Michael Egnor

Atheist/materialist ‘Skeptico’ (why are these guys/ladies so afraid to have their names associated with their ideas?) has announced the “Golden Woo” awards, which he-she has decided to bestow on people who have expressed views incompatible with Skeptico’s personal ideology. Skeptico explains:

I decided I would start some of my own — The Golden Woo Awards for outstanding work in the promotion of Woo in the previous year. It’s a bit like the Golden Globes, only for, er, Woo.

What is “Woo”? Skeptico explains:

Now, some of you might notice that the award titles look similar to Randi’s Pigasus Awards, with just the words “paranormal,” “occult” etc. replaced with Woo, and might think I’ve just run out of ideas for posts and purloined Randi’s idea as my own. (Cough.) Clearly that isn’t true as I have at least one extra category that Randi doesn’t have. However, if you were to view this post as my Golden Globes in advance of Randi’s Oscars… then you could. Perhaps the great man might even read this and get some ideas for April 1st?…OK so here goes — the Golden Woos for 2008. I hope you’ll find them entertaining.

Skeptico, who emulates atheist/materialist magician “The Amazing Randi,” has decided to give out awards to other people that he believes are devoted to silly ideas. And the first Golden Woo Award recipient is…your humble neurosurgeon and atheism/materialism ‘denialist’:

The scientist or academic who said or did the silliest thing related to Woo…Michael Egnor for his tireless support of Intelligent Design Creationism, and especially his many recent assaults on materialism.

Skeptico, who believes that all life, including the genetic code and intricate nanotechnology inside living cells, arose from primeval mud by a process of chance and tautology (random heritable variation and natural selection), is certainly well-situated to recognize Woo. So what exactly is it about my scientific and philosophical views that Skeptico finds so…Wooful?

Darwinist and University of Toronto biochemistry professor, Larry Moran, who has called publicly for the expulsion of Christian college students who, despite passing all exams, don’t personally believe in atheism and materialism, has commented on my recent post on qualia in the mind-body problem. I had used a famous traditional philosophical argument on the mind-body problem called the ‘knowledge argument.’ The knowledge argument, first articulated explicitly by Frank Jackson in his ‘Mary’s Room’ thought problem in 1982, highlights the hard problem of consciousness, which is the problem of subjectivity. Why is it that we have subjective first-person experience, whereas all that we know about the brain is objective third person knowledge? The knowledge argument points out that there are things about mental states — subjective experience called ‘qualia’ — that are knowledge that is not material. The denouement of the knowledge argument is that materialist monism is an incomplete description of the mind because it is inadequate to explain subjective experience. Some sort of dualism is necessary for a satisfactory understanding of the mind.

The knowledge argument is a profound problem for strict materialism, and materialist philosophers of the mind such as Daniel Dennett have devoted considerable effort to refuting it. The primary materialist recourse has been to deny the reality of subjective mental states. Most philosophers — and most other people — find such denial hard to take seriously.
I formulated a question for Dr. Steven Novella, who is a materialist with a dogmatic approach to the mind-body problem, that is based on the knowledge argument. My question is this:

Dr. Novella, the dogmatic neurologist from Yale who can’t fathom why his materialist ideology isn’t accepted as truth by all, concludes his latest mind-brain problem post (after calling me intellectually dishonest, a creationist, etc.) with this rhetorical flourish:

Dr. Egnor’s three pillars of neuroscience denial – dualism of the gaps; denying the inferences from brain-mind correlation; and confusing the question of how the brain causes mind with the question of does the brain cause mind – have all been shattered.

My ‘”three pillars of neuroscience denial have been shattered”?

!

Well, it’s time for me to unshatter them.

R.R. Reno, features editor at First Things, has a fine essay on the mind-brain problem that addresses many of the issues that Steven Novella and I have been debating over the past year or so. The substance of my arguments against Dr. Novella’s dogmatic materialism and his astonishing hubris regarding the application of neuroscience to the mind brain problem (“Every single prediction of materialism has been proven…”) has been twofold.

First, I assert that the materialistic understanding of the mind isn’t even logically coherent. The salient characteristics of the mind, such as intentionality, qualia, free will, restricted access, continuity of self through time, incorrigibility, and unity of consciousness are not properties of matter, and there are very strong philosophical and logical reasons to reject the thesis that the mind is matter or that the mind is caused entirely by matter, without remainder. Materialist theories of the mind haven’t even reached logical coherence, let alone empirical verification.

My second argument is that, contrary to the hyperbolic claims of materialists, modern neuroscience accords quite well with dualist (and hylomorphic) understandings of the mind-brain relationship. The pioneer in the scientific study of the relationship between the brain and the mind was UCSF neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet, who described his own understanding of the mind-brain relationship as essentially property dualism. Other leaders in neuroscience, such as neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield (the father of epilepsy surgery), Sir John Eccles (Nobel Laurate in medicine for his pioneering work on neuronal synapses) and Charles Sherrington (the father of modern neuroscience) were explicit dualists. The inference to dualism in neuroscience has been emphasized by UCLA neurologist and neuroscientist Jeffery Schwartz, who has documented the substantial evidence that mental changes can induce measurable changes in brain function. Obviously these observations aren’t decisive; a materialist could assert that the brain changes were induced by other brain changes, and that the mental states were epiphenomenal, but the salient point is that advances in neuroscience admit dualist as well as materialist interpretations.

In his essay “Brain Science and the Soul,” Reno, writing from the Christian perspective on the mind-body problem, observes:

In a recent post, I pointed out the obvious — that traditional allopathic medical practice is capable of causing considerable harm to patients, and I appealed to some of the particularly nasty critics of alternative medicine to back off with the venom directed against practitioners and ordinary people who have experienced benefit from alternative medicine or who are concerned about the risks associated with vaccinations. We doctors have our hands full protecting patients from our own mistakes, without spending our time excoriating accupuncturists. A little perspective is in order.

So why are these particular bloggers so obsessed with hatred for people who question medical or scientific orthodoxy? Most of these arrogant critics are atheist/materialist physicians, and their anger is fueled by the refusal of the public and many other scientists and physicians to accede to their orthodoxy. Their issue is ideological, not medical or scientific. Scientism is a materialist religion — a metaphysical stance — and its priests don’t suffer questions lightly.

My view on the debate between allopathic medicine and alternative medicine is straightforward: follow the evidence wherever it leads, and do so with professionalism and respect. It is based on the evidence that I doubt the efficacy of many of the claims made by proponents of alternative medicine, and it’s based on the evidence that I support intelligent design theory and the viewpoint that the mind is not merely the brain. In that sense, I’m very much a denialist. I deny many of the claims of proponents of alternative medicine, I deny some of the claims made by proponents of allopathic medicine, and I deny Darwinism as an adequate explanation for life and I deny materialism as adequate for the mind. I’m interested in evidence, not doctrinal purity or ideological bullying.

For my temerity, I got ‘smackdowned.’ One PalMD from ‘Denialism blog’ thumped his anonymous chest:

Dr. Steven Novela believes that the brain (matter) entirely explains the mind. I challenge him to answer the question raised by this thought problem:

Imagine a tutor who specializes in teaching children about color. He’s a materialist, named…Steve. He knows all that is known about color. He knows the physics, the optics, the chemistry, the neurobiology, everything. A family retains him to teach their child, a prodigy, all that can be known about color.

Steven Novella has a recent post on SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Like many of us, Dr. Novella is fascinated by the prospect of finding evidence for intelligent alien life in outer space. Dr. Novella:

I am a strong supporter of SETI – the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. To me this is a fascinating scientific endeavor with a potentially huge payoff…

Dr. Novella defends SETI against the claims by some that it is not real science:

Dr. Steven Novella is a Yale neurologist with whom I have been having a blog debate about the mind-brain question. Dr. Novella asserts that neuroscience has proven the strict materialistic understanding of the mind — that the mind is caused entirely by the brain, and reducible entirely to it — is true. I disagree. Although the mind and brain correlate to a high degree, the mind is ontologically irreducible to the brain. I believe that some form of dualism is necessary for a satisfactory explanation of the mind.

I have written several posts about qualia, which is the subjective nature of sensory experiences, such the experience of the color red, or the smell of coffee, or the ‘hurt’ of pain. The neurophysiological correlates of these phenomena, such as the physiology of retinal mediation of color vision, or the olfactory nerves in the nose that mediate the smell of coffee, or the neurochemistry of C-fibers that mediate pain, can be explained materialistically, but the experience of color, smell, and pain — qualia — elides material explanation.

Here is my description of the problem that qualia poses, from a previous post:

I’m in the midst of an online debate with neurologist Dr. Steven Novella about this question: can the mind be explained entirely by the brain, or is there an immaterial aspect of mental states that defies materialist reduction? Dr. Novella and I are both well-acquainted with neuroscience (I’m a neurosurgeon), and we have quite different views on the mind-brain problem. Dr. Novella is a materialist, and he believes that neuroscience has demonstrated beyond question that the mind is entirely caused by material processes in the brain. I believe that there are properties of mental states that don’t admit material explanations, and I favor dualism. Dr Novella asserts:

There is an internet cottage industry of physicians and scientists who regularly excoriate alternative medicine and other non-traditional or even fringe approaches to health or to scientific understanding. Steven Novella, Orac, and a host of other faux “defenders of science” decry the danger to the public from vaccine “denial,” homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, among others. Now, I agree with my medical colleagues that the scientific basis for most of these practices or viewpoints is missing or minimal. I don’t believe that the scientific evidence supports the view that vaccines cause autism. I am not a supporter of “alternative medicine,” and I objected when an effort was made some years ago to expand alternative medicine here at Stony Brook. Alternative medicine, like traditional medicine, must be subjected to strict standards of evidence for safety and efficacy. Most types of alternative medicine fail to meet those standards, and therefore should not be endorsed by the medical profession.

Yet there is an irony in the efforts of “defenders of science” to protect the public from treatments and theories that are outside of the mainstream of medical practice. The greatest iatrogenic danger to patients isn’t chiropractors or homeopaths or vaccine “deniers.” It’s the doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel working in the traditional medical paradigm.