Mega-thread for help with rebuttals against skeptical talking points

I ended up stumbling upon this video in Arabic (comes with subtitles) trying to demonstrate the soul as being a myth from 2017:

For the stuff on consciousness and self-awareness skip to around 14:00. 

The video is specifically aimed towards debunking claims of Muslims AFAIK, hence why it goes on about stuff most wouldn't really see as relevant. He lists a bunch of resources which he cherry-picks from, which range from some talk from Christof Koch, to a speech Anthony Hopkins gave in the TV series WestWorld asserting that 'consciousness does not exist' as though that somehow strengthens his argument. 

He also quotes claims from Sean Carroll (and possibly Steven Novella) in video clips...including one amusingly taken from that Intelligence2 debate with Moody and Alexander IIRC. So of course he doesn't include their clips on what they had to say.

He goes on to make some wild speculative assertion about consciousness which is seemingly unsourced. He just vaguely asserts its 'many processes put together reacting to the environment' and that 'AI and robots would have consciousness', with no supporting sources their either. He just cherry-picks some video from Michio Kaku claiming it may be possible some day. Just the usual 'brain chemistry gets affected by alcohol and drugs that can affect your personality and consciousness' etc. Naturally he does not refute any actual evidence for the 'soul' either anywhere in his video, instead promoting the possibility of delaying death. 

He does however reference in this video some conference from 2012 at Cambridge where neurologists announced identifying the 'substrates' for consciousness in animals. The 'declaration' can be read here: http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDe...usness.pdf ...I assume the assertions about substrates are just that and given how this was from 2012 this is largely irrelevant to today. 

On the topic of self-awareness though, he makes a point I've seen before that studies have shown how self-awareness develops during childhood with the brain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...0003000813
He uses this to then claim we aren't born with self-awareness and it is a product from 'the area of the brain that generates it'. I understand that self-awareness is apparently not the same thing as consciousness, but is this relevant to supposedly supporting physicalism/materialism?

Not only that, but he claims that there are robots who have already passed self-recognition tests for self-awareness. He shows an image of the paper but doesn't list it in the links. Skip to 15:00 to see this paper. Since he doesn't seem to link to it AFAIK I have no idea when it's from. But I personally suspect he's grossly exaggerating this study/blowing it out of proportion, which happens to a lot of these studies. Has anyone here heard of this paper before, or even this 'Sherif Aber' guy?

Mostly crap. The AI thing is nothing because if it was anything worthwhile you'd fuckin KNOW about it. I do think I've heard of AI passing self awareness tests, but only if they're designed to make it look like they beat them, which yknow doesnt really count. 

As for the self awareness in children there's some interesting things about that but then the paper's from bloody 2003 so I imagine there's some new developnents. The whole concept of self is a very complex topic but what he says doesnt lend any support to physicalism. Just think about when people take drugs and lose their sense of self for a short time, they no longer remember who they even are but still so keenly consciously experience the world. So does thar mean that the sense of self is required for consciousness or just something alongside it? Do drugs do something to inhibit the part of our brain that would normally allow us an idea of the self considering in NDEs the sense of self is so enchanced? Just the tip of the iceburg.

But yeah, junk, bad vid, just preaching to the choir don't even think about it.

Mostly crap. The AI thing is nothing because if it was anything worthwhile you'd fuckin KNOW about it. I do think I've heard of AI passing self awareness tests, but only if they're designed to make it look like they beat them, which yknow doesnt really count. 

As for the self awareness in children there's some interesting things about that but then the paper's from bloody 2003 so I imagine there's some new developnents. The whole concept of self is a very complex topic but what he says doesnt lend any support to physicalism. Just think about when people take drugs and lose their sense of self for a short time, they no longer remember who they even are but still so keenly consciously experience the world. So does thar mean that the sense of self is required for consciousness or just something alongside it? Do drugs do something to inhibit the part of our brain that would normally allow us an idea of the self considering in NDEs the sense of self is so enchanced? Just the tip of the iceburg.

But yeah, junk, bad vid, just preaching to the choir don't even think about it.

Agreed. All of the stuff in the video is nothing new and at times likely outdated. The fact he didn't link to the paper and only showed a brief glimpse is very suspicious. The cherry-picking is through the roof as well. 

The awareness stuff I wasn't sure about since it tends to get conflated with consciousness as well online. I won't be surprised if it's deliberately distorted to suit his anti-religious agenda.

I probably should've known better based off this guy's comment sections and social media. He has roughly 300k subscribers yet has multiple videos with over a million views? That doesn't add up. And there are still recent comments of nothing but barely coherent praise for him as a person from what I translated. Very little on the video's content itself and very little that made much sense. There was a lot of what looked like spam.

As a result, I'm 85% certain he's relying on bots, especially with that like to dislike ratio, which has quite a few dislikes surprisingly. It's apparently very common for YouTube channels of that sort to rely on bots and sock puppet accounts. 

I'm getting sick and tired of these militant atheist accounts spreading misinformation. I do hope my prediction that they'll be even more irrelevant in the next few years is true. Especially that Thomas Westbrook-good lord he p*sses me off with his half-truths, lies and plain ignorance coupled with his smug, condescending tone.

How does anyone know whether an insect is self-aware, let alone whether a baby is self-aware?

Sounds like the research was begging the question.

As a result, I'm 85% certain he's relying on bots, especially with that like to dislike ratio, which has quite a few dislikes surprisingly. It's apparently very common for YouTube channels of that sort to rely on bots and sock puppet accounts. 

I'm getting sick and tired of these militant atheist accounts spreading misinformation. I do hope my prediction that they'll be even more irrelevant in the next few years is true. Especially that Thomas Westbrook-good lord he p*sses me off with his half-truths, lies and plain ignorance coupled with his smug, condescending tone.

I don't think that bots would be an immediate think to assume. Again, it's just preaching to the crowd. It's going against religion, people eat that shit up. Same with someone like Thomas Westbrook. It's just not relevant, nobody is watching them except the people they are marketing to, just ignore them, it's not worth the time and effort and you know that anything they say isn't going to anything more than the most blatantly basic takes. Religion bad, the world wasn't actually created 6000 years ago, did you know that obviously fake psychics and ghosts hunters.....aren't real??? Ect

I'd been following the stuff on Surviving Death and NDEs recently on Twitter, being surprised by the more positive responses, when I ended up coming across this very ignorant tweet by militant atheist YouTuber 'Paulogia', which for me means I won't be surprised if he at least ends up making a video trying to 'debunk' Surviving Death at some point: https://twitter.com/paulogia0/status/134...2668163072

Not sure if he even watched the first episode especially given that it literally albeit briefly addresses anoxia/hypoxia arguments and references multiple veridical cases. 

Someone in the comments cited this cobbled article from 2017 that mentions Sam Parnia and is already outdated by quoting his Skeptiko interview insinuating that NDEs are 'probably just illusions'. 

The OP claimed endorphins are released and hearing is the last sense to go but the article doesn't mention either of those things, and to my knowledge there's no evidence for endorphins being released. 

Ugh, I'm just dreading the possibility of him making a 'debunking' video on this, even though the odds of that are probably lower than I think.

How does anyone know whether an insect is self-aware, let alone whether a baby is self-aware?

Sounds like the research was begging the question.

It's easy to know whether babies are self-aware. Ask them. Of course you have to wait until they have acquired the power of speech and some grasp of language. By which time most will have forgotten. But not all. Some retain memories of their earliest years right through into adulthood.

It's easy to know whether babies are self-aware. Ask them. Of course you have to wait until they have acquired the power of speech and some grasp of language. By which time most will have forgotten. But not all. Some retain memories of their earliest years right through into adulthood.

Good point. Didn't Sagan try to explain away NDEs by saying they were memories of being born?

"Skeptics" always seem to change what they are willing to accept as an excuse.

It's easy to know whether babies are self-aware. Ask them. Of course you have to wait until they have acquired the power of speech and some grasp of language. By which time most will have forgotten. But not all. Some retain memories of their earliest years right through into adulthood.

I'm fairly certain the guy in the video mentions the test for self-awareness in babies involving paint and mirrors or something.

And yeah Sci, he might have done, I remember reading near-death.com's rebuttal to why that explanation makes no sense.

I'm fairly certain the guy in the video mentions the test for self-awareness in babies involving paint and mirrors or something.

Yes, but that sort of external surface appearance tells us nothing about what is going on inside. For example we could construct a machine to perform the same movements. But we know (because we just constructed the machine) exactly what is going on inside - precisely nothing.

What is perhaps more important is what happens if the baby fails the test - perhaps because it is very young. Do we infer that the baby has no self-awareness? Based on the adult memories I mentioned, that could be a dangerous and mistaken conclusion.

The mirror test for animal self-awareness reflects the limits of human cognition

Also ->

Kids (and Animals) Who Fail Classic Mirror Tests May Still Have Sense of Self