the mind was produced by the brain. Also artifical intelligence main goal was to show the mind can be put into an robot another failure.
Keith says
"It seems inescapable to me that any form of substance dualism is committed to predicting that the mind (the controller) is largely independent from the brain (the drone's transmitter/receiver). The worst you can do to the controller by manipulating the drone's transmitter/receiver is make the controller deaf or blind regarding the drone's environment, or unable to move the drone. You cannot affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces. You cannot get the controller to go into a psychotic rage by manipulating the drone's radio. But you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain. In short, basic neuroscientific facts are simply inexplicable on any variety of substance dualism."
My response
Unless that receiver is very advanced, the maybe a very advanced receiver. Also you seem to be assuming that dualists believe a soul is controlling the physical body, i don't think many dualists hold that view, they hold that this soul is restricted and heavily constrained by the physical body. The brain is a reducing valve to consciousness.
Also i like to quote Keith here when he says
That Phineas Gage's personality changes might not be as dramatic as previously reported does not show that his brain damage resulted in no dramatic personality changes. The Gage example is commonly used in Introduction to Psychology textbooks, and that is why it is typically cited, but numerous other examples could be mentioned.
Here he is begging the question why you ask?. Here is why.
The uncertainty of Harlow's sources for the changes he describes in Gage, combined with the fact that he waited almost twenty years (between his first and second papers) to communicate those changes, constitute one of the central puzzles of the case.
-Harlow's observation which is very questionable based on him taking almost 20 years to communicate changes he saw in Phineas Gage, between his first and second papers. Possible embellishment, could be. However, materialists insists on taking Harlow's account as a trustworthy source. Now with new evidence which i posted above it's even more likely that the personality changes that Harlow's said occur weren't as dramatic as he said they were.
No doubt Phineas Gage that their was some effect on his personality, any theory that looks to Gage for support faces the difficulty that the nature and extent of the injury's effects on his mental state are highly uncertain. In fact, very little is known about what Phineas was like either before or after his injury (almost none of it first-hand),[22] the mental changes described after his death were far more dramatic than anything reported while he was alive, and even those descriptions which seem credible do not tell us the period of his post-accident life to which they are meant to apply.
This shows also that the mind brain linkage often cited by materialists is not as close as what is assumed.
Keith says
First, Leo, I'd recommend you stop pushing the Houdini Code stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ford#The_Three_Houdini_Messages_and_others
Douglas Stokes also says in one of his parapsychological books that the medium Arthur Ford, who "broke" the Houdini code, "was discovered to have kept elaborate files on prospective sitters." So the Wikipedia entry's explanation of how Ford broke it, by reading the solution off of Houdini's wife's engraved ring when he handled it for "psychometry," certainly seems plausible. (That said, I don't know more about this case than that tidbit; and I'm characterizing it from memory, so see the Wikipedia entry itself for the specifics.)
My response
So i am suppose to assume that Arthur Ford was a fraud, because of an anecdote says that may of happened?.
Keith also says
I don't suppose that you'd argue that Rosemary Kennedy's mind was hardly affected by her lobotomy: "Instead of producing the hoped-for result, however, the lobotomy reduced Rosemary to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent and staring blankly at walls for hours. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Her mother, Mrs. Rose Kennedy, remarked that although the lobotomy stopped her daughter's violent behavior, it left her completely incapacitated."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy
Yes her verbal skills were affected, no dualist deny's the face that information[memories, thoughts, verbal skills etc.] get affected by a host of thing such as brain damage, lomotomies etc. But the question is this information being constrained and restricted by the brain or the brain is like a reducing valve, or is that information so dependent that it couldn't survive death?. Certainly this case don't tell us anything about this. It is compatible on both views, it's really about which theory accounts for all of the data. This is what the transmission theory does.
Friday, April 17, 2009
My Rebuttal To Keith Augustine's Response To Jim
Keith mentions psychical researchers Gardner Murphy, Douglas Stokes, C. D. Broad, and John Beloff who agree with Keith Augustine that neuroscience has proven the production theory. The problem is that appears not to be true. Why? the above four psychical researchers contented that Wilder Penfield's work gave supportable evidence for the production theory however Wilder Penfield never endorsed this theory. Nor did he think that this was the best explanation for his data. Wilder Penfield started out an materialist until he started doing work with epileptic patients. keith appeals to authority by pointed out four psychical researchers who believed that the best explanation was that consciousness is produced by the brain. The above misinterpretation of Wilder Penfield's work by these four psychical researchers should put some doubt on their view that consciousness is generated by brain processes.
Dr. Wilder Penfields writes
For my own part, after years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier to be logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does consist of two fundamental elements. Because it seems to me certain that it will always be quite impossible to explain the mind on the basis of neuronal action within the brain, and because it seems to me that the mind develops and matures independently throughout an individual's life as though it were a continuing element, and because a computer (which the brain is) must be programmed and operated by an agency capable of independent understanding, I am forced to choose the proposition that our being is to be understood on the basis of two elements.
Keith also says
Similarly, I would say that "the productive hypothesis" is the best explanation of the neuroscientific facts, which are indeed facts, and those other parapsychological things you might appeal to--OBEs, NDEs, CORT (cases of reincarnation type), mediumistic productions, apparitions--have nothing to do with disembodied existence, and thus the mind-brain relation, but concern different things: in some cases, perceptual tricks, in others, fraud or subconscious invention, and so on. (This is essentially what philosophers of mind take them to be, else they would look into such phenomena to learn about the mind-body relation. They don't look there because they don't believe such experiences tell us anything about the mind-body relation at all.)
You notice Keith doesn't mentioned at least some of these philosophers?.
Here's an excellent paper called " Can Consciousness survive the destruction of the brain?".
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk/articles/hart/consciousness.htm
Keith also says
If we had decisive evidence of the supernatural, I'd believe in it as much as I believe that the Sun is the center of the solar system. It's just that we don't have such evidence. That's why I am a naturalist--because the only *knowledge* we have of the world, knowledge gleaned from biology, or psychology, or geology, or what have you, is knowledge of natural things. It didn't have to be that way; astronomy could have revealed that life emerged within a second after the Big Bang. That would be incredibly difficult to account for naturalistically, if it could be done at all. But this is not the world revealed to us by science. It is science that has found only natural causes where supernatural ones were once imagined to exist. That's essentially where we are today: there are many known natural causes, many believed-in but no known supernatural causes, and ambiguous causes that may or may not be natural. But among the known causes, there are only natural ones. There's not a single indisputable supernatural thing in existence. That's possible if naturalism is false--but not likely. That's why I accept naturalism.
Keith fails to understand that dualism itself doesn't argue against of the reality of matter and energy. It's very obvious that both exist, and those two are both natural. The problem i think is our conceptions of both the supernatural and the natural as they are commonly adhered to be.
Dr. Wilder Penfields writes
For my own part, after years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier to be logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does consist of two fundamental elements. Because it seems to me certain that it will always be quite impossible to explain the mind on the basis of neuronal action within the brain, and because it seems to me that the mind develops and matures independently throughout an individual's life as though it were a continuing element, and because a computer (which the brain is) must be programmed and operated by an agency capable of independent understanding, I am forced to choose the proposition that our being is to be understood on the basis of two elements.
Keith also says
Similarly, I would say that "the productive hypothesis" is the best explanation of the neuroscientific facts, which are indeed facts, and those other parapsychological things you might appeal to--OBEs, NDEs, CORT (cases of reincarnation type), mediumistic productions, apparitions--have nothing to do with disembodied existence, and thus the mind-brain relation, but concern different things: in some cases, perceptual tricks, in others, fraud or subconscious invention, and so on. (This is essentially what philosophers of mind take them to be, else they would look into such phenomena to learn about the mind-body relation. They don't look there because they don't believe such experiences tell us anything about the mind-body relation at all.)
You notice Keith doesn't mentioned at least some of these philosophers?.
Here's an excellent paper called " Can Consciousness survive the destruction of the brain?".
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk/articles/hart/consciousness.htm
Keith also says
If we had decisive evidence of the supernatural, I'd believe in it as much as I believe that the Sun is the center of the solar system. It's just that we don't have such evidence. That's why I am a naturalist--because the only *knowledge* we have of the world, knowledge gleaned from biology, or psychology, or geology, or what have you, is knowledge of natural things. It didn't have to be that way; astronomy could have revealed that life emerged within a second after the Big Bang. That would be incredibly difficult to account for naturalistically, if it could be done at all. But this is not the world revealed to us by science. It is science that has found only natural causes where supernatural ones were once imagined to exist. That's essentially where we are today: there are many known natural causes, many believed-in but no known supernatural causes, and ambiguous causes that may or may not be natural. But among the known causes, there are only natural ones. There's not a single indisputable supernatural thing in existence. That's possible if naturalism is false--but not likely. That's why I accept naturalism.
Keith fails to understand that dualism itself doesn't argue against of the reality of matter and energy. It's very obvious that both exist, and those two are both natural. The problem i think is our conceptions of both the supernatural and the natural as they are commonly adhered to be.
Friday, March 27, 2009
My Response To Keith Augustine's Case Against Survival
keith,
Your side has been given many chances to present your case. Examples of scientists that have presented the case that mind is produced by the brain, and in their view their is no soul. Steve Pinker, Susan Blackmore, Steven Novella among others] They have been given plenty of media talks.
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/dawkins_pinker/dawkins_pinker_index.ht
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html
As far as Mrs Piper goes. Their is a godo critique on Martin Gardner's debunking of her mediumship.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/08/how-martin-gard.html
I wonder what you think of this direct test for survival which was proven.
Houdini's code
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk/articles/ford/houdini.htm
Hi response was that Steven Pinker never presented many areas of evidence against survival. But the link of Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker titled " Is science killing the soul" Present lots of this supposed evidence.
Keith,
Anyone can point to weaknesses in particular evidence, for example; the Phineas Cage case that you mentioned before, new information suggests that the seriously maladapted Gage described by Harlow may have existed for only a limited number of years after the accident—that in later life Phineas may have been far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than has been thought.
Now the production theory would predict that his lost of functionality and social abilities would be lost forever especially with the state of his brain damage. But that ain't so.
Embellishment also appears the case in this case, with the uncertainty of Harlow's sources for the changes he describes in Phineas, combined with the fact that he waited almost twenty years (between his first and second papers) to communicate those changes, constitute one of the central puzzles of the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
Another piece of evidence Keith to argue his case for extinction is the brain split experiments which are controversial. Many scientists among even Dr. Gazzaniga admitted to John Searle that he couldn't tell Searle if that showed two separate conscious selves or not.
True, Keith mainstream science often ignores parapsychological evidence because it is threatening to the precious naturalistic worldview. Their's a lot to lose.
I can go and on and on and continue to poke big holes in the cases against survival.
Your side has been given many chances to present your case. Examples of scientists that have presented the case that mind is produced by the brain, and in their view their is no soul. Steve Pinker, Susan Blackmore, Steven Novella among others] They have been given plenty of media talks.
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/dawkins_pinker/dawkins_pinker_index.ht
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html
As far as Mrs Piper goes. Their is a godo critique on Martin Gardner's debunking of her mediumship.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/08/how-martin-gard.html
I wonder what you think of this direct test for survival which was proven.
Houdini's code
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk/articles/ford/houdini.htm
Hi response was that Steven Pinker never presented many areas of evidence against survival. But the link of Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker titled " Is science killing the soul" Present lots of this supposed evidence.
Keith,
Anyone can point to weaknesses in particular evidence, for example; the Phineas Cage case that you mentioned before, new information suggests that the seriously maladapted Gage described by Harlow may have existed for only a limited number of years after the accident—that in later life Phineas may have been far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than has been thought.
Now the production theory would predict that his lost of functionality and social abilities would be lost forever especially with the state of his brain damage. But that ain't so.
Embellishment also appears the case in this case, with the uncertainty of Harlow's sources for the changes he describes in Phineas, combined with the fact that he waited almost twenty years (between his first and second papers) to communicate those changes, constitute one of the central puzzles of the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
Another piece of evidence Keith to argue his case for extinction is the brain split experiments which are controversial. Many scientists among even Dr. Gazzaniga admitted to John Searle that he couldn't tell Searle if that showed two separate conscious selves or not.
True, Keith mainstream science often ignores parapsychological evidence because it is threatening to the precious naturalistic worldview. Their's a lot to lose.
I can go and on and on and continue to poke big holes in the cases against survival.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Rebuttal To Keith Augustine's Look At The Tests Done By Ian Stevenson
Here is what Keith says
The late Robert Thouless, former President of the Society for Psychical Research, developed a test of survival where a message is encrypted in such a way that it can only be decoded by key words known only to one who has died (Stevenson 114). Thouless set up three encrypted messages for himself, hoping to communicate the key words which would decode his messages to his colleagues after his death through a medium. Though the first cipher he proposed was cracked a few weeks after he published it, neither of the other two ciphers were broken during his lifetime, providing a rare opportunity for parapsychologists to produce truly compelling evidence for survival of bodily death. The key to one of the remaining ciphers (a replacement for the cracked key) was a simple two-word key; the key to the other was a roughly 100-word literary passage. The literary passage key, though long, could be obtained simply by relaying the title of the book, the location of the passage in that book, and a couple of words from the beginning of the passage (Oram 118).
Under the advice of Ian Stevenson, Thouless also transposed the first six letters of his two-word key into numbers using a published table in order to reset a combination lock to those numbers (Stevenson 114). Unlike Thouless' encrypted message tests, the combination lock test requires the entire key to be known to unlock it and gives no hints that one is coming close to hitting the key by making near-misses, thus ruling out the possibility that one could narrow down his options for a key by repeated attempts to unlock the combination lock (115). Stevenson has reported that the odds of hitting the right key for a combination lock test purely by chance are 1 in 125,000 (115).
When Thouless died in 1984 roughly one hundred candidates for a key were submitted to the Society for Psychical Research, some of which came from mediums, but none of them were able to decipher any of Thouless' encrypted messages (Stevenson 114). However, in 1995 James Gillogly successfully decoded one of Thouless' messages using the two key words "black beauty" generated by a computer program he wrote[8] which yielded the message: "This is a cipher which will not be read unless I give the key words". The discovery of Thouless' two-word key was further confirmed when Stevenson used his table to transpose "BLACKB" back into numbers which unlocked Thouless' combination lock (115).
The flaw in Thouless' test which allowed it to be deciphered was his use of common words for a key that could easily be cross-checked by a computer program designed to form two-word combinations from all the entries in a typical dictionary (Oram 116). Incredibly, the parapsychologist Arthur Oram has come to the credulous conclusion that the repeated failures of mediums to come up with a key that will successfully unlock Thouless' encoded messages despite numerous tests is due to the inability of the deceased Thouless to remember the simple keys 'on the other side'! (Although the deceased Thouless could apparently remember who Oram was and other similar facts) (Oram 117). A simpler explanation for these failures is that Thouless could not communicate the key words because he had not in fact 'survived' his death and thus was not in contact with Oram through the mediums. To his credit, Oram does concede this point:
It seems fair to assume that if [the mediums] were in effective touch with Thouless they would either be given the key or an explanation that [and why] he cannot remember or cannot communicate the key ... [A] considerable number of people have felt that they have been in touch with Thouless and some of them have felt that rather deeply, including at least one whose submitted key was of a wrong form [italics mine] (117).
Regarding Thouless' simplest test Oram reports: "There are no instances in our records of anyone getting the two-word key even partially correct" (118). Other similar direct tests of the survival hypothesis have also yielded negative results: attempts to obtain postmortem Thouless' literary passage key to his remaining message, J. Gaither Pratt's mnemonic key to his combination lock, and T. E. Wood's key to his enciphered message have all been unsuccessful (Stevenson, et al, 329-334). Oram succinctly characterizes the state of the experimental evidence for survival from mediumship: "We can only be sure of two facts relating this research; one is that work has been done to try to get the keys through mediums and the other fact is that we have not obtained the keys" (Oram 118).
My response: Apparently, deceased Thouless could remember Oram and other similar facts. Now Keith says even though that is so the simpler explanation would be because he didn't remember the simple keys would be that he didn't survive his death. But their are certainly more explanations then that. One explanation would be that he was not communicating with thouless at all but some other entity and was being deceived by this entity. To me the explanation that another entity who pretended to know Oram is more plausible than the explanation that Thousless didn't survive death. Why? because apparently this entity knew Oram, did Oram ask this entity if he could know anything that thousless would know when he was alive?. According to Oram this entity just knew him. So what we have hear is no confirmation that this was indeed Thousless or some other entity pretending to be Thouless.
Of course Keith doesn't mention in his essay the case against immortality, strong evidence that apparently point to survival. Such as the cross correspondences, another is the r-101 case, the book tests, newspaper tests, along with Ian Stevenson's 21 best cases for reincarnation etc.
The r 101 case for example can be read here
http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/R-101.htm
The late Robert Thouless, former President of the Society for Psychical Research, developed a test of survival where a message is encrypted in such a way that it can only be decoded by key words known only to one who has died (Stevenson 114). Thouless set up three encrypted messages for himself, hoping to communicate the key words which would decode his messages to his colleagues after his death through a medium. Though the first cipher he proposed was cracked a few weeks after he published it, neither of the other two ciphers were broken during his lifetime, providing a rare opportunity for parapsychologists to produce truly compelling evidence for survival of bodily death. The key to one of the remaining ciphers (a replacement for the cracked key) was a simple two-word key; the key to the other was a roughly 100-word literary passage. The literary passage key, though long, could be obtained simply by relaying the title of the book, the location of the passage in that book, and a couple of words from the beginning of the passage (Oram 118).
Under the advice of Ian Stevenson, Thouless also transposed the first six letters of his two-word key into numbers using a published table in order to reset a combination lock to those numbers (Stevenson 114). Unlike Thouless' encrypted message tests, the combination lock test requires the entire key to be known to unlock it and gives no hints that one is coming close to hitting the key by making near-misses, thus ruling out the possibility that one could narrow down his options for a key by repeated attempts to unlock the combination lock (115). Stevenson has reported that the odds of hitting the right key for a combination lock test purely by chance are 1 in 125,000 (115).
When Thouless died in 1984 roughly one hundred candidates for a key were submitted to the Society for Psychical Research, some of which came from mediums, but none of them were able to decipher any of Thouless' encrypted messages (Stevenson 114). However, in 1995 James Gillogly successfully decoded one of Thouless' messages using the two key words "black beauty" generated by a computer program he wrote[8] which yielded the message: "This is a cipher which will not be read unless I give the key words". The discovery of Thouless' two-word key was further confirmed when Stevenson used his table to transpose "BLACKB" back into numbers which unlocked Thouless' combination lock (115).
The flaw in Thouless' test which allowed it to be deciphered was his use of common words for a key that could easily be cross-checked by a computer program designed to form two-word combinations from all the entries in a typical dictionary (Oram 116). Incredibly, the parapsychologist Arthur Oram has come to the credulous conclusion that the repeated failures of mediums to come up with a key that will successfully unlock Thouless' encoded messages despite numerous tests is due to the inability of the deceased Thouless to remember the simple keys 'on the other side'! (Although the deceased Thouless could apparently remember who Oram was and other similar facts) (Oram 117). A simpler explanation for these failures is that Thouless could not communicate the key words because he had not in fact 'survived' his death and thus was not in contact with Oram through the mediums. To his credit, Oram does concede this point:
It seems fair to assume that if [the mediums] were in effective touch with Thouless they would either be given the key or an explanation that [and why] he cannot remember or cannot communicate the key ... [A] considerable number of people have felt that they have been in touch with Thouless and some of them have felt that rather deeply, including at least one whose submitted key was of a wrong form [italics mine] (117).
Regarding Thouless' simplest test Oram reports: "There are no instances in our records of anyone getting the two-word key even partially correct" (118). Other similar direct tests of the survival hypothesis have also yielded negative results: attempts to obtain postmortem Thouless' literary passage key to his remaining message, J. Gaither Pratt's mnemonic key to his combination lock, and T. E. Wood's key to his enciphered message have all been unsuccessful (Stevenson, et al, 329-334). Oram succinctly characterizes the state of the experimental evidence for survival from mediumship: "We can only be sure of two facts relating this research; one is that work has been done to try to get the keys through mediums and the other fact is that we have not obtained the keys" (Oram 118).
My response: Apparently, deceased Thouless could remember Oram and other similar facts. Now Keith says even though that is so the simpler explanation would be because he didn't remember the simple keys would be that he didn't survive his death. But their are certainly more explanations then that. One explanation would be that he was not communicating with thouless at all but some other entity and was being deceived by this entity. To me the explanation that another entity who pretended to know Oram is more plausible than the explanation that Thousless didn't survive death. Why? because apparently this entity knew Oram, did Oram ask this entity if he could know anything that thousless would know when he was alive?. According to Oram this entity just knew him. So what we have hear is no confirmation that this was indeed Thousless or some other entity pretending to be Thouless.
Of course Keith doesn't mention in his essay the case against immortality, strong evidence that apparently point to survival. Such as the cross correspondences, another is the r-101 case, the book tests, newspaper tests, along with Ian Stevenson's 21 best cases for reincarnation etc.
The r 101 case for example can be read here
http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/R-101.htm
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Keith Augustine's Response To Neil Grossman's Article In The Journal Of Near Death Studies
Here's some citations from Neil Grossman's article. Unforunately as Michael Prescott says his article is not online.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2008/11/four-errors.html
Let me go though some of Keith Augustine's responses in the comment section he made in Michael Prescott blog.
Keith Augustine says, "being unconvinced of the reality of the supernatural, paranormal, or survival doesn't make one a dogmatic, close-minded, or "hard-core" skeptic; it simply makes one a skeptic."
Really a lot of scientists were skeptical of survival, paranormal and the supernatural until they could no longer ignore the massive amounts of evidence. Also, Keith is trying to protect an outdated worldview. We know now that reality is much bigger than we ever imagined.
Keith calls people a pundit because they disagree with him. No one likes to be called names.
I have always considered that materialism could be true. Of course you can say I don't consider materialism which is downright false.
Also I think we know the evidence Keith, it was summarized in the article the case against immortality. Their is ways to falisfy the transmission theory one would be to demonstrate that the brain is a generator. Now you can say that has already happened. But what most of us argue is that the brain is a complex receiver of consciousness.For example some of the evidence Keith uses is from the brain split experiments and Wilder Penfield's experimental findings. Benjamin Libet's finding that brain activity precedes a conscious decision, which is routinely presented by sceptics, in their dull way, as 'another nail in the coffin for dualism' (Blackmore, Dying to Live, p. 237), and which of course is open to contrary interpretations, as Libet himself pointed out. Wilder Penfield's experimental findings on the neurological basis of memory is also used by sceptics in an anti-dualist sense which Penfield himself did not endorse.
“Edwards puts the last nail in the coffin for a version of astral body theories when he observes that:”
“If the astral body is an exact duplicate of the regular body it must die along with the regular body ... If the secular body died as the result of a brain tumor or as the result of being shot through the heart, the astral brain and astral heart must have been similarly injured (22).”
Wait a second, what dualist says the astral body is made of ordinary matter?. None that I know of. This is a straw man. I see the astral body as a different type of matter but isn't affected by death. But this different type of matter can mimic the physical body.
I found an interesting comment down in the footnotes that read: "[1] We have no more reason to believe that human consciousness continues to exist after death than we have to believe that water buffalo or other animals continue to have experiences after they have died."
Umm no reason to believe?. How about our inner life?, experiences, empirical evidence that support psi and survival after death. Now if that isn't reason to believe that what is?. Also, the multiverse theory doesn't fit well with materialism. I mean the mystics have been saying for a long long time now that their are other realities/universes/dimensions.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2008/11/four-errors.html
Let me go though some of Keith Augustine's responses in the comment section he made in Michael Prescott blog.
Keith Augustine says, "being unconvinced of the reality of the supernatural, paranormal, or survival doesn't make one a dogmatic, close-minded, or "hard-core" skeptic; it simply makes one a skeptic."
Really a lot of scientists were skeptical of survival, paranormal and the supernatural until they could no longer ignore the massive amounts of evidence. Also, Keith is trying to protect an outdated worldview. We know now that reality is much bigger than we ever imagined.
Keith calls people a pundit because they disagree with him. No one likes to be called names.
I have always considered that materialism could be true. Of course you can say I don't consider materialism which is downright false.
Also I think we know the evidence Keith, it was summarized in the article the case against immortality. Their is ways to falisfy the transmission theory one would be to demonstrate that the brain is a generator. Now you can say that has already happened. But what most of us argue is that the brain is a complex receiver of consciousness.For example some of the evidence Keith uses is from the brain split experiments and Wilder Penfield's experimental findings. Benjamin Libet's finding that brain activity precedes a conscious decision, which is routinely presented by sceptics, in their dull way, as 'another nail in the coffin for dualism' (Blackmore, Dying to Live, p. 237), and which of course is open to contrary interpretations, as Libet himself pointed out. Wilder Penfield's experimental findings on the neurological basis of memory is also used by sceptics in an anti-dualist sense which Penfield himself did not endorse.
“Edwards puts the last nail in the coffin for a version of astral body theories when he observes that:”
“If the astral body is an exact duplicate of the regular body it must die along with the regular body ... If the secular body died as the result of a brain tumor or as the result of being shot through the heart, the astral brain and astral heart must have been similarly injured (22).”
Wait a second, what dualist says the astral body is made of ordinary matter?. None that I know of. This is a straw man. I see the astral body as a different type of matter but isn't affected by death. But this different type of matter can mimic the physical body.
I found an interesting comment down in the footnotes that read: "[1] We have no more reason to believe that human consciousness continues to exist after death than we have to believe that water buffalo or other animals continue to have experiences after they have died."
Umm no reason to believe?. How about our inner life?, experiences, empirical evidence that support psi and survival after death. Now if that isn't reason to believe that what is?. Also, the multiverse theory doesn't fit well with materialism. I mean the mystics have been saying for a long long time now that their are other realities/universes/dimensions.
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