Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who knows some details about the brain, responds: What is most remarkable about these patients is that after the surgery they are unaffected in everyday life, except for the diminished seizures.
Tag: Michael Egnor
Michael Egnor sympathizes with people who think the universe is conscious
Michaael Egnor: There is no doubt that consciousness is a fundamental property of animal and human existence. As philosopher Philip Goff notes, a philosophy that cannot plausibly account for it cannot be correct.
Michael Egnor: How can mind interact with matter?
Nature itself, he says, provides examples of how the immaterial interacts with the material.
Do Jeffrey Shallit’s writings offer more information than a blank page?
Michael Egnor wonders whether that’s true. But he faces the difficulty of convincing anti-ID mathematician Jeffrey Shallit, that HE, at least, ought to think they do.
Michael Egnor: The Nobels this year were another win for design in nature
But the Darwinists can console themselves that, no matter what else happens, pop science mags will probably stay faithful. Darwinism means always having a folk tale with a simple moral to tell about the animal world.
Can we engineer consciousness into a robot?
We actually don’t know what consciousness is, so it feels odd to speak of “engineering” it.
In debating Jerry Coyne, Michael Egnor tries philosophy…
Egnor: The Prime Mover argument is the most popular formal argument for the existence of God, and it is often misunderstood and, when understood, often misrepresented. Atheists, in my experience, never get it right. If they did, they wouldn’t be atheists.
Michael Egnor: Did consciousness evolve to help us “find love”?
Egnor: How tight a link might we expect between reproductive success and the contemplation of truth? Not a lot, it would seem, if the experience of philosophy majors on the dating scene is any measure.
Michael Egnor gets mail from Jerry Coyne
Coyne: If our capacity for reason gives us the “capacity to know immaterial reality and act on our knowledge”, then how come every religion has a different conception of immaterial reality?
Michael Egnor: Did consciousness “evolve”?
Michael Egnor: If consciousness is merely a property of the brain, it has no agency—no power to cause anything—in itself. Properties can’t do anything. For example, if you hit a nail with a yellow hammer, you hit it with the hammer, not with the yellow.
If you are not a p-zombie, you should not be a materialist either
But don’t tell neuroscientist Michael Graziano, who has set his sights on figuring out consciousness from a materialist perspective. Let it be a surprise
Michael Egnor on Jeffrey Epstein: “Consensus science” meant not denouncing him
Listen to this: People’s lives may depend on other people not speaking out. For example about design in nature.
Michael Egnor: Why human-ape similarity argues for human exceptionality
When everything is the same except the one thing that matters most, we can be sure we are onto a real difference.
Michael Egnor: A materialist neuroscientist continues the argument with himself
Dr. Ali seems to take both sides of the question.
Michael Egnor: Now Dr. Ali argues with Dr. Ali
In short, he argues that it’s no surprise that cutting the brain in half has no effect on abstract thought, and then he argues that delicate complexity and interconnection is essential for abstract thought. Dr. Ali is debating Dr. Ali.