Commentator Dinesh D'Souza on The Spiritual Brain: Including stuff he didn't know

Commentator Dinesh D'Souza blogged on The Spiritual Brain recently:

We find the materialist view ably expressed in Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis. What Crick finds astonishing is that our thoughts, emotions and feelings consist entirely in the physiological activity in the circuitry of the brain. Daniel Dennett argues that "mind" is simply a term for what the brain does. And how do we know that the brain and the mind are essentially the same? The best evidence is that when the brain is damaged, the injury affects the mind. Patients whose brains atrophy due to stroke, for instance, lose their ability to distinguish colors or to empathize with others.

But in his book The Spiritual Brain, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows why the Crick-Dennett position is based on a fallacy. Yes, the brain is the necessary locus or venue for the mind to operate. It does not follow that the two are the same. Beauregard gives a telling analogy. "Olympic swimming events require an Olympic class swimming pool. But the pool does not create the Olympic events; it makes them feasible at a given location." Far from being identical to the mind, Beauregard argues that the brain "is an organ suitable for connecting the mind to the rest of the universe."

D'Souza is correct in saying that Mario and I defend the non-materialist position regarding the mind.

He mentions in the review that he had been unaware of the existence of the nocebo effect:

Beauregard also writes about something I didn't know much about: the nocebo effect. "The nocebo effect is the harmful health effect created by a sick person's belief and expectation that a powerful source of harm has been contacted or administered." So if patients are strongly convinced that a particular pill will give them nausea, they frequently become nauseous, even when the pill they have taken is not the one they expected but only a sugar pill.

Yes, and that's why the doctor tells us that a given treatment ""will only hurt a little bit." Naturally, she hopes that is true, but telling us to expect a lot of pain is a sure way to produce more of it (a nocebo effect).

Here are some Hack posts on D'Souza:

"Atheist Dawkins blasted in Skeptical magazine"

"Religion profs who don't know much religion?"

"Alister McGrath on Richard Dawkins: Athiesm is simple-minded narcissism"

"Secularism: Early post-mortem results"

Here are some Hack stories on the nocebo effect:

"Does behaviorism work?"

"Prayer studies: From one-way skepticism, deliver us"

"Faith as one of the healing arts"

"If it hurts you more than it hurts someone else, are you just a sissy?"

A third recent ChristianWeek column: Faith as one of the healing arts

Faith as one of the healing arts

by Denyse O'Leary

According to an article in Jewish World Review (October 3, 2006) hospitals in the United States have finally begun to pay attention to patients' religious beliefs. "The last thing you want to worry about while somebody is sick is that they might have to transgress on something they believe in," says Zahava Cohen, Englewood Hospital's patient care director (New Jersey). Cohen is surely right; and we can only hope that this trend spreads.

Yes, yes, illness and death come to us all. And serious illness may require abrupt actions and intimidating technology. But, especially among older people, many illnesses are chronic. There is no "pill for every ill." We adapt our lives to illnesses and illnesses to our lives, and go on from there. We instinctively resist being packaged as "the pancreas in # 209" or ultimately the "corpse" to be disposed of, with no acknowledgement that this is or once was part of a person who was in turn part of a community. After all, even in death, the silenced corporal reality is still "Nana" or "Unkie Joe." Acknowledging the community to which the sick, dying, or deceased belong, in which they will be remembered at least by a few for decades to come, is good medicine.

The way in which we receive health care makes a huge difference to its ultimate effect. This reality has long been disguised under the misnamed and misunderstood "placebo" effect. Literally, the word means "I will please." Originally, it referred to sugar pills given to a patient who believes that they are potent. Over one third of patients get better simply because they think the placebo is a powerful medicine. The placebo effect probably underlies traditional shamanism. The reason so many tribal Christians continue to surreptitiously visit shamans is not that they are deluded into believing that shamanism works but because it so often does work. Unfortunately, the shaman typically attributes the healing to specific bizarre practices rather than to the power of belief to trigger healing processes.

Indeed, since the 1970s, a proposed new medication is expected to perform about five percent better than a placebo, if it is to be licensed for use by physicians. Now, let's stop and think about what that means for a moment: We may be taking medications that are only a small percentage more effective than our own belief in them! The placebo effect is thus an interesting demonstration of the power of the mind over the brain and body. It might better be called the cognosco or "I am aware (of healing)" effect.

The placebo effect is not a cure-all; a recent study suggests that it is ineffectual against cancer. However, a 2004 study compared thirty Parkinson's patients who received controversial embryonic stem cell implants with patients who thought they were receiving them (but were actually undergoing a sham surgery). Those who thought they had received stem cells reported a better quality of life a year later than those who thought they had received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery the patients had actually received. And the medical personnel's assessments of patients tended to concur with the patients' own views.

Doctors use the placebo effect automatically in their work. For example, they behave confidently and reassuringly even when completely stumped by the patient's symptoms or faced suddenly with a life-threatening disorder. They are right to behave this way. A doctor's anxiety would trigger the placebo effect's evil twin, the nocebo effect. "Nocebo" means "I will harm," and nocebos really do harm. Patients may be ill for longer periods and suffer worse symptoms if nocebo effects convince them that they are doomed.

Some consider the placebo effect a mystery. In March 2005, British science magazine New Scientist listed thirteen "Things That Don't Make Sense", and the placebo effect was number one on their list. Of course, the placebo effect doesn't "make sense" if you assume, as they do, that the mind either does not exist or is powerless. The traditional Christian view is that the mind is grounded in the brain so long as we live in this world. Therefore, what the patient's mind perceives expresses itself in the brain and body. Both the placebo and nocebo effects are strong support for the traditional view.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, detailing events of interest in the intelligent design controversy. My most recently published book is By Design or by Chance?, an overview of the intelligent design controversy.

Big mystery: Why you feel sick when doctors tell you you are

Of New Scientist's Michael Brooks's 13 things that don't make sense, the thirteenth was the nocebo effect (02 September 2009).

In Latin, "nocebo" means "I will harm." It is the opposite of "placebo" which means "I will please." Practically, just as placebo means that the patient gets better because he has been told he will, nocebo means that a patient gets worse precisely because medics have predicted pain, debility, or death.

It was easy to dismiss accounts of voodoo death, but Brooks recounts the following case:

In the 1970s, for example, doctors diagnosed a man with end-stage liver cancer, and told him he had just a few months to live. Though the patient died in the predicted time, an autopsy showed the doctors had been mistaken. There was a tiny tumour, but it had not spread. It seemed the doctors' prognosis had been a death curse.

I am not clear why that doesn't make sense. A person who is informed by a credible source that he will die could surely have a heart attack or allow a chronic condition to overtake him. The placebo effect works very well indeed, so we should expect its evil twin to do likewise.

It is only a b ig mystery if you think that the mind is an illusion generated by the dance of neurons in the brain and has no causal power. Otherwise, the sense of mystery is completely absent.

Interestingly, the Criminal Code of Canada says two relevant things: After denying that deaths supposedly caused by “the influence of the mind alone” (= witchcraft, the "evil eye", etc.) are culpable homicide, the Code nonetheless adds this rider: “This section does not apply where a person causes the death of a child or sick person by willfully frightening him” (sec. 228). Now, the doctors mentioned in Brooks's account are not in the dock for this, because they honestly believed what they told that man. But should they have told him the news in that way?

I once interviewed a radiologist whose key job was "bad news from radiology." I asked her how she coped. She said, basically, my patients are usually in considerable pain and have been sick for a long time, and they know something is very wrong. Her method was, before telling them the results, to set up a further treatment plan. The plan usually amounted to palliative care. But, she said, they are never left alone, never abandoned. She seemed a wise lady to me.

And I think that, with her approach, if a patient's diagnosis turns out to be wrong, he won't deteriorate rapidly or die any time soon, so a new diagnosis will be sought. And the nocebo effect will be out looking for a job.

More on the nocebo effect at The Mindful Hack:

Evolutionary psychology: Misunderstanding superstition

Commentator Dinesh D'Souza on The Spiritual Brain: Including stuff he didn't know (No way is that his fault. The medical and parmaceutical community finds all these topics very difficult, and they discuss them only reluctantly.)

Prayer studies: From one-way skepticism, deliver us

Faith as one ofthe healing arts

Prayer studies: From one-way skepticism, deliver us

For some reason, Arts and Letters Daily, which I often visit, is always publishing materialist stuff, whether it is well sourced or not, but almost never non-materialist stuff.

Anyway, here’s a really silly piece from CSICOP - a group of unidirectional materialist skeptics - denying that prayer works.

Now, I agree that there are some serious logistical difficulties in determining whether prayer works. The main one is - how can you be sure that no one is praying for a given person? Ridding the world of prayer would be no easy task. Some old, venerable, and popular religious organizations pride themselves on the fact that no minute passes without prayers offered up, all over the planet How can you be sure that you are not touching their invisible wires?.

The “skeptical” piece linked above, thought worthy of publication by Arts and Letters Daily, opines as follows on studies of intercessory prayer:

To date, such studies of intercessory prayer have not shown it to improve health-care outcomes. In contrast to thoughts themselves, the brain activity from which thoughts arise does consist of energy—electrochemical energy within neural circuitry. Reading this teeming energy in millions of circuit neurons and translating it into the thought or prayer arising from it seems theoretically impossible for even a supernatural being.

But what can this mean? Who knows what a supernatural being can do? Surely that was never a serious object of study?

The only relevant reference I could find in the article, which significantly lacked detail, was to the famous STEP study. In this study, inept handling of offers for intercessory prayer inadvertently reversed the enormously powerful placebo effect that many patients experience (you get better because you believe you will).

Quite the contrary, offers of prayer without a suitable context turned prayer into a nocebo effect (you get worse because you believe you will).

Far from demonstrating that intercessory prayer does not work, the study demonstrated that it can work all too well - that is, ineptly handled, intercessory prayer can become a nocebo effect. (Logically, then, correctly handled, it should be a positive effect.) There are still key problems with understanding what, exactly, is happening with intercessory prayer, of course, but the STEP study definitely showed, by reversing the effect, that it made a difference.

Mario Beauregard and I discuss the STEP study and its findings in The Spiritual Brain, to be released in September. Meanwhile, I advise you to be skeptical of the sort of “skepticism” that does not even discuss the details of the STEP study.

Why not? Because that would mean acknowledging that prayer can work, in principle, which is bad for their business.

Golly, if this is the best that unidirectional skeptics and materialists can do - get me a broom, somebody, and a pile of recyclable trash bags.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), anoverview of the intelligent design controversy, and of Faith@Science. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, detailing events of interest in the intelligent design controversy.

Evolutionary psychology: Misunderstanding superstition

New Scientist has recently announced that we now know the origin of superstition. Ewen Callaway tells us (10 September 2008):

Darwin never warned against crossing black cats, walking under ladders or stepping on cracks in the pavement, but his theory of natural selection explains why people believe in such nonsense.

The tendency to falsely link cause to effect – a superstition – is occasionally beneficial, says Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University.

For instance, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of a predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but "if a group of lions is coming there’s a huge benefit to not being around," Foster says.

Foster and a University of Helsinki colleague Hanna Kokko sought to model superstition in mathematical language, using a definition that could apply to animals and bacteria as well as humans, and found that "As long as the cost of believing a superstition is less than the cost of missing a real association, superstitious beliefs will be favoured."

The problem is that the quality described in the New Scientist article as "superstition" is more commonly called "prudence" (= avoiding foreseeable risks).

It would help if we begin by understanding what superstition actually is.

Superstition is not a "false" link between cause and effect. If it were, many health fads would be superstition. But they are not; they are merely unsubstantiated or poorly substantiated claims.

Superstition is the belief that the connections between events are occult (hidden) and that bad events can be caused or prevented by understanding and working with these hidden causes. For example, here's a superstition: It's seven years' bad luck to break a mirror. Why? Well, I've heard people theorize that at one time mirrors were very expensive, and therefore it might take seven years to save enough to replace one. And later on, people just somehow continued to believe the idea even though mirrors had become cheap.

There is a name for that kind of thinking - euhemerism, in honour of Euhemerus, a 3rd-century BC Greek philosopher. Euhemerus argued that the Greek gods were originally just mortal heroes whose exploits were embellished. In other words, he sought a pragmatic explanation for belief in the gods, in the same way that Foster and Kokko seek a pragmatic explanation for superstition.

But Euhemerus missed the transcendent and numinous qualities that people sought in the Greek gods, the qualities that caused the 19th century poet Wordsworth - trapped in industrial England - to exclaim,

Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

In the same way, Foster and Kokko missed the point about superstition - what makes a belief a superstition is not that the supposed connections between events may be false but that they are occult. They are not normal connections in any event.

Now back to the mirror: The true reason that breaking a mirror was anciently considered bad luck is that one's reflection was thought to be an image of one's soul, one's life. So the shattered image was an omen of death:

The mirror crack'd from side to side;
The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

- Tennyson

Is the belief false? That's difficult to say because, while it is false for the person who disregards it, it might be true for the person who believes it.

That is, if you break a mirror, nothing happens, of course. But the person who honestly believes she will become very ill could trigger the flareup of a chronic illness. That's called a nocebo effect.
The difficulty then is that the person who believes in superstitions and occult causes may see genuine confirmation of her belief. So one will not get very far in discussing the matter with her by simply informing her that her belief about the broken mirror is false.

It might be wiser to help her see that the power that she attributes to the image in the mirror actually resides in her own mind. It is quite real, but it is not what she thinks and she has power over it.

But, back to Foster and Kokko for a moment, we can now see why their "simple definition for superstition that includes animals and even bacteria" is not going to be very helpful for humans.

Note: Mario Beauregard and I discussed the nocebo effect in The Spiritual Brain.

Image note: The image is f rom Wiki Commons, a rendering of Tennyson's Lady of Shalott, doomed to die - or so she believed - if she looked out the window, so she had used a mirror instead.

Does behaviorism work?

Behaviorism was one of the now-discredited psychological theories of the last century, championed by B.F. Skinner, according to which mental states do not matter because behavior can be programmed directly. Mario Beauregard and I talk a bit about this in The Spiritual Brain.

Actually, the mere mention of the placebo effect should be enough to sink behaviorism as a theory. Basically, for many illnesses, mental states play a huge role in how well treatments work (placebo effect) - or DON'T work (nocebo effect).

Of course, W. H. Auden took a down-to-earth approach to how the theory was used in practice. He said,

Of course, Behaviourism "works". So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, & simple electrical appliances, & in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

Behaviorist treatments for obsessive compulsive disorder have, for example, included forcing compulsive handwashers to touch toilets in public washrooms, after which they were forbidden the wash their hands. As a result, many refused to seek treatment. And if that's a new standard in enlightenment, we might as well move back to the Dark Ages.

Hat tip Toronto journalist David Warren for the Auden quote. Here are some other fun quotes about psychological and educational bad ideas.

If it hurts you more than it hurts someone else, are you just a sissy?

Not necessarily. The old "telegraph" model of pain is being replaced by a model that looks more like the Internet:

... in the last decade or so, psychologists and other pain researchers are coming around to a new definition of just what is pain — and how the experience looks to be different in men and women.

Gone is the old telegraph model that served medical science for thousands of years: You put your hand in a hot fire you felt the pain of the burn until the tissue eventually healed.

In its place, some scientists are putting forward the notion that pain ricochets through the body more like the way the internet works: The initial experience sets off a complex chain of reactions involving one's general health, genetic makeup, brain chemistry and perhaps even how one has come to think about pain in the first place.

Even more, the placebo effect and its evil twin the nocebo effect, functions of your own mind, play a great role in what you will or won't feel.

Much, though, is clearly in the deep recesses of the mind. Two years ago, for example, researchers in London and Pittsburgh hypnotized otherwise healthy people and told them they were in acute pain. Brain scans then showed these subjects had virtually the same electro-chemical activity as patients with actual ailments — another indicator pain can actually originate in the mind.

Obviously, if it hurts you, it hurts. But no one single standard of pain can be applied to everyone because many factors, including your own mind, play a role in what you are experiencing. Remember that when someone tells you that your mind does not really exist.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, which keeps tabs on the intelligent design controversy.