Post #298,286
10/23/08 10:55:40 AM
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Creationists find new strategy
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026793.000-creationists-declare-war-over-the-brain.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news1_head_mg20026793.000
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Schwartz and Beauregard are part of a growing "non-material neuroscience" movement. They are attempting to resurrect Cartesian dualism - the idea that brain and mind are two fundamentally different kinds of things, material and immaterial - in the hope that it will make room in science both for supernatural forces and for a soul. The two have signed the "Scientific dissent from Darwinism" petition, spearheaded by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, headquarters of the intelligent design movement. ID argues that biological life is too complex to have arisen through evolution.
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Intelligent Design is failing, so the Creationists are looking around for a new strategy. And neuroscience seems like a good target for their attack. The whole field is unstable right now, there is a lot of speculation, questionable basic research and disputes between scientists. Plus, a lot of this has implications that many people find unsettling and even a minor victory here would open a window for bringing the soul back into science.
Jay
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Post #298,287
10/23/08 11:10:04 AM
10/23/08 11:11:07 AM
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cartesien dualism is fine
every philosphy department should discuss it. Biology, chemistry and hard sciences really are not affected by it
thanx,
bill
if lemmy and god had a wrestling match who would win?
Edited by boxley
Oct. 23, 2008, 11:11:07 AM EDT
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Post #298,289
10/23/08 11:12:08 AM
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Who are you and what did you do with Bill?
The boxlish that can be understood is not the true boxlish.
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Post #298,290
10/23/08 11:18:08 AM
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Re: Creationists find new strategy
I actually find that there is no grounds for that. Complexity and chaos more than account for the possibility of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts... the demonstrate that simple components can easily create higher-order organisation without any need to appeal to some authority. Yes, the mind is immaterial... but that doesn't mean that it's supernatural.
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Post #298,291
10/23/08 12:03:00 PM
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Elaborate, please.
I strongly disagree with "yes, the mind is immaterial". IMO, it's well demonstrated that the mind is intimately and inextricably tied to the brain.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #298,292
10/23/08 1:14:02 PM
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Re: Elaborate, please.
Intimately and inextricably tied doesn't mean it has to be material.
When you think of an apple, is there a material component that one can definitively point to and say "there's the thought of the apple"? My thinking is no... but there is material that one can point to without which the thought of the apple would be impossible.
It's not possible to point to a particular pattern of electricity and chemistry that is the thought of the apple... because the apple will be only one part of what those patterns actually represent... further, the thought will have separate yet related patterns in various parts of the brain, including some very far down into the r-complex as well as some way up in the neocortex, and various points in between. However, mathematically, this is not troubling, because we know that in the realms of weather, biology, physics, and many other disciplines that chaos theory shows us that these types of chaotic yet ordered outcomes are possible from seemingly deterministic inputs... I can't think of any reason why that would be any different (if not even more likely) in the field of neurobiology and neuroscience.
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Post #298,302
10/23/08 5:39:38 PM
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I am of two minds on this
/flees ...
I do not expect to see any 'resolution' of mind/brain (except for the usual, lazy conflations with insufficient theory or data) -- in my lifetime, anyway. 'Action-at-a-distance' remains one of the bugaboos of QM: if you still want to claim conservation of spin, etc. Western science is extremely uncomfortable trying to work in any area overlaid by Consciousness; uncomfortable work produces ___.
I aver that 'we' (sigma 'science') lack fundamental comprehension of ... most Everything, let alone the vastly near-magical relationship of jelloware :: the allegedly-individual consciousness temporarily? borrowing same.
(For that 'matter' (no, not the massive kind) -- Eastern philosophy is light-years beyond the simplistic Puritan bathos, which is not ever too far from the inculcated mindsets of most Western science students -- especially as that relates to all efforts to limn *Consciousness*. And without That model: mind/brain becomes a Red Herring, however many equations are spawned. I wot, muchly.)
Some food for thought or thoughtlessness (as well as quantum mechanics, well-applied by a demurrer: Hugh Everette.)
PBS's NOVA, "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" - on, currently.
Everette wrote a (dare one say, 'seminal'?) paper in '57; finally wangled a meeting with Niels (that's 'Nells' not 'Neals') Bohr in København, in '59. Bohr was, of course, totally immersed in the wondrous apparent cohesiveness of his co-Creation, dismissing the work of Everette -- we cannot know, after .. "how Much? deliberation?"
One focus of E's attention was upon the paradox we all know as Schrödinger's pussy-cat in a box with poison and a geiger detector. Everette's view (and his pukka QM calculations via which he presented that) -- was that BOTH conditions are possible: The cat lives | The cat doesn't. Decently portrayed in this NOVA, which is, of course - trying to make things as simple as possible - and appparently obeying AE's marvelous quip, in the process ["... but not simpler."]
BOTH Possible??
In parallel 'universes' (for want of any referent we could use as familiarly.)
E's are physics calculations, not metaphysical wonderings (though some of us do not dismiss those so readily as physics fundamentalists would dismiss these - sans inspection. I despise knee-jerk auto-negatives, but that's just moi.)
Anyway, genetics being what they are, still understood miniscule-ly:
Everette's son flunked HS algebra! and the aim of this NOVA was to try.. and lead him, via all tricks possible: towards a small appreciation of what his father's life-work had been about. Also to introduce him to another young physicist, as enamored of his father's theories along with (some others = not explored, that last.)
Son likes to play the guitar.. Never Knew his father, who seems to have been almost silently-about-the-house. Has boxes of his father's papers.
Worth the hour, I think
Ashton
__________________________________________________________________
Table yielded back to the serious Questions of the day -
Palin's underwear color (if any)
and which group threw, hit or intercepted some gadget more times
-- than another group did.
And feel all Good about that.
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Post #298,307
10/23/08 11:28:14 PM
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Thanks.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/father.html
I haven't seen the show, but the writeup is very interesting.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #298,315
10/24/08 7:43:32 AM
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binary answer off to new adventures/done
if lemmy and god had a wrestling match who would win?
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Post #298,306
10/23/08 11:12:48 PM
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If I understand you correctly, I still disagree. :-)
When I was in college I took a course on the brain. It was just a quick "survey" type of thing, but I found it fascinating. One of the things that stuck with me was the talk of the "grandmother neuron".
Probably all of us have had the experience of seeing someone far off in a crowd - too far to make out distinct features - but instantly feeling that we know that person. Or seeing your grandmother from a distance, even after a span of years, and instantly recognizing them.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7567
=== begin cut ==
In the 1960s, neuroscientist Jerry Lettvin suggested that people have neurons that respond to a single concept such as, for example, their grandmother. The notion of these hyper-specific neurons, coined Âgrandmother cells was quickly rejected by psychologists as laughably simplistic.
But Rodrigo Quiroga, at the University of Leicester, UK, who led the new study, and his colleagues have found some very grandmother-like cells. Previous unpublished findings from the team showed tantalising results: a neuron that fired only in response to pictures of former US president Bill Clinton, or another to images of the Beatles. But for such Âgrandmother cells to exist, they must invariably respond to the Âconcept of Bill Clinton, not just similar pictures.
[...]
The team found similar results with another woman who had a neuron for pictures of Halle Berry, including a drawing of her face and an image of just the words of her name. ÂThis neuron is responding to the concept, the abstract entity, of Halle Berry, says Quiroga. ÂIf you show a line drawing or a profile, itÂs the same response. We also showed pictures of her as Catwoman, and you can hardly see her because of the mask. But if you know it is Halle Berry then the neurons still fire.Â
Given more time and an exhaustive list of images, the team may well have landed upon other images that spiked the activity of the ÂHalle Berry neuron. In one participant, the ÂJen neuron also fired in response to a picture of her former Friends cast-mate, Lisa Kudrow. The pattern suggests that the actresses are tied together in the memory associations of this particular woman, says Charles Connor, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US.
These object-specific neurons may be at the core of how we make memories, say Connor. ÂI think thatÂs the excitement to these results, he says. ÂYou are looking at the far end of the transformation from metric, visual shapes to conceptual memory-related information. It is that transformation that underlies our ability to understand the world. ItÂs not enough to see something familiar and match it. ItÂs the fact that you plug visual information into the rich tapestry of memory that brings it to life.Â
Journal reference: Nature (vol 435 p 1102)
=== end cut ===
Thoughts, concepts, memories, ideas, etc. are ultimately tied to the hardware. :-) We still don't understand much about how the hardware works, but we know that when it doesn't, then we have big problems...
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #298,343
10/24/08 4:42:12 PM
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Excellent find!
And kudos, as frequently -- for your gift of wading through endless noise to find a Gem.
(No flattery intended -- or needed.)
Gracias,
I Who Be
(but know-not the limitations of either 'I' or 'Being',
but I am unanimous in That.)
_______________________________
A mindset is a terrible thing to waste.
aka
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
--Henri Poincaré
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Post #298,311
10/24/08 7:22:24 AM
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PZ chimes in.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/your_brain_is_the_next_battleg.php
As usual, he's not afraid of saying exactly what he thinks of some of the "arguments" put forth on the other side. Don't read it if you have sympathy for the Discovery Institute. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #298,347
10/24/08 6:09:56 PM
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Thinking ... MEAT ?!?
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