Hi all,
I have lurked on this site for probably over 3 years now. I really enjoy reading the forums and have a great amount of respect for nearly all of the posters on this site and I also enjoy a lot of Alex's shows. I had a specific question to ask and so I decided to make an account.
I'm really looking for people's opinions and ideas with regards to how brain injuries can alter our behavior, motivations, memory, and general cognition, and how that relates to materialism as a theory, as well as the resources/links/articles/blogs etc that you have used to form those opinions.
I am obviously very familiar with the filter theory, dualism, idealism, materialism and its offshoots, etc, so I'm just kind of trying to get a better understanding of how proponents and "skeptics" kind of view this issue and the foundation upon which they build their views. Personally, I think materialism has a number of theoretical/philosophical issues as a theory, and I believe there are a number of pieces of sound evidence against it, including PSI (though I'm not as familiar with it as I could be); NDEs, to an extent; and especially the studies done by Jim Tucker and Ian Stevenson, which I actually think are perhaps the most methodologically sound and robust studies giving actual evidence against materialism.
Regardless, my focus in this thread is, again, to see what you all think of this issue. It seems to me to be one of the strongest evidence based arguments in favor of materialism, so I am interested to see the sources you all draw from and the way you think about this to kind of base an opinion on it, whether you think it is a truly a strong argument for materialism or if it is an argument that has weaknesses.
I'm looking forward to hearing what you all have to say and continuing to read. Thanks for having me!
Dante
I have lurked on this site for probably over 3 years now. I really enjoy reading the forums and have a great amount of respect for nearly all of the posters on this site and I also enjoy a lot of Alex's shows. I had a specific question to ask and so I decided to make an account.
I'm really looking for people's opinions and ideas with regards to how brain injuries can alter our behavior, motivations, memory, and general cognition, and how that relates to materialism as a theory, as well as the resources/links/articles/blogs etc that you have used to form those opinions.
I am obviously very familiar with the filter theory, dualism, idealism, materialism and its offshoots, etc, so I'm just kind of trying to get a better understanding of how proponents and "skeptics" kind of view this issue and the foundation upon which they build their views. Personally, I think materialism has a number of theoretical/philosophical issues as a theory, and I believe there are a number of pieces of sound evidence against it, including PSI (though I'm not as familiar with it as I could be); NDEs, to an extent; and especially the studies done by Jim Tucker and Ian Stevenson, which I actually think are perhaps the most methodologically sound and robust studies giving actual evidence against materialism.
Regardless, my focus in this thread is, again, to see what you all think of this issue. It seems to me to be one of the strongest evidence based arguments in favor of materialism, so I am interested to see the sources you all draw from and the way you think about this to kind of base an opinion on it, whether you think it is a truly a strong argument for materialism or if it is an argument that has weaknesses.
I'm looking forward to hearing what you all have to say and continuing to read. Thanks for having me!
Dante