In 2005, New Scientist listed the placebo effect as Number 1 among 13 things that do not make sense.
Now they are trying to figure out how to harness it over there:
From New Scientist:
How you can harness the placebo effect
…
“It’s hard to believe that sham surgery can produce a long-lasting effect,” says Luana Colloca, who studies the placebo effect at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. But it can. More.
We don’t make this stuff up, you know. If we had that kind of imagination, we’d be getting rich writing screenplays.
See also: Royal Society meet on paradigm shift in evolution? Many of the 50 or so scientists associated with The Third Way of Evolution will attend.
There is no reason why the New Scientist should not write two different articles about the Placebo effect 10 years apart. This is thing about science – you look at the results, you learn, and sometimes you change your mind.
However, in this case the two articles are compatible. The first is about how we don’t understand the mechanism of the placebo effect. The second article is about using it. Neither deny it exists. That would be daft, as scientists have known about it for decades.
markf @1, you would hardly need to write to say that if you didn’t know change is in the wind. Shd be fun.
Exactly how is it that a belief in my mind can have real physiological effects on my body if, as atheistic Darwinists hold, my mind is merely emergent from, or an ‘illusion’ of, my brain?
A few notes to go with the placebo effect:
‘Brain Plasticity’ to a person’s focused intention has now been established by Jeffrey Schwartz, as well as among other researchers.
Moreover, completely contrary to materialistic thought, ‘mind’ has been now been shown to be able to reach all the way down and have pronounced effects on the gene expression of our bodies:
You have it the wrong way round. It is easy to see how the mind can have real physiological effect if the mind itself is a material process. It is much harder to see how it can have an effect on the material world if it is something completely different. Where is the interface? How does it work?
I wrote my response because what you wrote was false. There was no “about face”. Why does that require a change in the wind?
as to:
“It is easy to see how the mind can have real physiological effect if the mind itself is a material process.”
It may be easy for you personally, as an atheist, to imagine how something you claim to be imaginary, i.e. your mind, your sense of self, your very personhood, can have a ‘real’ effect on your body, since you in fact hold that the most real thing you can know about the world, i.e. that you really exist as a real person, is merely imaginary, but in the real world, imaginary things do not have effects on real things.
i.e. Just because you can falsely imagine that imaginary things can have real effects does not make it logically true.
Moreover, it is impossible for atheists to live their lives as if their atheistic materialism were actually true. i.e. As if they had no mind nor free will. Therefore atheistic materialism is, of logical necessity, a false view of reality, i.e. a delusion.
To do scientific investigation already presupposes the existence of the self, So it makes no sense to try and use science to demonstrate the existence of the self. These materialists to be consistent have to say they are experiencing an illusion of doing scientific investigation, but then the question is, who is having the illusion?
They would have to hold they are illusions having illusions.
That is the absurdity strict materialism leads to.
Jack Jones,
No, that is the absurdity that the claim that materialism means that the self is an illusion leads to. If someone claims that under materialism that the self is an illusion, than the logical question to ask is: Who is having the illusion? I’ve asked that of many ID proponents and Creationists who make the claim, but I never receive an answer. (I’d ask materialists who make the same claim that question too, but I have never personally run into one.)
News,
What “stuff” are you referring to? It sounds like you’re referring to the placebo effect, but you’ve always sounded like you believe in the effect before, so I doubt you mean that.
Is there something in this article that you disagree with?
Is there anything in the 2005 article that you disagree with?
It’s not clear what it is that you have a problem with in either article.
Or your denial that that’s what it leads to.
Exactly! That’s one reason why materialism is a suicidal fairytale for grownups.
From Atheist Horseman, Sam Harris:
Just in from a quick google search.
Vy,
That the self exists is something that non-materialists and (the vast majority) of materialists agree on. It’s something that self-evidently exists. The disagreement is on the source (is it the soul? Just the brain? A mix of the two? etc).
If someone is going to claim that under materialism that the self is an illusion, it’s up to the person making the statement to explain what the statement means. There has to be a self to have any illusions. So it’s a (seemingly) contradictory statement.
It’s fair to challenge materialists on the origin of the self – but it’s just strange to say that with materialism that it doesn’t exist. I disagree with YECs on the origin of the moon – but I wouldn’t tell a YEC that under their worldview that the moon doesn’t exist.
Yeah, I can google too. But I’ve never had a chance to speak with him. If I ever run into Sam Harris, I’ll ask him the question. But from what I’ve seen, it sounds to me that he’s merely saying that there are aspects of the self that are an illusion, rather than claiming that the “self” itself is an illusion. If that’s what he actually means then my advice to him would be that he should be more careful with his wording.
Besides Sam Harris, you might want to talk to a litany of other atheistic materialists.
at 37:51 minute mark of following video, according to the law of identity, Richard Dawkins does not exist as a person: (the unity of Aristotelian Form is also discussed) i.e. to repeat, ironically, in atheists denying that God really exists, they end up denying that they themselves really exist as real persons.
At the 23:33 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins himself agrees with materialistic philosophers who say that:
A few minutes later Rowan Williams asks Dawkins
And in the following article Dawkins admits that it is impossible to for him live as if his atheistic worldview were actually true
The vast majority of materialists I’ve discussed with deny the existence of the self. In fact, materialism denies the existence of the self. The materialists that claim not to try to use mental gymnastics to get the self and materialism to play nice.
yes! Yes!! Yes!!! 😀
For the gold medalists in mental gymnastics, e.g. Sam Harris, such an amazingly obvious thing seems impossible to grasp.
Materialism provides no foundation for the existence of the “self”.
Exactly! But it’s at that point where it’s clear why people like Sam Harris have gold medals in mental gymnastics.
Exactly!
There’s no “seemingly”, it’s 100% suicidal. Full Stop.
Materialists say that. We just try to make sure they are consistent with their worldview when necessary.
Bad analogy. Materialism doesn’t provide a basis for the existence of the self.
As BA @12 shows, you have more than one “Harris” to talk to.
Er, what?
It couldn’t be any clearer that he’s referring to the self in all its glory.
Here’s another materialist denying consciousness:
His Yoda Complex won’t let him see that based on his own babble, hi…its words are useless!
A slightly OT follow-up Dawkins Delusion video for post 12.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QERyh9YYEis
Vy,
Wow, we’ve obviously been hanging out in different places – I have yet to personally meet anyone that believes that the self doesn’t exist (I only know of atheists that supposedly claim as such from the same few that are listed over and over again ad nauseum).
How so?
If you mean that no one has yet come up with how the self/consciousness/mind results from the physical brain, I completely agree. But I haven’t seen any non-materialists come up with a theory for how the self/consciousness/mind exists in their worldview either.
So far there’s no worldview that provides a basis for the existence of self. Even if one believes in God and believes that “God did it” – God did what? How? What is the self made of? If you say a “soul”, that’s just a label. But even with this utter lack of a basis for the existence for the self, I certainly wouldn’t say that under theism that the self doesn’t exist – only that they have no explanation for how it exists.
There’s a world of difference between saying “the self/mind/consciousness doesn’t exist” and “there are aspects of the self/mind/consciousness that aren’t what they appear to be”.
It’s been a very long time since I read any books by Harris, and I don’t recall him speaking about this subject in the books, so I’m not familiar with his views on this subject. I looked up the video that the quote above comes from and just watched it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0
For most of the video he speaks plainly as if the self and consciousness exist, and he talks a lot about the illusion of the self or consciousness being separate from the body. There are a couple of sentences where he speaks of the self and “I” being an illusion… by that does he mean that they don’t exist? That wouldn’t make sense considering the rest of the video. But if I ever meet him I’ll ask him. 🙂 If there’s a book where he talks about this in depth I might read it. If that is what he’s saying I obviously disagree with him.
One of the other common names brought up of those who say that “consciousness/mind/self doesn’t exist” is Susan Blackmore. Googling around I came across this:
http://www.susanblackmore.co.u.....m/ns02.htm
“First we must be clear what is meant by the term ‘illusion’. To say that consciousness is an illusion is not to say that it doesn’t exist, but that it is not what it seems to be”
Well, then, don’t say that! Instead say that there are aspects of consciousness that are an illusion, or aspects of consciousness that aren’t what they appear to be. But they probably realize that those claims don’t get as much attention. I’ve noticed that many places with a headline or quote that has “the mind doesn’t exist” or such are just for attention or to get quoted, and then when you read the article it’s like, “Ok, now that I have your attention, here’s what I really mean…”.
I suspect you got your quotes from here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_d.....anguage=en
If you watch the talk it should be obvious to you that he believes that consciousness exists.
I’ve also watched a couple of lengthy talks he’s given on his work “Consciousness Explained”, and it’s quite clear in the in the talks that he believes that the mind/consciousness/self exists. (I haven’t yet read the book though.)
Do you think it’s relevant that he believes that consciousness is the “result of physical processes”? Do you equate that with him claiming that consciousness doesn’t exist?
If so, I could use the same logic to claim that you don’t believe in consciousness (since I disagree with you on the origin of consciousness). And that YECs don’t believe in the moon.
goodusername,
Did ‘you’ freely choose to write your own post or did the molecules randomly bouncing around in your skull via the laws of physics write your post and inform the ‘illusion of you’ of the matter after the fact?
Although Dr. Nelson alluded to writing an e-mail, (i.e. creating information), to tie his ‘personal agent’ argument into intelligent design, Dr. Nelson’s ‘personal agent’ argument can easily be amended to any action that ‘you’, as a personal agent, choose to take:
Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
What should be needless to say, if raising your arm is enough to refute your supposedly ‘scientific’ worldview of atheistic materialism/naturalism, then perhaps it is time for you to seriously consider getting a new scientific worldview?
Might I suggest the Christian worldview which launched the scientific revolution in the first place?
Several other resources backing up this claim are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, and Christopher Dawson.
A few related notes:
Born “Exactly how is it that a belief in my mind can have real physiological effects on my body if, as atheistic Darwinists hold, my mind is merely emergent from, or an ‘illusion’ of, my brain?”
Excellent Born. Indeed, if the mind emerges from or is an illusion from the Brain then how can that then in turn have any control over the cause?
It makes no logical sense of course. Materialism really is a busted flush.