Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Interview with Mario Beauregard

Here. 

5 comments:

amorbis said...

Just for the record: This guy DOES have data to back up what he's saying in this interview. I have read his 2012 book "Brain Wars", and the vast amount of data covered in the book to support his conclusions is impressive, if not compelling. It's a shame this interview is just gonna give off the impression that he's making blind assertions without evidence, which is just gonna make it fodder for the angry, dogmatic materialists that come here.

im-skeptical said...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience

Interesting discussion of Beauregard

William said...

Skep,

You should study how section 7 is written, since it is really quite good. It avoids the oft-seen materialist fallacy used by you and others all too often, the descent to anthropomorphic metaphor in speaking about the brain, except the fallacious howler here:

"It's the part of your brain that tells you when something is really not a good idea, and lets you control yourself; it's the part you use when you are "biting your tongue" to keep from saying what you really want to say."

Really, I think we ought to put a microphone up to our prefrontal area, since it speaks :)

im-skeptical said...

William,

I assume you are referring to section 2.2, the discussion of "Badly crafted neuroscience". Yes, it perhaps should have said something like "initiates inhibitory mental processes" instead of "tells you", which is obviously metaphoric. I am curious about where you heard me say something like that, though. I'm not saying emphatically that I have never said it, but I don't recall it.

William said...

Yes, I was referring to 2.2 (called section 7 if you click 'edit".

Regarding past use of things like "think" and "feel" and "talk" when discussing neural tissues, I'm afraid I cannot do good searches for comments on this blog (as opposed to Victor's posts) so I will have to point out yours and other's use of the "pathetic fallacy" in neuroscience some other time, sorry.