Mega-thread for help with rebuttals against skeptical talking points

What do you mean by that tim? Where did you get that from? I didn't know you could leave reviews for medical practitioners?

He does seem to have a lot of spare time on his hands, given how he is has a blog, a podcast and a YouTube channel with lengthy livestreams.

He's an MD, he has a practice with patients. You certainly can leave reviews. Some of them don't seem to be too happy but that may not be all it seems, because all doctors can unfortunately attract unfair criticism. They can also attract positive thanks and praise, too.  

 Patient Reviews for Dr. Steven Novella in New Haven, CT (vitals.com)

Thanks for clearing that up nicely, Sci! 

Yes on his own blog, there used to be a host of his 'apostles', regularly highlighting his Yale Neurology status, I guess with the attention of increasing the value of his various opinions. This guy knows what he's talking about etc. I don't remember Novella ever setting them straight as he ought to, by his own "claimed" standards.   

I note that Alexander's Harvard status (which was earned at Harvard/Duke) carried no weight whatsoever, with these guardians of reason, even though his education, qualifications and career easily trump Novella's. 

The last paragraph of your post says a lot, doesn't it. Cheers.

Just out of interest, his reviews are very poor (as a Neurologist). Of course that may be because he's being trolled. Or it could be because he spends too much time trying to debunk Psi and a myriad of other issues.

Ah yeah if it's on his own blog he should mention where his M.D. comes from given there is a Yale School of Medicine and he didn't go there but instead went to Georgetown. Though it is odd - in the US before med-school you attend a 4 year institution and Novella doesn't seem to list where he did those initial years. Is he ashamed of his original school?

Re: Eben Alexander, skeptics only like credentials when they make them feel smart by association. Josephson has a Noble Prize, Sheldrake went to Cambridge and IIRC learned about the philosophers Whitehead and Bergson when doing a brief tour at Harvard, Kastrup has a PhD in Computer Engineering and helped build CERN, etc....but of course your average pseudo-skeptic is a "Bright" and so much smarter.

I've also seen those negative reviews. I suspect a few are trolls, but looking now they do go back years. The "does not keep up with research" complaint someone made of Novella's medical practice stood out to me, because I do find it odd to see the insistence even now from skeptics that quantum biology will not be needed to account for consciousness. The research is coming in fits and starts, but it seems to be pointing toward consciousness being tied up with quantum level processes.

Ultimately we know there are neuroscientists, neurobiologists, neurosurgeons, and neuropsychiatrists who have rejected materialism. Some are still atheists, some are Idealist-esque types, and some are strong believers in God and/or the afterlife. Novella's really just a guy with a strong opinion, and briefly conversing with him about philosophy on his blog years ago he definitely didn't have a good grasp on why a New Atheist Horseman like Sam Harris [who has his own PhD in neuroscience] would reject materialism.

I also don't believe he is really following the research into quantum [& magneto-] biology let alone parapsychology properly so I'd say Novella can be dismissed.

Ah yeah if it's on his own blog he should mention where his M.D. comes from given there is a Yale School of Medicine and he didn't go there but instead went to Georgetown. Though it is odd - in the US before med-school you attend a 4 year institution and Novella doesn't seem to list where he did those initial years. Is he ashamed of his original school?

Re: Eben Alexander, skeptics only like credentials when they make them feel smart by association. Josephson has a Noble Prize, Sheldrake went to Cambridge and IIRC learned about the philosophers Whitehead and Bergson when doing a brief tour at Harvard, Kastrup has a PhD in Computer Engineering and helped build CERN, etc....but of course your average pseudo-skeptic is a "Bright" and so much smarter.

I've also seen those negative reviews. I suspect a few are trolls, but looking now they do go back years. The "does not keep up with research" complaint someone made of Novella's medical practice stood out to me, because I do find it odd to see the insistence even now from skeptics that quantum biology will not be needed to account for consciousness. The research is coming in fits and starts, but it seems to be pointing toward consciousness being tied up with quantum level processes.

Ultimately we know there are neuroscientists, neurobiologists, neurosurgeons, and neuropsychiatrists who have rejected materialism. Some are still atheists, some are Idealist-esque types, and some are strong believers in God and/or the afterlife. Novella's really just a guy with a strong opinion, and briefly conversing with him about philosophy on his blog years ago he definitely didn't have a good grasp on why a New Atheist Horseman like Sam Harris [who has his own PhD in neuroscience] would reject materialism.

I also don't believe he is really following the research into quantum [& magneto-] biology let alone parapsychology properly so I'd say Novella can be dismissed.

Very good, Sci !

The argument made by the lady on the left in this video in response to someone asking about consciousness has been bothering me a bit. For context, she does have at least some qualifications in psychology and/or neuroscience and does know a lot about the brain. 


She uses this argument a lot from what I've seen, including when someone briefly tried to describe the receiver analogy before getting cut off by her and another host changing the subject. 

The jist of it seems to be something to do with thoughts, and how ATP is involved in neurons processing information and directing thoughts in the brain? She argues she doesn't see why a soul is therefore relevant/involved in consciousness or would be consciousness. Again, I struggled wrapping my head around it. 

It's not that long a video, so I was wondering what the thoughts were, given the neuroscientific terms she uses. I will say that I've never seen Novella use this argument before...

The argument made by the lady on the left in this video in response to someone asking about consciousness has been bothering me a bit. For context, she does have at least some qualifications in psychology and/or neuroscience and does know a lot about the brain. 


She uses this argument a lot from what I've seen, including when someone briefly tried to describe the receiver analogy before getting cut off by her and another host changing the subject. 

The jist of it seems to be something to do with thoughts, and how ATP is involved in neurons processing information and directing thoughts in the brain? She argues she doesn't see why a soul is therefore relevant/involved in consciousness or would be consciousness. Again, I struggled wrapping my head around it. 

It's not that long a video, so I was wondering what the thoughts were, given the neuroscientific terms she uses. I will say that I've never seen Novella use this argument before...

@1.33 She can't remember her name. Well it's Susan Blackmore. And apparently she's now a philosopher and neuroscientist as well as a psychologist. And Shannon thinks consciousness is an emergent property of a piece of protoplasm (meat). I stopped watching as soon as she said that.

@1.33 She can't remember her name. Well it's Susan Blackmore. And apparently she's now a philosopher and neuroscientist as well as a psychologist. And Shannon thinks consciousness is an emergent property of a piece of protoplasm (meat). I stopped watching as soon as she said that.

Well yeah, I heard she referenced Blackmore, but she makes an argument for why she would rather believe that. That's the point I want to address because of the terminology she uses.

The argument made by the lady on the left in this video in response to someone asking about consciousness has been bothering me a bit. For context, she does have at least some qualifications in psychology and/or neuroscience and does know a lot about the brain. 


She uses this argument a lot from what I've seen, including when someone briefly tried to describe the receiver analogy before getting cut off by her and another host changing the subject. 

The jist of it seems to be something to do with thoughts, and how ATP is involved in neurons processing information and directing thoughts in the brain? She argues she doesn't see why a soul is therefore relevant/involved in consciousness or would be consciousness. Again, I struggled wrapping my head around it. 

It's not that long a video, so I was wondering what the thoughts were, given the neuroscientific terms she uses. I will say that I've never seen Novella use this argument before...

The caller wasnt particularly good in this and I'm not interested in doing an in depth rebuttal so I'll drive by this one. Basically what they're saying is that Descartes style substance dualism is false, which we know it is, and that mind and brain are deeply connected. The question then comes in of whether or not brain is enough to explain all aspects of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness and that's where the brick wall is. The red flag for me is when they say they don't know much about philosophy, which is where most of the arguments against the mind is just brain theory, like the hard problem, reside, not to mention it's where modern arguments for dualism are and not just old abandoned ones that everyone admits weren't good. The fact that they can't tell the difference between substance dualism, which is anout the seperate substance of the soul controlling the body, and property dualism which is about how consciousness has two seperate properties, material and subjective, is a big tell. 

Also the brain damage points we discussed the other day, knocking me on the head leaves me as the same person, just with different problems. Knock me on the head and turn me into Donald Trump, then we'll have real conversations.

Well yeah, I heard she referenced Blackmore, but she makes an argument for why she would rather believe that. That's the point I want to address because of the terminology she uses.

To go about this, I'll come at it from a purely materialist perspective. Basically, what Blackmore says is that every single living moment of our lives that we think, there's a giant construction going on. Our feelings about the external world are filteree through our emotions, our memory ect and used to create a model, our consciousness, that we use to interact with the world. Part of this filtering goes through our memories so we can make predictions about how the world will act, how others will act how we will act. When this happens we have to through memories of us in the past, and that connects our current state to our previous state and makes it seem like we are the same person as back then, the same 'self', when in fact we're completely different and the sense of self is in fact an illusion.

Now is that true? Obviously it doesn't deal with any hard problem, evidence we have might have something to say about it and there's neuroscientific evidence to say that our concept of self over time is actually quite solid and unchanging, when even our beliefs or personality might change. So do with it what you will, but that's the point im pretty sure that she was trying to get across.

I didn't understand Shannon's point though about neurons and ATP mainly. She said it rather quickly and didn't clarify how that relates to the questions posed.

For context, she does have at least some qualifications in psychology and/or neuroscience and does know a lot about the brain.

What qualifications?