Monday, October 27, 2008

Dr.Steven Novella's Attack On Dualist's Supporters

Recently Neurologist Steven Novella on his blog Neurologica a two part post titled Reports of the demise of materialism are premature.

Here's some points that I like to address from his posts.

Steven Novella says

The New Scientist has recently discovered what readers of this blog have known for a while - that the denial of materialist neuroscience is the “new creationism.” In fact I have written extensively over the past year about the embrace by the Discovery Institute (an intelligent design group) of cartesian dualism, the notion that the mind is a different substance from the brain. The primary proponent of this argument for the DI (and a frequent foil of my blog entries) is Michael Egnor, a creationist neurosurgeon. But the New Scientist article correctly points out that this is actually part of a larger movement and a larger strategy.

So, anyone who disagrees with the materialist view is labelled a creationist?. Of course Intelligent Design is an alternative to evolution, like cartesian dualism is an alternative to theories that mind is either epiphenomenal or an emergent property of the brain. The question is should science be fully materialistic or dualistic?. For me after studying the evidence, I have come to the conclusion that we live in a dualistic universe.

2 comments:

Reckless Divinity said...

Why have you come to that conclusion? What form of dualism do you embrace?

Leo MacDonald said...

Hello there

I embrace substance dualism. I have come to that conclusion through my study on psychical research and parapsychology.

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