[Wittrs] Re: Current Brain Research: Causal Model?
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 01 May 2010 00:53:38 -0000
--- 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?
> 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?
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.
> 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. 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.
bruce
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