Selma's characterization below of my assertions in this thread is totally wrong.
What I stated cannot be recast in the antiquated philosophical dichotomy of monism and dualism. The current scientific understanding of the brain points to a much more complicated scenario. Googling for monism and dualism, as she recommends, will not give you much of an insight into it. One will have to google at a minimum for about a week, and spend more than six months reading and trying to understand all the papers that google throws up to grasp a little bit of what we are dealing with here. However, if one finds comfort in using rhetorical flourish or pre-scientific philosophical labels then the current scientific position can be referred to as a cross between the philosophical concepts of emergentism and property dualism. In short, it is neither monism nor dualism. The ancient classical views alluded to by Selma have long been refuted by both modern philosophy and science. In particular, there is hardly any philosopher alive today, let alone a brain scientist, who believes in classical mind-body dualism or Cartesian dualism or substance dualism. The concept that a mind, soul, self, etc exists independently of the brain has been rejected on strong scientific as well as philosophical grounds. I have already provided some of the evidence against it on Goanet itself over the last few years. For example, I have told you that the first scientific nail in its coffin was hammered in in the 18th and 19th centuries with the discovery of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Any spooky non-physical entity cannot interact with the matter and energy of physical objects such as the brain without violating those well established fundamental laws. The coffin was finally buried by the second half of the 20th century by advances in neurology, neurosurgery, neurophysiology and cognitive neuroscience, all of which showed that not a single mental or conscious phenomenon survives in the face of damage to specific parts of the brain. The last two decades have provided fascinating insights into the brain basis of the most elusive conscious mental and spiritual phenomena you can imagine. Out of body experiences, near death experiences, phantom limbs, phantom selves, multiple ghostly apparitions, religious experiences, merging with universal consciousness, etc have all been shown to result from certain patterns of electrical activation in specific parts on the brain. I am not talking about armchair speculations here. In each case this has been a direct unequivocal inference from reproducible experimental observations. On the flip side no evidence has ever been uncovered for the persistence of any mental or conscious phenomenon in the absence of a functioning brain structure that mediates it, or for the interaction of non-physical entities with the world of matter and energy. And believe me this is not for lack of trying. All of the serious scientific studies designed to uncover such evidence have in the final analysis come up empty. Examples of such failures include investigations of near death experiences and reincarnation studies at the University of Virginia (the latter also at NIMHANS, Bangalore), the PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) project of Princeton University, the paranormal investigations of psychologists Richard Wiseman and Susan Blackmore in UK, and the intercessary prayer studies at Columbia University and elsewhere, funded by the Templeton foundation. Classical monism is equally dead. It runs into a serious conceptual problem in explaining the natural phenomenon of consciousness - the problem as to how and why only certain brain processes are conscious. Modern philosophers have labeled this problem or gap in understanding with rather uncreative terms such as "the hard problem" or "the explanatory gap". Those who took monism seriously in the past did so by rejecting the reality of conscious experience. They can no longer do so because modern brain science has established that consciousness is a measurable and manipulable natural phenomenon. A good case can be made that it is most likely a fundamental physical property similar in some respects to mass and electrical charge. So please don't be misguided by Selma's claim that the present day scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon, the mind, in terms of an underlying natural causal process, the activity of the brain, is simply some age-old philosophical opinion. Cheers, Santosh --- Carvalho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > What Santosh is trying to say with his excessive > throat-clearing, is that one is either a Monist or a > Dualist. Those interested in this topic, can google > Monism and Dualism, suffice it to say Dualists > believe > that a sense of self exists outside of the body. > > I'd be very interested in knowing what precise > scientific evidence exists that discredits Dualism > without a shadow of doubt. The fact is, man > throughout > the ages has been conscious of a sense of self > distinct from his physical being. This sense of self > manifests very early and can be noticed in children > even as young as two. > > Until, it is decidedly proven one way or another, > despite Santosh's enthusiasm, Monism remains an > opinion just as Dualism does. > > selma >
