This is a fictional and friendly discussion between a survivalist/dualist and a materialist/skeptic regarding the mind-body connection and survival of consciousness. Any resemblance with actual online debates on these topics is mere coincidence...
Materialist: I've read that you defend the idea of an afterlife. Your arguments are interesting, but they're open to a basic (and, in my opinion, fatal) objection: contemporary neuroscience has shown a very strong and close dependence of mind on the brain and this seriously undermine the possibility of survival.
Dualist: What do you mean by "strong and close dependence" of mind on the brain?
Materialist: I'll illustrate my point with an example: if you take drugs or suffer a blow on your head, your mental states and consciousness will change accordingly.
Dualist: Ok, I see your point, and I fully agree with it.
Materialist: Well, if you agree with it, then you're agreeing that mind depends on the brain and, therefore, the former cannot plausibly exist after the destruction of the latter. Keith Augustine has made this point clear: "Modern science demonstrates the dependence of consciousness on the brain, verifying that the mind must die with the body"
Dualist: No, you're wrong, you're misrepresenting my position. I'm conceding the functional dependence of mind on the body, but I'm not jumping to the metaphysical materialistic idea that former is dependent for its existence on the latter. It's logically possible that they're separable (in fact, even a well known young naturalist and atheist out there agree that the "mind-pattern" can exist outside of a brain and might be transferred to and continue to exist inside of a computer...)
Materialist: Yes, it's logically possible that mind exists with independence of a brain. But the discussion is on probability, not on possibility. You seem to assume that a mere logical possibility suffices to give plausubility to your position.
Dualist: No, I'm not assuming so silly thing. My point about the logical possibility of dualism is to refute your claim that agreeing about some kind of functional dependence of mind on the brain is inconsistent with (or undermine) my survivalist position. Actually, it's logically consistent with my position and you have conceded it.
Materialist: Ok, I concede your position could be consistent from a logical point of view; but it doesn't make it true. Logical possibilities can be empirically false. So you need empirical evidence for your position.
Dualist: I agree and I think there are plenty of it, some controversial, some not so controversial. As an example of the former, consider the best cases of mediumship research (like, let's to say... Leslie Flint or John Sloan's mediumship).
Materialist: Yes, I'm familiar with that evidence, but I'm not impressed. It proves nothing. They could be product of fraud, delusion, wishful thinking or faulty methodology.
Dualist: Yes, it's logically possible that they "could" be such thing. But do you have empirical evidence showing that, in my concrete exemples, one of your alternatives is the actual explanation? A mere logical possibility doesn't validate your objections either; using your own words, "you need empirical evidence" for it.
Materialist: I don't need empirical evidence, because you're the one who is making the claim.
Dualist: I'm making the claim that such cases provide evidence for dualism and afterlife; but you're making another positive claim: that such cases are product of fraud, delusion, etc. Thus, you need to substantiate your allegations of fraud and delusions too.
Materialist: No!!!!! I'm a skeptic, and skeptics don't need to prove anything.
Dualist: Why? Suppose that I'm skeptical of the claim that Earth is round. Is it reasonable to accept my skeptical position without offer any evidence for it?
Materialist: Skeptics don't need to prove anything because you can't prove a negative.
Dualist: This is incorrect. Actually, evidence and proofs have logically positive and logically negative implications. If I prove that dualism is true, I'm proving that the negative claim "Dualism is not true" is false.
In fact, you're arguing against dualism appealing to the truth of materialism: In other words, if materialism is true, the negative claim "Dualism is not true" would be false. In this case, you'd be proving the falsehood of negative claim!
Also, when atheists argue that evil exists and it's inconsistent with God, they're offering a positive argument to prove the negative claim "God doesn't exist".
Likewise, the negative claim "Creationism is not a valid explanation in biology" is considered true by atheists and when you ask them why they think such thing, they offer positive arguments to support their negative claim (e.g. methodological arguments on falsability, the validity of evolutionary theory, etc.). So, atheists and materialists actually pretend to prove some negative claims!
Materialist: Ok, but don't change the topic, let's return to our original discussion. The evidence that you mention is very improbable, given our knowledge of the strong mind body dependence.
Dualist: No, you're begging the question. You're assuming that the observed mind-body dependence is exclusively of the materialistic kind (Mind is produced by the brain). You're not considering other kinds of functional dependence, like transmissive or permissive dependence, where the brain would be (and it's only a crude analogy for the purposes of illustration) a sort of transmitter-receiver of consciousness.
In that hypothesis, consciousness is primary, not secondary. But, ocassionally, conciousness enters into connection with a brain to be useful in a physical enviroment. If it's true, then you'll see a strong mind-brain functional dependence while consciousness is embodied.
Materialist: Your transmission theory is interesting and logically possible, but it's flawed.
When you consider a transmitter like a radio or TV, its function is purely receptive or transmissive, but it doesn't have any causal influence on the contents of the signal being transmitted.
But in the case of the brain, some diseases like Alzheimer or certain drugs actually produce a change in the contents of mental states (like creating weird ideas, or changing dramatically the personality). Thus, that kind of influence is not similar to the one observed in radio or TV and this undermine your analogy.
Dualist: I concede my analogy is crude, and it doesn't pretend to "prove" my position. The only point of my analogy is to illustrate a possible connection between consciousness and the brain that account for the observed mind-brain dependence (so appreciated by you!) and phenomena suggestive of an afterlife (mediumship, etc.) and dualism (e.g. psi)
I'm not saying that the brain is, exactly, like a radio or TV.
Materialist: I see your point. But it doesn't explain the examples mentioned above (Alzheimer, etc.)
Dualist: The transmission hypothesis is consistent with them, because that hypothesis doesn't postulate one-way or unidirectional influence (e.g. from mind on the body), but a two-way bidirectional influence. Analogue with TV or a radio (which are mostly receptive artifacts, even though not totally, because for example a TV can causally influence the colors and audio of the pictures of the signal being transmitted), the brain receive and transmit of "signal" of consciousness but, in addition, and given the strong (temporal) attachment of consciousness on the brain, the latter can influence in very strong and dramatic ways the functioning of consciousness.
Materialist: But your hypothesis is superfluous; the productive-materialistic hypothesis can account for such dependence, without appealing to an immaterial soul or consciousness. This is more simple hypothesis, and therefore, it should be preferred.
Dualist: Simpler hypothesis should be preferred when they account for the same facts, i.e. when their empirical content is equivalent. If you have 20 facts to explain, and two hypothesis (A and B) fully explain these facts, then the simpler hypothesis (e.g. A) should be preferred, because it's epistemically more economic (i.e. it can do the explicative work without postuling unnecesary entities)
But it is not the case here. In our discussion, there are a group of facts and anomalies (psi, afterlife data, etc.) that dualists can explain, while that materialists cannot (they can only dismiss or deny them).
So, the transmission hypothesis is not totally correferential and co-extensive with the materialist hypothesis, that is, they share only part of their referents (e.g. the evidence from neuroscience), not all of them.
Dualist have to explain 1)the evidence from neuroscience; and 2)Psi, afterlife. The materialist only can explain the former; the latter is considered non-existent and dismissed as extraordinary or improbable (in the materalistic worldview!) and rejected on these grounds. (As a matter of fact, materialists have organized themselves in groups known as "organized skeptics", and whose purpose is to debunk, refute, stigmatize and invalidate any scientific research with the potential to refute materialism)
So, such extraordinary claims about certain phenomena are "extraordinary" only if you asssume, in advance (and implictly or explicitly) that materialism is true. But this is part of the issue at stake!
A consequence of this is that a materialist, when he's forced by the weight of the evidence, will concede that the evidence is good according to the scientific standards of science. But, as according him materialism is true and such phenomena are improbable in his worldview, he'll reject the evidence on the grounds that such phenomena are extraordinary! (A clever way of begging the question, isn't it?)
Materialist: But you can't compare the hard evidence gotten in neuroscience with the weak evidence of parapsychology. The evidence of neuroscience is better than the evidence of parapsychology, and for that reason I prefer to believe in the former than in the latter.
Dualist: But I'm not comparing both fields. My point is that your worldview have to account for all the actual phenomena, even for the ones where the evidence is supposedly weak (but existent and valid according to the normal standards of science!).
Each scientific field has more or less different methodological rigour and the evidence has not the same weight in each case. As a rule, evidence in social science tend to be weaker than evidence in natural sciences.
But there are exceptions. The evidence for the historical ocurrence of the French Revolution is stronger than the evidence for Dawkins' "memes" or, in natural science, for a multiverse. (As a curious note, the same weird naturalist mentioned above, who believe in mind-body dualism and immortality inside of a computer, is very sympathetic to the multiverse theory, in spite of the lack of hard evidence for it, because it makes the idea of God or some intelligent designer more improbable or unnecesary. I let you to think if it's a consistent position... but this is another problem)
By the way, why do you have to choose between believing in the evidence of neuroscience or believing in the evidence of parapsychology? Implicitly, you're posing a false dilemma, based on your materialistic assumption that the evidence of parapsychology is inconsistent with neuroscience, when the reality is that the evidence of parapsychology is inconsistent with materialism! (not neuroscience, whose evidence you interpret, in advance, in materialistic terms alone, begging the question again)
Just curious, if the evidence of parapsychology is so weak, why do some informed materialistic professional debunkers have conceded that some of this evidence proves the phenomenon according to the normal standards of science? (As you can expect, I disagree with that the evidence of parapsychology is "weak"... I think it's very good)
Materialists: I don't know, and in any case, I disagree with it. And I don't think I'm begging the question...
Dualist: Ok sorry, I was just curious... (and yes, I think you're begging the question)
Materialist: Don't speculate about me, let's to return to our original discussion.
Dualist: Ok, but later... right know I have other things to do.
Materialist: Ok.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Materialist: I've read that you defend the idea of an afterlife. Your arguments are interesting, but they're open to a basic (and, in my opinion, fatal) objection: contemporary neuroscience has shown a very strong and close dependence of mind on the brain and this seriously undermine the possibility of survival.
Dualist: What do you mean by "strong and close dependence" of mind on the brain?
Materialist: I'll illustrate my point with an example: if you take drugs or suffer a blow on your head, your mental states and consciousness will change accordingly.
Dualist: Ok, I see your point, and I fully agree with it.
Materialist: Well, if you agree with it, then you're agreeing that mind depends on the brain and, therefore, the former cannot plausibly exist after the destruction of the latter. Keith Augustine has made this point clear: "Modern science demonstrates the dependence of consciousness on the brain, verifying that the mind must die with the body"
Dualist: No, you're wrong, you're misrepresenting my position. I'm conceding the functional dependence of mind on the body, but I'm not jumping to the metaphysical materialistic idea that former is dependent for its existence on the latter. It's logically possible that they're separable (in fact, even a well known young naturalist and atheist out there agree that the "mind-pattern" can exist outside of a brain and might be transferred to and continue to exist inside of a computer...)
Materialist: Yes, it's logically possible that mind exists with independence of a brain. But the discussion is on probability, not on possibility. You seem to assume that a mere logical possibility suffices to give plausubility to your position.
Dualist: No, I'm not assuming so silly thing. My point about the logical possibility of dualism is to refute your claim that agreeing about some kind of functional dependence of mind on the brain is inconsistent with (or undermine) my survivalist position. Actually, it's logically consistent with my position and you have conceded it.
Materialist: Ok, I concede your position could be consistent from a logical point of view; but it doesn't make it true. Logical possibilities can be empirically false. So you need empirical evidence for your position.
Dualist: I agree and I think there are plenty of it, some controversial, some not so controversial. As an example of the former, consider the best cases of mediumship research (like, let's to say... Leslie Flint or John Sloan's mediumship).
Materialist: Yes, I'm familiar with that evidence, but I'm not impressed. It proves nothing. They could be product of fraud, delusion, wishful thinking or faulty methodology.
Dualist: Yes, it's logically possible that they "could" be such thing. But do you have empirical evidence showing that, in my concrete exemples, one of your alternatives is the actual explanation? A mere logical possibility doesn't validate your objections either; using your own words, "you need empirical evidence" for it.
Materialist: I don't need empirical evidence, because you're the one who is making the claim.
Dualist: I'm making the claim that such cases provide evidence for dualism and afterlife; but you're making another positive claim: that such cases are product of fraud, delusion, etc. Thus, you need to substantiate your allegations of fraud and delusions too.
Materialist: No!!!!! I'm a skeptic, and skeptics don't need to prove anything.
Dualist: Why? Suppose that I'm skeptical of the claim that Earth is round. Is it reasonable to accept my skeptical position without offer any evidence for it?
Materialist: Skeptics don't need to prove anything because you can't prove a negative.
Dualist: This is incorrect. Actually, evidence and proofs have logically positive and logically negative implications. If I prove that dualism is true, I'm proving that the negative claim "Dualism is not true" is false.
In fact, you're arguing against dualism appealing to the truth of materialism: In other words, if materialism is true, the negative claim "Dualism is not true" would be false. In this case, you'd be proving the falsehood of negative claim!
Also, when atheists argue that evil exists and it's inconsistent with God, they're offering a positive argument to prove the negative claim "God doesn't exist".
Likewise, the negative claim "Creationism is not a valid explanation in biology" is considered true by atheists and when you ask them why they think such thing, they offer positive arguments to support their negative claim (e.g. methodological arguments on falsability, the validity of evolutionary theory, etc.). So, atheists and materialists actually pretend to prove some negative claims!
Materialist: Ok, but don't change the topic, let's return to our original discussion. The evidence that you mention is very improbable, given our knowledge of the strong mind body dependence.
Dualist: No, you're begging the question. You're assuming that the observed mind-body dependence is exclusively of the materialistic kind (Mind is produced by the brain). You're not considering other kinds of functional dependence, like transmissive or permissive dependence, where the brain would be (and it's only a crude analogy for the purposes of illustration) a sort of transmitter-receiver of consciousness.
In that hypothesis, consciousness is primary, not secondary. But, ocassionally, conciousness enters into connection with a brain to be useful in a physical enviroment. If it's true, then you'll see a strong mind-brain functional dependence while consciousness is embodied.
Materialist: Your transmission theory is interesting and logically possible, but it's flawed.
When you consider a transmitter like a radio or TV, its function is purely receptive or transmissive, but it doesn't have any causal influence on the contents of the signal being transmitted.
But in the case of the brain, some diseases like Alzheimer or certain drugs actually produce a change in the contents of mental states (like creating weird ideas, or changing dramatically the personality). Thus, that kind of influence is not similar to the one observed in radio or TV and this undermine your analogy.
Dualist: I concede my analogy is crude, and it doesn't pretend to "prove" my position. The only point of my analogy is to illustrate a possible connection between consciousness and the brain that account for the observed mind-brain dependence (so appreciated by you!) and phenomena suggestive of an afterlife (mediumship, etc.) and dualism (e.g. psi)
I'm not saying that the brain is, exactly, like a radio or TV.
Materialist: I see your point. But it doesn't explain the examples mentioned above (Alzheimer, etc.)
Dualist: The transmission hypothesis is consistent with them, because that hypothesis doesn't postulate one-way or unidirectional influence (e.g. from mind on the body), but a two-way bidirectional influence. Analogue with TV or a radio (which are mostly receptive artifacts, even though not totally, because for example a TV can causally influence the colors and audio of the pictures of the signal being transmitted), the brain receive and transmit of "signal" of consciousness but, in addition, and given the strong (temporal) attachment of consciousness on the brain, the latter can influence in very strong and dramatic ways the functioning of consciousness.
Materialist: But your hypothesis is superfluous; the productive-materialistic hypothesis can account for such dependence, without appealing to an immaterial soul or consciousness. This is more simple hypothesis, and therefore, it should be preferred.
Dualist: Simpler hypothesis should be preferred when they account for the same facts, i.e. when their empirical content is equivalent. If you have 20 facts to explain, and two hypothesis (A and B) fully explain these facts, then the simpler hypothesis (e.g. A) should be preferred, because it's epistemically more economic (i.e. it can do the explicative work without postuling unnecesary entities)
But it is not the case here. In our discussion, there are a group of facts and anomalies (psi, afterlife data, etc.) that dualists can explain, while that materialists cannot (they can only dismiss or deny them).
So, the transmission hypothesis is not totally correferential and co-extensive with the materialist hypothesis, that is, they share only part of their referents (e.g. the evidence from neuroscience), not all of them.
Dualist have to explain 1)the evidence from neuroscience; and 2)Psi, afterlife. The materialist only can explain the former; the latter is considered non-existent and dismissed as extraordinary or improbable (in the materalistic worldview!) and rejected on these grounds. (As a matter of fact, materialists have organized themselves in groups known as "organized skeptics", and whose purpose is to debunk, refute, stigmatize and invalidate any scientific research with the potential to refute materialism)
So, such extraordinary claims about certain phenomena are "extraordinary" only if you asssume, in advance (and implictly or explicitly) that materialism is true. But this is part of the issue at stake!
A consequence of this is that a materialist, when he's forced by the weight of the evidence, will concede that the evidence is good according to the scientific standards of science. But, as according him materialism is true and such phenomena are improbable in his worldview, he'll reject the evidence on the grounds that such phenomena are extraordinary! (A clever way of begging the question, isn't it?)
Materialist: But you can't compare the hard evidence gotten in neuroscience with the weak evidence of parapsychology. The evidence of neuroscience is better than the evidence of parapsychology, and for that reason I prefer to believe in the former than in the latter.
Dualist: But I'm not comparing both fields. My point is that your worldview have to account for all the actual phenomena, even for the ones where the evidence is supposedly weak (but existent and valid according to the normal standards of science!).
Each scientific field has more or less different methodological rigour and the evidence has not the same weight in each case. As a rule, evidence in social science tend to be weaker than evidence in natural sciences.
But there are exceptions. The evidence for the historical ocurrence of the French Revolution is stronger than the evidence for Dawkins' "memes" or, in natural science, for a multiverse. (As a curious note, the same weird naturalist mentioned above, who believe in mind-body dualism and immortality inside of a computer, is very sympathetic to the multiverse theory, in spite of the lack of hard evidence for it, because it makes the idea of God or some intelligent designer more improbable or unnecesary. I let you to think if it's a consistent position... but this is another problem)
By the way, why do you have to choose between believing in the evidence of neuroscience or believing in the evidence of parapsychology? Implicitly, you're posing a false dilemma, based on your materialistic assumption that the evidence of parapsychology is inconsistent with neuroscience, when the reality is that the evidence of parapsychology is inconsistent with materialism! (not neuroscience, whose evidence you interpret, in advance, in materialistic terms alone, begging the question again)
Just curious, if the evidence of parapsychology is so weak, why do some informed materialistic professional debunkers have conceded that some of this evidence proves the phenomenon according to the normal standards of science? (As you can expect, I disagree with that the evidence of parapsychology is "weak"... I think it's very good)
Materialists: I don't know, and in any case, I disagree with it. And I don't think I'm begging the question...
Dualist: Ok sorry, I was just curious... (and yes, I think you're begging the question)
Materialist: Don't speculate about me, let's to return to our original discussion.
Dualist: Ok, but later... right know I have other things to do.
Materialist: Ok.
TO BE CONTINUED...
