[Wittrs] Re: Current Brain Research: Causal Model?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 02 May 2010 02:08:43 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > I think that at this point this is about ways of talking and not much
> else.
>
> I agree. Nothing empirical is at issue. Neither of us are gathering or
> interpreting data. We differ on "how to talk about the relation between
> brain and mind" and the difference has critical clinical consequences
> that I face every day.
>
> A patient of mine related this: A psychiatrist told him that his anxiety
> "may" be caused by his brain chemistry and that he was helpless to do
> anything about it. His psychiatrist obviously has a partial causal model
> and some notion of self that functions free of the brain. Does your
> causal model fare any better?
>
Why wouldn't it? Nothing in my "model" suggests we lack the ability to make
decisions, exercise choice. It just offers a way of understanding how that
capacity comes about and what underlies it. However, the psychiatrist you
reference has something of a point though, as far as I can see, brains are
self-influencing and highly plastic so one is not simply a captive of one's
chemistry even if one is limited by it. Drinking too much alcohol gets us
drunk, though capacities differ among individuals, and dropping acid gets us
high. Drinking coffee in the morning may give us a rush (depending on
individual susceptibility to caffeine) and sometimes a candy bar will give a
boost of energy as well. Why shouldn't some drugs administered by psychiatrists
have the ability to calm anxiety, etc.? Still, we're a complex system and there
are things we do that alter our own internal chemical balances as well.
> > The constituent elements work together, in a system, to produce X. In
> this case X is subjectivity, subjective experience.
>
> So you would tell my patient that all of his experiences, including his
> anxieties, are caused by his brain chemistry. What if he then said:
> "Your arrogance in thinking you know the source of my anxiety so angers
> me that I no longer feel anxious, but pissed. How does you causal model
> explain the shift in mood?
>
See above. (Looks like you answered your own question about my view here
without waiting to see my own answer, Bruce!)
> I say it can't because while you speak of "subjectivity", you treat it
> as a thing, a phenomena, like a light of burning candle wick. The candle
> doesn't know its burning. But my patient knows he is (was) anxious. Your
> model has subjectivity without a subject. It also has intentions which
> are not intentions, but causes.
>
I think that's a mistaken understanding of what my "model" suggests. But this,
too, is an old argument. You don't like the idea that what we are might just be
an expression of our individual physical constituents however complex and
unique each particular individual's may be. You want to see mind as unfettered,
unaffected by the physical (except, perhaps, at some gross and relatively
unimportant level, since you acknowledge alcohol's effects). I see your
preferred view as a doctrinal commitment rather than an intellectually honest
assessment of the facts. But I suppose you see my view like that, too.
If you don't want to agree that our dispute over how to "model" mind is really
just a linguistic one, if you really insist that it is a matter of the facts,
then one of us must have those facts wrong. for what it's worth, I think it's
clear you do.
> > Something causes what we call intentionality in us.
>
> This is true for a voice activated GPS. Asking it where you are, causes
> it to give location. Would you say the same account holds for your wife
> sitting next to you.
Not at all. She's a much more complicated system than a GPS!
> She may think she intends to help but, in fact,
> your brain has made sound waves that cause her brain to make sound
> waves. What we call a person's intention is nothing more and hence we
> are fools to believe in the ordinary notion of good and bad intentions.
>
I think this clearly shows you still don't grasp what my "model" is all about.
It isn't about denying awareness, intelligence, understanding, intentions,
etc., etc. It's about explaining them.
SWM
> bruce
>
>
>
>
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