HOW TO ANNOY A PHILOSOPHER

Creationists declare war over the brain
Basically, the Intelligent Design crowd is turning their sights towards neuroscience and philosophy of mind, resolute in the mission to revive Cartesian dualism with the goal of “nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies”. Because, you know, they have already finished proving evolution wrong and they need something to occupy them until the second coming.

However, look at the bright side. The evolution/creationism debate has spawned an entire cottage industry within academic philosophy to popularize contemporary thought and bring the basic arguments for evolution into the mainstream. I mean, Hume destroyed creationism as a plausible theory 200 years ago, but while this is common knowledge among professional philosophers it had never quite trickled down to the public, so the culture wasn’t already inoculated against these kinds of malicious memes.

I suspect the same will happen for the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience, which is lightyears ahead of the pseudo-Freudian psychology that most people use to explain human behavior. The popular discourse could use some serious updating, and the best way to do it is for a bunch of dualist whackjobs to make a stink and to get roundly shut down in the public square.