Science and Culture Today | Page 1298 | Discovering Design in Nature

Steven Novella recently replied to my post in which I pointed out six properties of the mind that were not properties of matter. Strict materialistic theories of the mind restrict themselves to purely materialistic explanations. The difficulty is that the salient properties of the mind — intentionality, qualia, continuity of self through time, restricted access of thoughts, incorrigibility of mental states, and free will — are not known to be properties of matter, including brain matter. The important things that characterize the mind are not material. How then can the mind be explained completely by materialism?

I’ll review the first property (intentionality) here, and the other five in subsequent posts. I’ll first give my original observation about it, then Dr. Novella’s reply, then my reply to Dr. Novella.
My original observation:

Intentionality is the “aboutness” or meaning of a mental state, the ability of a mental state to refer to something outside of itself. Ink on paper has no meaning unless it is conferred by a mind, which wrote it or read it. Matter may have intentionality only secondarily (“derived intentionality”). The problem of intentionality is believed by many philosophers of the mind to be the most serious challenge to materialism. “Meaning” is imparted to matter by a mind; matter isn’t the source of meaning. Therefore matter (brain tissue) can’t be the entire cause of the mind.

Dr. Novella’s reply:

A news article at ScienceCentric.com reports that single-celled protists have left tracks and grooves in the ocean-bottom that resemble fossil grooves or “trail” fossils that are found in some pre-Cambrian strata. Darwinists have asserted that such pre-Cambrian track or trail fossils must have been produced by complex, multicellular, worm-like animals, thus implying that the Cambrian explosion was not really as explosive as the fossil record makes it appear. Actual fossils of the alleged pre-Cambrian worms that supposedly made the trails are yet to be found, but Darwinists have claimed that the track fossils are smoking gun evidence that they existed. The Darwinists’ story is challenged by this new find: if tracks can be produced by single-celled protists, then pre-Cambrian track Read More ›

In his recent post on Pharyngula, P.Z. Myers comments on the “breakthrough” in our understanding of human evolution that has emerged from an analysis of the genes in humans and apes that code for salivary amylase, an enzyme in spit that helps digest carbohydrates. For unfathomable reasons, this research, led by Nathaniel Dominy and George Perry, has captured quite a bit of attention in the scientific community and even in the press.

Concurrent with publication of their paper in Nature Genetics last year, Dominy and colleagues put out a press release entitled: “Extra gene copies were enough to make early humans’ mouths water.” Dominy bizarrely credits mutations in salivary amylase with the evolution of the human brain:

Dr. Steven Novella has taken exception to my recent post suggesting that the materialist theory of the mind has characteristics of a superstition. In the recent past, the Yale neurologist has been so confident of the truth of his materialistic ideology on the mind-brain problem that he has asserted that

“The materialist hypothesis- that the brain causes consciousness- has made a number of predictions, and every single prediction has been validated.”

Leaving aside the hubris (has any reputable scientist ever claimed that ‘every single prediction’ of his pet theory has been validated?), one of Dr. Novella’s implicit predictions seems to have frustratingly failed to materialize. In his latest post, Dr Novella seems to have been certain that, following his pronouncement on the resolution of the mind-brain problem, everyone would defer to his decision:

[Egnor] fails to recognize that this battle has already been fought and lost within the scientific arena…[a]s our knowledge of brain function increases, it is squeezing out any role for a non-material ghost in the machine. A non-material cause of mind is…unnecessary…

We are teaming up with the IDEA Center (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness) to help students in starting IDEA chapters on their campuses. Such campus clubs are a fun and educational way for students to examine all sides of the debate over evolution. Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Clubs are student-initiated clubs that foster academic freedom as students learn about scientific evidence that supports intelligent design and also learn about modern evolutionary theory. IDEA Clubs are a growing network of student-led clubs on university and high school campuses around the United States with thirty new chapters formed to date. Visit www.ideacenter.org or e-mail Brian Westad at brianw@ideacenter.org for information on how you can start an IDEA club in your Read More ›

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Multiple choice quiz. Where did the following words first appear? “We need to move forward in our human evolution and not regress to the flawed passions of the crusades, the suppression of science by religion, or the intolerance of theocracy over freedom of the human spirit.” Was it:A. The latest blog post from PZ Myers?B. The bumper sticker on some 1968 VW Bus owned by a hippie commune?C. The manifesto of the Allied Atheist Alliance?D. The latest Dean’s newsletter from Philip A. Pizzo, Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine? If you guessed… …D, you’re correct. As I reported recently, Dean Pizzo’s latest December 1, 2008 newsletter extols those who would make scientific research “free” by keeping it “protected Read More ›

Recently I used the analogy of a genetic disease (spinal bifida) that kept afflicted men out of the army in WWI to point out the vacuousness of “evolutionary” explanations for disease. The “evolutionary adaptation” provided by the handicap may have led to a transient increased prevalence of men with spina bifida in England, but from the standpoint of medicine, the evolutionary vignette was of no tangible value. Medicine needs more than stories about differential survival, which is the only unique thing that evolutionary biology offers to medicine. The genuine accomplishments of medical science and practice, for which Darwinists persistently claim credit, such as the understanding of bacterial antibiotic resistance or heterozygote advantage in the protection from disease (such as the protection from malaria conferred on people with sickle cell trait), have come about because of superb work by medical scientists in molecular biology, microbiology, genetics, and epidemiology. They didn’t place phone calls to their colleagues in evolutionary biology to do their work. Darwinian fairy tales, such as “X-Linked Color Blindness Evolved to Help Paleolithic Male Hunters See Camouflage,” added nothing to the important research already going on in medicine.

Darwinists were not pleased with my observations, and Mike Dunford seems to have drawn the “respond to Egnor” short straw. He responded first with the requisite personal sneers:

The recent Dean’s Newsletter from Philip A. Pizzo, Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, announces a statement from the “Scientific Advisory Board” of the Koch Foundation that recommends creating a brave new world of censorship. According to Dean Pizzo’s newsletter, when giving an award recently to a biology researcher, the Koch Foundation’s “Scientific Advisory Board” stated: “Research must remain free and therefore has to be protected from non-scientific influences such as ‘Creationism,’ ‘Fundamentalism,’ ‘Intelligent Design,’ or other non-scientific ideas or religious convictions.” Ignoring their inappropriate lumping of intelligent design with “creationism,” “fundamentalism,” “non-scientific ideas” and “religious convictions,” it seems that in the Koch Foundation’s vision of the future, being “free” means that ID cannot have any influence upon Read More ›

I recently pointed out that Darwinian stories about the evolution of diseases were of no tangible use to medical science. Few physicians and medical scientists and educators with genuine experience with medical education, research, and practice, and who are not ideologically committed to the materialist-atheist metaphysics for which Darwinism is the creation myth, honestly believe that evolutionary biology is important to medicine. There are many important disciplines in medicine today, such as microbiology, epidemiology, molecular and population genetics, and mathematical biology, that deal with the real science for which evolutionary biologists routinely claim credit, and these genuine medical disciplines, unlike evolutionary biology, are very important to medicine. We’ve done very well for more than half a century without Darwinian medicine. The recent drive to introduce Darwinian Medicine 2.0 into medical education was initiated by Darwinists. They weren’t invited.