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What Your Brain Looks Like on Faith
by TIME
Reposted from:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1694723,00.html?cnn=yes
Sam Harris is best known for his barn-burning 2004 attack on religion, The End of Faith, which spent 33 weeks on the New York Times best-seller List. The book's sequel, Letter to a Christian Nation also came out in editions totalling hundreds of thousands. Last Monday, however, the combative Californian produced a shorter (seven pages) and seemingly calmer publication that will be a hit if it reaches 10,000 readers [note from Josh: we've had 75,000 unique visitors since last Tuesday when it was posted HERE - not that everyone read it of course] : "Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty." It appears in the respected journal Annals of Neurology. And Harris, 40, claims it has little if any connection to his popular two books. Believers, however, may draw their own conclusions and may want to read his subsequent neurological studies even more carefully.
The current paper recovers Harris's identity as a doctoral candidate in neurology at UCLA, his occupation before he commenced what he calls his "extramural affair jumping into trenches in the culture wars." It is an addition to the growing field of brain scan trials, and Harris thinks it may be the first to detail how the brain processes belief. At first read, it seems less dangerous to Christianity than to another cherished pillar of Western thought that "objective" beliefs like "2 + 2 = 4" and "subjective" beliefs like "torture is bad" belong to entirely separate categories of thought.
Harris and two co-authors ran 360 statements by 14 adult subject whose brain activities were then scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) devices. It suggests that within the brain pan, at least, the distinction between objective and subjective is not so clear-cut. Although more complex assertions may get analyzed in so-called "higher" areas of the brain, all seem to get their final stamp of "belief" or disbelief in "primitive" locales traditionally associated with emotions or taste and odor. Even "2 + 2 = 4," on some level, is a question of taste. Thus, the statement "that just doesn't smell right to me" may be more literal than we thought.
Harris tested how the brain responded to assertions in seven categories: mathematical, geographic, semantic, factual, autobiographical, ethical and religious. All seven provided some useful data, but only the ones relating to math and ethics produced results clear enough to give a vivid picture of the way the simple and the complex, the subjective and the objective intertwine. Regardless of their content, statements that the subjects believed lit up the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a location in the brain best known for processing reward, emotion and taste. Equally "primitive" areas associated with taste, pain perception and disgust determined disbelief. "False propositions may actually disgust us," Harris writes.
Is there a practical application here? He speculates that if belief brain scanning were sufficiently refined it could act as an accurate lie detector and help control for the placebo effect in drug design.
Harris says there is no critique of faith hidden somewhere in his brief paper. But his next neurological enterprise may be another matter. He is planning an fMRI run that will concentrate specifically on religious faith, which Harris thinks he now knows how to plumb more deeply. He also plans to set up two different subject groups the faithful and non-believers. "That way," among other things, he says, "you can ask, 'Do believers believe that Jesus was born of a virgin the same way that nonbelievers believe that Chevrolet makes cars and trucks?'" It may turn out that the brain treats religious faith as its own special category of belief unlike ethics and math.
But that is not what Harris expects to find. He suspects the machines will show that "belief is belief is belief." And that conclusion, he admits, may put him at loggerheads with familiar foes. No one, he says, could accuse him or anyone else of trying to disprove God's existence on the basis of an fMRI. But faith is more vulnerable. "People who feel that religious faith is a singular operation of the brain if they admit that it's an operation of the brain at all would object to what I'm doing, since it may show that faith is essentially the same as other kinds of knowing or thinking. The whole thing will seem fishy to anyone who thinks we have immaterial souls running around in our bodies."
Which, of course, a lot of people do. And despite the fact that, as Harris puts it, his current literary mode "is not beach reading," they may find that they are keeping up with his academic writings more avidly and nervously than they do his bestsellers.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1694723,00.html?cnn=yes
Sam Harris is best known for his barn-burning 2004 attack on religion, The End of Faith, which spent 33 weeks on the New York Times best-seller List. The book's sequel, Letter to a Christian Nation also came out in editions totalling hundreds of thousands. Last Monday, however, the combative Californian produced a shorter (seven pages) and seemingly calmer publication that will be a hit if it reaches 10,000 readers [note from Josh: we've had 75,000 unique visitors since last Tuesday when it was posted HERE - not that everyone read it of course] : "Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty." It appears in the respected journal Annals of Neurology. And Harris, 40, claims it has little if any connection to his popular two books. Believers, however, may draw their own conclusions and may want to read his subsequent neurological studies even more carefully.The current paper recovers Harris's identity as a doctoral candidate in neurology at UCLA, his occupation before he commenced what he calls his "extramural affair jumping into trenches in the culture wars." It is an addition to the growing field of brain scan trials, and Harris thinks it may be the first to detail how the brain processes belief. At first read, it seems less dangerous to Christianity than to another cherished pillar of Western thought that "objective" beliefs like "2 + 2 = 4" and "subjective" beliefs like "torture is bad" belong to entirely separate categories of thought.
Harris and two co-authors ran 360 statements by 14 adult subject whose brain activities were then scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) devices. It suggests that within the brain pan, at least, the distinction between objective and subjective is not so clear-cut. Although more complex assertions may get analyzed in so-called "higher" areas of the brain, all seem to get their final stamp of "belief" or disbelief in "primitive" locales traditionally associated with emotions or taste and odor. Even "2 + 2 = 4," on some level, is a question of taste. Thus, the statement "that just doesn't smell right to me" may be more literal than we thought.
Harris tested how the brain responded to assertions in seven categories: mathematical, geographic, semantic, factual, autobiographical, ethical and religious. All seven provided some useful data, but only the ones relating to math and ethics produced results clear enough to give a vivid picture of the way the simple and the complex, the subjective and the objective intertwine. Regardless of their content, statements that the subjects believed lit up the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a location in the brain best known for processing reward, emotion and taste. Equally "primitive" areas associated with taste, pain perception and disgust determined disbelief. "False propositions may actually disgust us," Harris writes.
Is there a practical application here? He speculates that if belief brain scanning were sufficiently refined it could act as an accurate lie detector and help control for the placebo effect in drug design.
Harris says there is no critique of faith hidden somewhere in his brief paper. But his next neurological enterprise may be another matter. He is planning an fMRI run that will concentrate specifically on religious faith, which Harris thinks he now knows how to plumb more deeply. He also plans to set up two different subject groups the faithful and non-believers. "That way," among other things, he says, "you can ask, 'Do believers believe that Jesus was born of a virgin the same way that nonbelievers believe that Chevrolet makes cars and trucks?'" It may turn out that the brain treats religious faith as its own special category of belief unlike ethics and math.
But that is not what Harris expects to find. He suspects the machines will show that "belief is belief is belief." And that conclusion, he admits, may put him at loggerheads with familiar foes. No one, he says, could accuse him or anyone else of trying to disprove God's existence on the basis of an fMRI. But faith is more vulnerable. "People who feel that religious faith is a singular operation of the brain if they admit that it's an operation of the brain at all would object to what I'm doing, since it may show that faith is essentially the same as other kinds of knowing or thinking. The whole thing will seem fishy to anyone who thinks we have immaterial souls running around in our bodies."
Which, of course, a lot of people do. And despite the fact that, as Harris puts it, his current literary mode "is not beach reading," they may find that they are keeping up with his academic writings more avidly and nervously than they do his bestsellers.
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Posted: Monday, December 17, 2007 | PermalinkComments 1 - 39 of 39 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #99782 by Devolution on December 17, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I have a man-crush on Sam Harris. There .... I said it! Other Comments by Devolution
3. Comment #99799 by aznxscorpion517 on December 17, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Man-Crush! Well, he is pretty damn great. lol I hope this project of his goes far and gives us some startling new information on how the mind works. Other Comments by aznxscorpion517
4. Comment #99805 by Atticus_of_Amber on December 17, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I call it a nerd-crush; but yeah, me too. Other Comments by Atticus_of_Amber
5. Comment #99812 by John Done on December 17, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Any development in our understanding of the human mind and religion through empirical means is of great help to anyone who wants to literally see ethics in action. To not only be aware, but aware of how we are aware, can prove that happiness and understaning needn't come from faith, but from the study a material godless universe.The other advantage of this development concerns Harris' public image. Now no one can say (although they probably will anyway) that he's simply an atheist author trying to cash in on a popular trend. When you quote Sam Harris and someone says "Who the hell is that and what does *he* know?" you can say "He's a qualified neurologist who's responsible for better understanding the inherent connection between belief and the brain. That's who he is. Who are *you*?"
Other Comments by John Done
6. Comment #99814 by Rtambree on December 17, 2007 at 3:39 pm
1. Comment #99769 by theantitheist>if we could get the Pope and the other Human Sheppards to undertake this maybe we could take the head off the beasts!!
Be careful what you wish for. If all these idiots are exposed as atheists, then they become our problem and we need to explain why atheists do evil things.
Other Comments by Rtambree
7. Comment #99824 by Gymnopedie on December 17, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Rtambree, your comment makes me wonder what would happen if everyone put themselves through the fMRI. Everyone is exposed as an atheist and finally they all turn to one another and say "So you didn't buy that bullshit either?"Other Comments by Gymnopedie
8. Comment #99830 by Rtambree on December 17, 2007 at 4:09 pm
7. Comment #99824 by GymnopedieI think that generally the further you go down the church hierachy, the more people do genuinely believe. But I'm skeptical that high ranking clerics, cardinals, bishops, popes, rabbis, mullahs, etc actually believe themselves, althought they may delude themselves into thinking they're performing a social service for the helpless flock.
Other Comments by Rtambree
9. Comment #99834 by Ducklike on December 17, 2007 at 4:28 pm
So how will Sam get "believers" to submit to the test? Easy:Step 1 ~ Show them a copy of the brain scan image as per the example in the article;
Step 2 ~ Tell them "If you're a "true" believer, we may find a religious icon in your scan like the Virgin Mary on the grilled cheese sandwich. Just think how famous your brain will be!"; and,
Step 3 ~ Ask them for a "donation" to do the scan.
Other Comments by Ducklike
10. Comment #99850 by bradpitcher on December 17, 2007 at 5:20 pm
haha, I followed the link to the Times article and one of the advertisements on the page was for "Christion Ringtones". Other Comments by bradpitcher
11. Comment #99936 by robotaholic on December 17, 2007 at 10:41 pm
We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation, or any of the other fantastical notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for millenniaβ" because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.-The End of Faith
I always laughed because it reminds me of 'World of Warcraft' zombies only worse-much worse
Other Comments by robotaholic
12. Comment #99961 by Incredulous on December 18, 2007 at 1:29 am
Rtambree, your comment makes me wonder what would happen if everyone put themselves through the fMRI. Everyone is exposed as an atheist and finally they all turn to one another and say "So you didn't buy that bullshit either?"
I really hope so. Willful mendacity at the top of the hierarchy and an honest mistaken belief at the bottom. Or more like willfully mendacious appeasement at the bottom to ensure dinner gets put on the table. Nothing much changes in the human zoo. The powerful need the powerless to be ... well ... powerless.
Obviously this is all supposition at the moment
Other Comments by Incredulous
13. Comment #99969 by nickthelight on December 18, 2007 at 2:17 am
A facinating new field of scientific exploration. Perhaps it could be used to discover if people who claim to belive actually do or if they are playing cognative tickes on their own minds, are they aware they do or do not believe but just choose to ingnore the feelings? This subject it mentioned in 'The Four Horsemen'. We all do it - those who smoke are aware that it's deadly and will send them to an early grave, so why do they do it? There are many other examples, of course and I wait for the results of this research with interest. Other Comments by nickthelight
14. Comment #99970 by YssiBoo on December 18, 2007 at 2:20 am
Comment #99961 by IncredulousI agree. The problem with organized religion is that tremendous power is placed in the hands of a few people. Generally one can say that people who rise to the top of any hierarchy are often interested in wielding this power. When these people can get the "common man" to believe that their power is vested in them by a supreme being it becomes difficult to control that power. To me this means that it doesn't matter much if the clerics actually believe their own proclamations as long as the congregation does. The solution will be the emancipation of people's minds.
Other Comments by YssiBoo
15. Comment #99994 by Duff on December 18, 2007 at 3:18 am
As the believer rises through the ranks he looks up to the top guy as the one who has the direct line to god and then all the sudden he makes it to the top and goes in to talk to god and there is.....nothing. OOOPs. It must be a bummer of a letdown.You just know all the top guys are faking it.
Other Comments by Duff
16. Comment #100013 by fides_et_ratio on December 18, 2007 at 4:15 am
I find this all very exciting. As a layman though one thing concerns me. My Dad's been in hospital since March and has had a few MRI scans which have shown different things at different times. It seems to be in its infancy. Is it too young to expect conclusions on faith yet? (given that for many religious, faith is often accompanied by doubt)Other Comments by fides_et_ratio
17. Comment #100021 by steve99 on December 18, 2007 at 5:00 am
Is it too young to expect conclusions on faith yet? (given that for many religious, faith is often accompanied by doubt)
My initial feeling is that it is too soon, but things are progressing fast.
I can see this as being useful for understanding how faith might work in the brain, but I have to say it worries me somewhat. Shouldn't we be allowed privacy in our own heads? I think what matters is reasoned argument. I would not like to think of scanning people's heads and telling them "you are fooling yourself".
Other Comments by steve99
18. Comment #100038 by debaser71 on December 18, 2007 at 5:51 am
I don't think it's only about belief, uncertainty, and disbelief. I think there are all sorts of ways the brain goes about processing information. For example there's denial, wishful thinking, etc. I think these sort of mental states might show up in the brain too. So IMO most religious people might show to be in denial about their religious beliefs, that they have tricked themselves into pretending they are certain, pretending they really believe what they profess.Also (at least for me) sometimes my beliefs cahange. For example, I might watch a show about parallel universes so for a few days after I might be more open to the notion, that it might show up as a "belief". But other times maybe I'm in a bad mood and I don't want to entertain the idea as much. etc.
Anyway these experiments are good first steps.
Other Comments by debaser71
19. Comment #100048 by fides_et_ratio on December 18, 2007 at 6:17 am
Hopefully the study will look at the effects of belief on the brain after different variables have been introduced. My experience of belief is similar to Debaser's. It's not a constant, hence the need for students to study, alcoholics to attend meetings, religious people to practise their faith, and visitors to richarddawkins.net to keep reading articles. The moment of insight ensures that the penny keeps dropping.Other Comments by fides_et_ratio
20. Comment #100113 by PJG on December 18, 2007 at 8:56 am
If this were to show "belief" and "non-belief" in a sort of lie-detector test way, it would be interesting to see who would be prepared to take it...Would Mother Teresa have taken it?
How about asking The Pope, Pat Robertson or even GWB who, after all, says he has a direct line to God?
Heh heh... I wait with bated breath!
Other Comments by PJG
21. Comment #100122 by wednesdayguevara on December 18, 2007 at 9:09 am
And despite the fact that, as Harris puts it, his current literary mode "is not beach reading," they may find that they are keeping up with his academic writings more avidly and nervously than they do his bestsellers.
I would totally read this stuff at the beach.
18. Comment #100021 by steve99 on December 18, 2007 at 5:00 am
Shouldn't we be allowed privacy in our own heads?
Of course we should. Why wouldn't we be?
Other Comments by wednesdayguevara
22. Comment #100123 by debaser71 on December 18, 2007 at 9:12 am
I value intellectual honesty, so I'd submit to being "tested". At worst the "test" might show where I need to think better.Other Comments by debaser71
23. Comment #100152 by Luthien on December 18, 2007 at 10:05 am
I always laughed because it reminds me of 'World of Warcraft' zombies only worse-much worse
Only I can't put my curses on them, or cast seed of corruption and run! :-P
Other Comments by Luthien
24. Comment #100523 by 35bluejacket on December 18, 2007 at 7:41 pm
D. Goetzinger:You have made a good observation. It brings up the question of all the millions of ignorant superstitious people, lose on the streets, who have lost their religion (because of our atheist teachings) and what little moral compass they recieved from their religions. Who is going to control them? Could we expect them to be rational in their morality?
Other Comments by 35bluejacket
25. Comment #100524 by Goldy on December 18, 2007 at 7:45 pm
End of faith - scary. Given the "athiesm is nihilism" then I can forsee a loss od self control and a free for all from those who don't quite understand the meaning of life...Other Comments by Goldy
26. Comment #100641 by rod-the-farmer on December 19, 2007 at 3:14 am
Very interesting article. Suppose he fine-tunes it to more accurately track belief. Who would he get to volunteer from among the god-believers ? Would there be different degrees of belief ? Fundies versus mildly Christian ? What if the word went out to NOT participate, as he was "trying to disprove God", and those who showed up were actually atheists pretending to be god-believers ? How do you PROVE that someone is a fundie, unless you get someone who is a public televangelist, who probably would not volunteer anyway. The plot thickens. I await a follow-on article. Other Comments by rod-the-farmer
27. Comment #100658 by 35bluejacket on December 19, 2007 at 4:35 am
I doubt the results of the research will convince any hardcore faith-heads, accept for one more thorn in their crown, but for truth seekers and the medical world it would be a godsend. I think Harris has just the right personality to be doing this type of work.Other Comments by 35bluejacket
28. Comment #101115 by jo5ef on December 19, 2007 at 10:57 pm
I can almost hear professor Frink " this ahem faithometer will soon tell us if the subject has been exposed to a source of ahur religious errr emanations, and , if so, will give a value from 1 to 10 which, if I triangulate ..carry the one.."C'mon fellow athiests, surely Sam Harris of all people must realize that if there's one thing you cant measure, almost by definition, it's faith. Theyll USE this to show how we reductionists just dont get it.
Other Comments by jo5ef
29. Comment #101121 by ADH on December 19, 2007 at 11:28 pm
"But that is not what Harris expects to find. He suspects the machines will show that "belief is belief is belief." And that conclusion, he admits, may put him at loggerheads with familiar foes. No one, he says, could accuse him or anyone else of trying to disprove God's existence on the basis of an fMRI. But faith is more vulnerable. "People who feel that religious faith is a singular operation of the brain if they admit that it's an operation of the brain at all would object to what I'm doing, since it may show that faith is essentially the same as other kinds of knowing or thinking. The whole thing will seem fishy to anyone who thinks we have immaterial souls running around in our bodies."Any rational individual on this site will see that this is just crass - on a par with 19th century Phrenology. What would neuroimaging of "faith" actually prove? It would prove that our brain is physically, "mechanically" if you like, involved in the act of believing in God or in any other religious proposition. So what? How does that impinge upon the content of the proposition? Maybe neuroimaging will prove different in the presence of a belief statement than in the presence of a fact statement: eg "Chevrolet make trucks". What about the statement "My wife (mother/son/husband etc.) loves me". Would this be represented as a "faith" statement or as a "fact statement"? What implications would it have in the event of it being the former? Would it actually be, in itself, a reason for doubting the truth of the alleged "love"?
This is a variation on the "genetic fallacy" theme. Being able to trace the physical, cerebral, location of a person's response to a religious statement says sweet FA about the truth value of the statement. Surely this should be obvious even to a brain like Harris'?!
This neuroimaging scan might show faith mingled with doubt on the part of many believers. The presence of doubt in the mind of a believer is nothing that a believer need be ashamed of. As the father of one of the people Jesus healed said before the miracle occurred: "Lord I believe - help me [overcome] my unbelief". Just as the presence of faith does not reflect on the content of the proposition, neither does the presence of doubt reflect on it, even if that "doubt" turns into unbelief. Some people ("doubting" Thomas for example) are innately sceptical, even with regard to their most deeply held convictions while others are innately credulous. You'll find both believers and unbelievers in both camps.
Other Comments by ADH
30. Comment #101128 by roach on December 20, 2007 at 12:23 am
The comments are confusing me.Other Comments by roach
31. Comment #101135 by hungarianelephant on December 20, 2007 at 1:32 am
ADH - Any rational individual on this site will see that his is just crass - on a par with 19th century Phrenology. What would neuroimaging of "faith" actually prove? It would prove that our brain is physically, "mechanically" if you like, involved in the act of believing in God or in any other religious proposition. So what? How does that impinge upon the content of the proposition? Maybe neuroimaging will prove different in the presence of a belief statement than in the presence of a fact statement: eg "Chevrolet make trucks". What about the statement "My wife (mother/son/husband etc.) loves me". Would this be represented as a "faith" statement or as a "fact statement"? What implications would it have in the event of it being the former? Would it actually be, in itself, a reason for doubting the truth of the alleged "love"?
ADH - No, belief or doubt don't tell you anything much about the truth of the proposition believed in or doubted in.
However, a central plank of the belief system of most believers is precisely the opposite. They know God exists, and since they cannot know this by rational means, then it must have been put there by God. This may be a silly argument to you - it certainly is to me - but it is a common one and needs to be disabused.
That is, I think, what Harris is saying. There's no suggestion in the article that this will prove the existence or non-existence of God.
Other Comments by hungarianelephant
32. Comment #101208 by ADH on December 20, 2007 at 5:10 am
I don't see what believers have to be disabused of. Our belief that God exists and the reality of His presence in our lives - comfort in the midst of suffering, hope in the midst of despair, an unshakeable conviction of His love towards us - may amount to knowledge and would be reflected as such on a scan (or at other times another scan made of the same person's brain might show uncertainty). So what? It seems a pretty pointless exercise to me if, as you admit, it cannot show these beliefs and/or knowledge to be delusional. What else can it show? That when we believe or doubt something happens in our brain? Of course it does. Why wouldn't it? If you were in a dark room at night on your own and could "hear" noises, your fear would show up on a scan. But the scan would not tell you anything about the noises. So why bother with the experiment? I must say I'm mystified.Other Comments by ADH
33. Comment #101453 by Corylus on December 20, 2007 at 11:30 am
ADH So why bother with the experiment? I must say I'm mystified.
There are two points I would make about this.
1) In terms of the specifics of the experiment it appears at drastic variance with the notion that 'faith' is a special type of belief. Something with a category all of its' own. Both subjective and objective: internal and externally derived.
Eg:
It may turn out that the brain treats religious faith as its own special category of belief unlike ethics and math.
But that is not what Harris expects to find.
He suspects the machines will show that "belief is belief is belief."
[my emphasis]
When we treat subjects as types of objects we commit the fallacy of 'reification'. This is often unthinkingly made when the conversation turns to God. You might want to look this one up. :-)
2) Also, there is a wider issue here that crops up in all neuro-imaging studies, to wit, that as a subject it is constantly at loggerheads with naive dualistic assumptions.
Religious belief (in its traditional sense) necessitates dualism in that it posits a soul (or an ineffable mental self) that is, in some sense both separable from the physical and able to effect it.
That is why Harris says
The whole thing will seem fishy to anyone who thinks we have immaterial souls running around in our bodies.The more that you show that thoughts, feelings and beliefs are correlated with physical states that less you see the mind and the body as separate interacting entities and instead consider the possibility that the mind is a physical thing.
Once you accept monism* and a naturalistic/physicalist/materialist understanding of mind (you can argue about which term you like best, but you are pretty much in the same place with all three)... then the notion of a soul disappears, and with it, God.
*Or at the very least radically change what you mean by dualism.
Hope this helps :-)
Other Comments by Corylus
34. Comment #101457 by Steve Zara on December 20, 2007 at 11:37 am
Of course we should. Why wouldn't we be?
Because when asked about something we claim we believe, a scan may be able to determine if we are lying, or delusional.
Other Comments by Steve Zara
35. Comment #101658 by ADH on December 20, 2007 at 5:23 pm
"Once you accept monism* and a naturalistic/physicalist/materialist understanding of mind (you can argue about which term you like best, but you are pretty much in the same place with all three)... then the notion of a soul disappears, and with it, God."I'm sorry but I am sure that I am not alone in seeing that this is a non-sequiter. We Christians are dualists, right. But I posit that ANYONE who really believes in the presence of a "self", a mind which in some way transcends the neurological "electrical discharges" which are the mechanics of the way in which it operates (of course this reasoning, feeling, conscious self expresses itself through these electical discharges, these biochemical impulses), is equally dualistic. Dualism, by the way, is not so simplistic and primitive a position as you might imagine. The "locus" of the self is our brain, which is part of our bodies. But that does not mean that our self can be defined in terms of the biochemical reactions through which it expresses itself. That kind of reductionism, apart from being lethal to human dignity, is (fortunately) unsubstantiated.
Other Comments by ADH
36. Comment #101660 by USA_Limey on December 20, 2007 at 5:29 pm
What is 'human dignity'? Other Comments by USA_Limey
37. Comment #101662 by ADH on December 20, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I'm not surprised you have trouble with this question. It is actually a dificult question to answer on a materialist premise.Other Comments by ADH
38. Comment #101663 by Steve Zara on December 20, 2007 at 5:35 pm
But I posit that ANYONE who really believes in the presence of a "self", a mind which in some way transcends the neurological "electrical discharges" which are the mechanics of the way in which it operates (of course this reasoning, feeling, conscious self expresses itself through these electical discharges, these biochemical impulses), is equally dualistic.
If you are going to believe in the presence of a mind which in some way transcends what goes on in the brain, you are going to have to provide at least some hypothesis as to what form that transcendence takes. You will have to indicate how than transcendence provides additional explanatory power. Otherwise we are into Invisible Pink Unicorn territory.
Other Comments by Steve Zara
39. Comment #101673 by Goldy on December 20, 2007 at 6:00 pm
If you were in a dark room at night on your own and could "hear" noises, your fear would show up on a scan. But the scan would not tell you anything about the noises. So why bother with the experiment? I must say I'm mystified.
At least you'd hear a noise - and only because you are listening, so you're only hearing noises you ignore most of the time :-) God, on the other hand....
Other Comments by Goldy
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1. Comment #99769 by theantitheist on December 17, 2007 at 2:04 pm
A none intrusive lie detection which deals more with the subconscious then the conscious mind. If we could get the Pope and the other Human Sheppards to undertake this maybe we could take the head off the beasts!!. (Never will happen unless forced and that's not how we roll, but it would be nice)
Thinking a bit further ahead actually, if it could be developed into something transportable and usable like a video camera maybe we will be able to point and click in the future to see if they do believe. Come on you future and my flying hoverboard!!
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