Alex
Administrator
Hi Grant... you might have finnally nudged me over the cliff :) I gotta try to get Gazzaniga on Skeptiko.This interview with the dear Dr. is one of those interviews where fact checking will produce a headache before it is all over. Therefore I will choose just one. The Dr, suggested that you read Dr. Michael Gazzaniga. I have read most of Gazzaniga and talk about it when I lecture on consciousness.It is good stuff. As with most arguments the Gazzaniga defense of atheism is only as good as the facts Paxinos wishes to leave out, because the split brain research hardly back up the 1st grade Sunday School view that Paxinos is promoting.
The fact that there are two brains hardly makes it easier to believe that this formation happened by accident. Gazzaniga also points out a bigger problem that there are potentially thousands of independent modules in the brain, such as sight, sound, balance, speech etc. Without getting into the complexity of genetic mutations forming this Jumbo Jet in the junkyard after numerous tornados, it raises the realization to any neuroscientist that he is reality attending Trump University. The ugly unspoken word at Trump University is the binding problem. How do these potentially thousands of modules work together to almost instantly create the super virtual reality we call qualia?
We are expected to believe that some massive committee of modules is making collective decisions (otherwise known as Oneness) to chose correctly each word as we put it in a sentence, walk talk and chew gum at the same time etc, or run the thousands of other unconscious functions like healing wounds, regulating blood pressure, sugar levels, heart rate yada yada.The insistance that this multi moduled brain is a randomly created self-organizing system rivals any and all miracles in the Bible.
The other wonderful thing about the split-brain research that Paxinos chose to ignore is the "storyteller" or "interpeter" that Gazzaniga was created with discovering. It is located in the scientific rational anylytical left brain and is as close to a "scientific fact" as one gets. It was discovered that when an instruction was given to the right brain, the left scientific rational analytical brain was ignorant of it because there are no signals being exchanged between the brain halves. When the right brain was told to get up and walk around or go get a drink, Gazzaniga would ask the "verbal" left brain, "Why did you get up and walk around or get a drink?"
In every case, the left brain would make something up and in every case it was wrong. It would immediately say "I was thirsty" or "I needed to stretch." It was given the name storyteller as the left brain consciousness (and it appears to be an independent consciousness so now we have three consciousnesses in the same brain) was trying to fill the gap in the suddenly inconsistent situation. The appropriate name for the storyteller in the rational left brain is pathological bullshitter.
This is where skepticism comes from. Science is a method to investigate the world around us. The idea that skepticism is a part was added later. Skepticism is the atheistic rational analytical consciousness's way of dealing with things when their religious scientific beliefs start to fail.
A prime example from the interview. Alex confronts the Dr. with the evidence of near-death experience and how it invalidates the materialistic brain Sunday School story. Because there is now a big hole in Paxinos's world view, his left brain storyteller jumps in immediately with "the evidence wasn't published in a major journal." The story is now consistent again.
So Alex then brings up the fact that the evidence was written in the Lancet, and again there is a hole in Paxinos's world view. The storyteller jumps in immediately with a questioning of the controls used in the experiment. If Alex had killed that the storyteller would have come up with something else. This is not theory. READ GAZZANIGA.
Just for interest sake the split brain research also shows that when the left brain is shut down as is found in autistic savants, even though many of them cannot dress themselves, speak, or go to school, can produce many things that they have never been taught. These include calendar counting for specific dates thousands of years in the future, multiplying six digits numbers against each other, producing 15 or 16 digital prime numbers, telepathically pick of 162 digits in a row, and instantly counting hundreds of small items instantly that have just dropped to the floor. ANY reading in savant literature shows clearly that these skills do exist and are completely reproducible. It would not be fair to bring these things up with Paxinos, as he is still in grade one when it comes to the complexity and what consciousness can do through the brain.