>Personally, I find it hard to believe that the "I" that perceives is a >purely physical phenomenon, and I'm much more convinced that there is >indeed some form of mind/body duality and something analogous to a >"soul".
The "I" that perceives is not anything -- its an illusion, a trick of perception and memory. It doesn't exist -- there is not fixed self. Buddha knews that 2500 years ago, and modern science is showing him right. Olin ----- Original Message ----- From: Bruce Bostwick<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion<mailto:brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2008 12:04 PM Subject: Re: New Creationist Ploy On Oct 25, 2008, at 1:25 PM, William T Goodall wrote: > http://tinyurl.com/6o9w33<http://tinyurl.com/6o9w33> > > > Creationists declare war over the brain > • 22 October 2008 > • From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. > • Amanda Gefter > "YOU cannot overestimate," thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, > "how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it > now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down. > You're gonna hear a lot in the next calendar year about... how > Darwin's explanation of how human intelligence arose is the only > scientific way of doing it... I'm asking us as a world community to go > out there and tell the scientific establishment, enough is enough! > Materialism needs to start fading away and non-materialist causation > needs to be understood as part of natural reality." > > His enthusiasm was met with much applause from the audience gathered > at the UN's east Manhattan conference hall on 11 September for an > international symposium called Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New > Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness. Earlier Mario Beauregard, a > researcher in neuroscience at the University of Montreal, Canada, and > co-author of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the > existence of the soul, told the audience that the "battle" between > "maverick" scientists like himself and those who "believe the mind is > what the brain does" is a "cultural war". > > 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-basedDiscovery Institute, headquarters of > the intelligent design movement. ID argues that biological life is too > complex to have arisen through evolution. > > Old hats Maru Kind of a non-issue for me on the creation/evolution debate (to the extent that the creationists believe there is a debate :D ) since to me, the existence or non-existence of a soul does not by itself prove or disprove the entire remainder of the creationist assertion that all life was directly created by their God-image. Personally, I find it hard to believe that the "I" that perceives is a purely physical phenomenon, and I'm much more convinced that there is indeed some form of mind/body duality and something analogous to a "soul". Awareness and cognition seem to me to argue in favor of that interpretation. What that soul consists of, and how it functions, and whether it survives after physical death, etc. etc. are mostly in the realm of religion, but to me, mind/body duality seems to be less firmly decided (or at least the significance of awareness and cognition seem to me to be grossly underestimated in the debate) than other aspects of human biology -- it's often discounted as fringe science and denigrated as a back door to creationism, but to me it seems to deserve taking a bit more seriously. Strictly my $.02, and admittedly, not really a "scientific" position as it is non- disprovable and irreproducible on some levels, but I don't consider it entirely ruled out. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l<http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l> _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
