[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:41:09 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "blroadies" <blroadies@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > ...To be a dualist is to suppose there are at least two ontological
> basics in the universe, typically mind and matter.
>
> By onto-basic you mean that one is not reducible to the other, where
> "reducible" doesn't preclude that
>
Yes. Two basic substances, completely different from one another where one
doesn't arise from or reduce to the other.
> > ...we mean something different by "minds" and "brains"
>
> that there are two different language games, for example, LW's
> distinction between Reason and Cause which he felt Freud had collapsed
> and hence providing an incoherent account.
>
Yes, in part. As you know (I think) we are in agreement as to the need for
different language games in different contexts. Where we disagree is that you
maintain this distinction carries over to science such that we cannot speak
intelligibly about brains being the cause of minds whereas I think we most
assuredly can.
> but rather an
>
> > argument for reduction of one to the other.
>
> Where reduction is shown by explaining a experience ("I'm suddenly
> feeling good") by a change in brain chemistry (increase in Serotonin).
>
> bruce
>
In some contexts that will make sense. "I took a hit of that hash and man, I'm
really buzzed." I didn't decide to be buzzed, I decided to become buzzed by
smoking the hash. So the hash or the smoking of it caused the feeling of being
buzzed. Similarly, certain interventions in the brain by a doctor may alter
one's feeling. So we can speak of physical causation re: minds and it is
precisely because we can that we are confronted by this question of explaining
the mind's relation to the brain.
SWM
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