Who Were the Sea Peoples?

An actual neuroscientist (at least one in training) is honest about where things stand . The findings: We have no f*%king clue how to simulate a brain. We have no f*%king clue how to wire up a brain. We have no f*%king clue what makes human brains work so well. We have no f*%king clue what the parameters are. We have no f*%king clue what the important thing to simulate is. So, we are just about there, hey? And note that this person is still a materialist, and still thinks we are dealing with a "machine" that thinks. S/he is just honest enough to admit that we have no clue how that "machine" operates.

A person "sees a tree." He is asked what caused him to see this. "Well, light from the tree coming to my eyes." A neuro-phile says, "No, what caused you to have that experience was this brain state I detected." * The neuro-phile is obviously confused: these are not competing explanations, but complementary explanations from different points of view. If someone asks me, "Gene, why are you in England?" then "I came for a conference" and "This is where the jet landed" are not contradictory answers! They address the question from two different perspectives. _____________________________ A person experiences strange fits. Doctors are puzzled as to what is occurring, but he is not: Aliens are beaming mind-control waves into his head, totally disrupting his brain patterns. We may not believe him, but that will be because we doubt aliens are visiting the earth, or something like that. What would be absurd here is to poi...

Peter Winch, in The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy , writes: Burnet puts the point very well in his book on Greek Philosophy when he points out (on pages 11 and 12) that the sense in which the philosopher asks ‘What is real?’ involves the problem of man’s relation to reality, which takes us beyond pure science. ‘We have to ask whether the mind of man can have any contact with reality at all, and, if it can, what difference this will make to his life’. Now to think that this question of Burnet’s could be settled by experimental methods involves just as serious a mistake as to think that philosophy, with its a priori methods of reasoning, could possibly compete with experimental science on its own ground. For it is not an empirical question at all, but a conceptual one. It has to do with the force of the concept of reality. An appeal to the results of an experiment would necessarily beg the important question, since the philosopher would be bound to ask by w...

This post isn't actually arguing for the existence of demons; it is actually about the misuse of neuroscience. I was reading Oliver Sachs new book, and he said something (the book is not with me now) along the lines of, "Some people took these feelings of presence as evidence of demons or ghosts, but now we know they are caused by such-and-such neural phenomena." How in the world does that dispose of the possibility of demons or ghosts existing? (Again, please, this is not an argument for their existence: I am addressing neuroscientists trying to do philosophy, not the spirit world!) Don't, say, trees create particular neural patterns when we look at them? Does that prove that trees aren't real as well? Why can't someone who believes in ghosts say, "See, now we have physical evidence for ghosts: they are able to create those neural patterns you see!" Look, when it comes to brain functioning, neuro-scientists are beast. (Yeah, I meant to write ...