Transcending the Mind-Body Dichotomy

...Philosophy ends where Science begins...
"As soon as we are confident that we really have knowledge and understanding in some domain, we stop calling it philosophy and start calling it science. And as soon as we make some definite progress, we think ourselves entitled to call it scientific progress."

"We need to get rid of the seventeenth-century categories. Forget about Descartes's categories of res existence and res cogitance, that is, the extended reality of the material and the thinking reality of the mental.

We've inherited this vocabulary that makes it look as if mental and physical name different realms. And it's part of our popular culture, so we sing songs about your body and your soul or we have saying about how your mind is willing but your flesh is weak, and sometimes the other way around, the flesh is willing but the mind is weak. And we have inherited, not only philosophically but in our religious tradition, we've inherited the idea that there are two quite distinct realms, a realm of the spiritual and a realm of the physical. And I'm fighting against that. I want to say we live in one realm, it's got all of these features, and once you see that then the philosophical mind-body problem dissolves."

"Brains cause minds. All of our mental life is causally explained by the behavior of neuronal systems."

John R. Searle, Mills Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley.
© Copyright 1999, Regents of the University of California

Myths, Fallacies and Quackery

• Homeopathy: there's nothing In it. It is no better than dummy drugs. The Test.
  Because homeopathic solutions are diluted so many times they are unlikely to contain any of the original ingredients at all.
  
  EASAC, the European Academies Science Advisory Council:
  The scientific claims made for homeopathy are implausible and inconsistent with established concepts from chemistry and physics. In particular, the memory effects of water are too short-range and transient (occurring within the nanometre and nanosecond range) to account for any claimed efficacy.
  
  Homeowatch provides information about homeopathy that is difficult or impossible to find elsewhere,
  the bottom line is that it is senseless and does not work. Homeopathic remedies are wasting of money.
  
  Oscillococcinum is a complete hoax product.
  It is "nothing more than a sugar pill", companies should stop from claiming it has any effectiveness against flu or flu symptoms.

• Understanding Vaccines: Eight Vaccine Myths Debunked
  Numerous studies have found no evidence to support the notion that vaccines cause autism and other chronic illnesses.

• Be Wary of Acupuncture, Qigong and "Chinese Medicine"
  TCM theory and practice are not based upon the body of knowledge related to health, disease, and health care that has been widely accepted by the scientific community. TCM practitioners disagree among themselves about how to diagnose patients and which treatments should go with which diagnoses. Even if they could agree, the TCM theories are so nebulous that no amount of scientific study will enable TCM to offer rational care.

• Astrology = Garbage: read Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy.

• Anthroposophy, Steiner's Occultist Sect: Criticism of Waldorf, Steiner and Anthroposophy.
  Steiner's Quackery: The Dangers of "Anthroposophical Medicine".

• Creationism and its bastard child, Intelligent Design, are full of crap.

• The Scam of Scientology: Who is Xenu?
  Undressing the "Church of Scientology"

Two great naturalists: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace

The Beagle Project: On the Future of Species The Beagle project reconstructs Darwin's 5-year long voyage on the HMS Beagle in the course of one year, and makes an attempt to assess where the world stands today in light of Darwin's evolution theory. As Charles Darwin pondered on the origin of species, our focus now is on the future: Do we have reason to worry?
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Human Evolution

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