Egnor Accepts His Woo

From Orac I just learned that creationist neurosurgeon Michael Egnor has accepted the Golden Woo I awarded him three weeks ago.  This is the first formal acceptance.  In accepting his award, Egnor quoted my snippet of his words that I quoted as a justification for bestowing the honor:

There is no shared property yet identified by science through which brain matter can cause mental acts like altruism. Material substances have mass and energy. Ideas have purpose and judgment. There is no commonality.

And he followed with

So I win this materialist's "Golden Woo Award" because I assert that there are properties of the mind, such as purpose and judgement, that are not properties of matter. Furthermore, I assert that this is a problem for materialism.

Yes.  And the problem is just that – Egnor just asserts these things; he presents no evidence for them.  He also conveniently ignores Steven Novella’s rebuttal, that I also linked, that starts with:

[Egnor’s argument] is utter rubbish on many levels. Egnor’s basic point is that the material brain cannot cause mental activity, which is immaterial. But he does not establish that premise, he merely assumes it and his justification is nothing more than semantics. He then accuses material scientists of assuming that mental functions are brain functions, while essentially dismissing a huge chunk of modern neuroscience as “interesting” but irrelevant by falsely invoking the “correlation is not causation” argument.

First, he is treating mental function as a pure abstraction – but in so doing he is assuming his conclusion and therefore is making a tautological argument.

And in my experience, this is the fundamental flaw with virtually all the philosophical arguments around this supposed “hard” problem, namely that the proponents of dualism (such as Egnor) or idealism, just assume that mental functions cannot be physically caused.  And so ultimately, all their arguments circle back to (you guessed it) mental functions cannot be physically caused.  Seriously – I don’t think I’ve ever had a debate with one of these people without circular reasoning making its customary honored guest appearance at a crucial time. Egnor follows this with a hilarious list of arguments from authority figures from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle through Galileo, Newton and Einstein, all of whom, we are supposed to believe, agreed with Egnor. 

Sadly, there is no monetary stipend to go with the award as Egnor imagined, but then he wouldn’t need it to buy me the copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy that he thinks I need for the simple reason that I already have a copy.  And I have read it.  And, just as with Egnor’s writing, it contains not a shred of evidence that the mind is caused by anything other than the brain.  FAIL.  Still, if he really wants to spend some money on a book that might explain some things that he is obviously confused about, I humbly suggest this one.  It’s nearly a buck more that the philosophy book, but then you get what you pay for.

Comments

[Dunc]

"I assert that there are properties of software, such as state and purpose, that are not properties of matter. Furthermore, I assert that this is a problem for computer science."

See how stupid that sounds? Where is mass or energy of the software now running on my computer, Dr Egnor?

[Akusai]

That has been my thought throughout these last few months of anti-materialist Egnor-spew. My computer must have a soul of its own because such silliness as "emergent properties" cannot possibly explain how a bunch of 1s and 0s could create Fallout 3. Yawn.

Computers are also a good analogue for his claim that self-created changes in brain states necessitate mind changing the brain; why can't the brain change itself? My hard drive can cause changes to itself with no external, non-physical causal agent. It doesn't have a computer-mind or computer-soul that reaches into it and makes those changes. It does it to itself.

[yakaru]

I just had a look at Egnor's site. It's a bit difficult to comment on his misconceptions, because they are so all-embracing that each one seems more stupid than the others.

But I will say this: I was impressed with his notion that Skeptico would identify Bertrand Russell as a purveyer of woo.

He does indeed richly deserve his Golden Woo. He has worked hard for it.

[roffe.myopenid.com]

B.F. Skinner accused cognitive science of being the creationism of psychology, because cognitive science accepts mental states as initiators of behavior.

I would insist on perusing his line of reasoning thoroughly before doling out a Golden Woo Award, though, as he is very subtle.

[Tom Foss]

Once again, it seems the only support woos can find from scientists are people who didn't work in the relevant fields, or people who haven't had access to the best and most recent data, due to being dead. Since Skinner's death in 1990, there have been huge leaps in our understanding of the brain through neuroscience and improvements in technological imaging. The simple fact that Skinner talked about these questions as a subset of psychology speaks to how dated this mindset is, since studying the effects of the brain has moved firmly into the realm of biology and neuroscience.

Skinner's work in behavioral psychology is important, though certainly not without flaws and criticisms. However, if he posited that there was some other entity besides the brain that produced the effects we call the "mind," then his claims fail on the same lack of evidence that Egnor's do. Dualism posits the existence of an extra entity that is not supported by the evidence, which consistently points toward the brain being the agent of mental functions. If it is to be considered a viable model, it needs to be supported by positive and specific evidence.

[Dunc]

However, if he posited that there was some other entity besides the brain that produced the effects we call the "mind," then his claims fail on the same lack of evidence that Egnor's do.

I'm not really familiar with Skinner's work, but I'm pretty sure that he rejected dualism entirely.