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Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Note this UK context
Psychiatrists deal with chemistry
(CPN - Community Psychiatric Nurses)
Psychologists the emotional/thinking
Mental health Social workers can liaise with the above.

See my post on 'Akedia' for a context of 17 variables that IMO can effect the context of a health journey.

Sadly, the physical gets the publicity. This negates the uniqueness of each of us.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think equating experience with chemical interactions isn't very useful, actually. It tends to erase experience, and then we are into a complete cul de sac.

In order to talk about our experiences, thoughts, feelings, and so on, we can discuss them as is, without having to say, oh they're chemicals.

In fact, of course, nobody does this, as life would be impossible.

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Of course we can discuss these things without having to talk about the basic chemical interactions that are driving them. That's what we do with virtually everything.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think equating experience with chemical interactions isn't very useful, actually. It tends to erase experience, and then we are into a complete cul de sac.

In order to talk about our experiences, thoughts, feelings, and so on, we can discuss them as is, without having to say, oh they're chemicals.

In fact, of course, nobody does this, as life would be impossible.

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Of course we can discuss these things without having to talk about the basic chemical interactions that are driving them. That's what we do with virtually everything.

I mean, nobody talks about muscle movements in terms of the biochemical processes that cause them to happen at a cellular and sub cellular level, but when it comes down to it they're just a bunch of chemical reactions causing muscle cells to contract.

It's the same with everything we do, from washing our hands to driving a car. We don't have to talk about the molecular-level science that's going on, but going on it is.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
You are correct in saying dealing with people it is not always good to reference biological mechanism. This is not the same as this not being how things work.

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

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Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Note this UK context
Psychiatrists deal with chemistry
(CPN - Community Psychiatric Nurses)
Psychologists the emotional/thinking
Mental health Social workers can liaise with the above.

See my post on 'Akedia' for a context of 17 variables that IMO can effect the context of a health journey.

Sadly, the physical gets the publicity. This negates the uniqueness of each of us.

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Is that part of the problem? Different aspects of the whole are handled by different profesions? It might be too much to expect a single practicioner to deal with all of it but is one profession better placed?

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
... thinking mechanical processes cannot also constitute free will is akin to believing in a 6k year old universe.

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Originally posted by QLib:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
... thinking mechanical processes cannot also constitute free will is akin to believing in a 6k year old universe.

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I don't think so. There are very respectable neuroscientists and philosophers who are prepared to argue that free will and/or the persistence of a "me" identity across a human lifespan is/are illusory. Just as there are, of course, equally respectable folk who disagree with them.

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Originally posted by Dark Knight:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Of course we can discuss these things without having to talk about the basic chemical interactions that are driving them. That's what we do with virtually everything.

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FFS. This is exactly what your materialist reductionism does do. This is in fact what you DID do.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
You are correct in saying dealing with people it is not always good to reference biological mechanism. This is not the same as this not being how things work.

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I think it's worse than 'not always good', it's fucking crazy.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
You are correct in saying dealing with people it is not always good to reference biological mechanism. This is not the same as this not being how things work.

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I think it's worse than 'not always good', it's fucking crazy.

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Actually, there's at least one type of discourse in which talking about biochemical processes is immensely good - and that's the area of disease prevention and cure. Our increasing knowledge of these processes has enabled us to make massive leaps in curing all sorts of ailments.

Why should that cease to be the case just because we're talking about a disease that affects the brain?

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Talking about yourself in the third person is pretty strange.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Talking about yourself in the third person is pretty strange.

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Yes and no, I think. Would saying "my fingers are typing these words" rather than "I am typing these words" be pretty strange? After all, my fingers are part of me, and thus are part of the "I" in the second sentence.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Similarly, 'there is disturbance in the Limbic Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis' would be an odd way to tell your wife that you feel low this morning. Well, maybe I'll try it.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
You know, fuck the term materialist and fuck the term scientism. What the fucking hell do you expect atheists to believe? Simply because you think there is any undefinable whosis piloting the universe doesn't mean they have to. Same goes for the undefinable whatsis that you think you are.
BTW, thinking mechanical processes cannot also constitute free will is akin to believing in a 6k year old universe.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Similarly, 'there is disturbance in the Limbic Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis' would be an odd way to tell your wife that you feel low this morning. Well, maybe I'll try it.

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Would it be better if you said "there is disturbance in my Limbic Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis"?

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1. At a minimum, brain activity is to be characterised as electro-chemical. And even that ignores the absolutely essential role of anatomy (structural organisation) and physiology (function as living tissue). Not to speak of issues of development, embodiment, etc. Apart from every philosophical consideration, to say that the brain is just biochemistry is like saying that Shakespeare is just ink on paper, a basically meaningless simplification even if one is only interested in mechanism.
2. We know a lot about the brain, but in fact very little about how it works precisely in a mechanistic sense. How do the neurons (and astrocytes and ...) do their job, make the brain perform as it does? We basically do not know. Where we have some idea how the brain is working is almost exclusively in primary sensomotory areas. That is, the very first (cortical) stage of sensory input and the last (cortical) stage of muscle control output is not completely beyond our grasp as far as mechanism goes. To put it in terms of a computer analogy: trying to understand how a laptop works, we have sort of figured out the USB port. Hooray us.
3. People do get confused by the incredible amount of data that experimental brain scientists are amassing. Data however is not a synonym for understanding. Furthermore, people do get confused by the unending stream of publications about where some function of the brain is supposed to be located (or perhaps about what rhythms are connected to what function). This is not the place for sorting reasonable work from the "new phrenology" that has ensued with our capability of creating pretty pictures from fMRI data. Suffice to say that practically all of this is at the level of pointing an infrared camera at a running car, noticing where most heat is coming from, and then pointing at the bonnet and saying "that's what drives the car". Of course, in a sense this is correct. But it hardly has the mechanistic power of explanation that laypeople tend to attribute to it.
4. To get anywhere near a materialistic claim for the brain, i.e., to be able to say that "I am my brain" in any sense or form beyond sophistry, roughly the following would have to be achieved: First, the total "performance space" of the brain would have to be mapped out, so that we exactly know what it is capable of doing. Second, the total "state space" of the brain would have to be mapped out, so that we exactly know what the brain is like and what its parts do. Third, a complete "mechanistic explanation space" would have to be constructed on the "state space", so that we know exhaustively how the state of the brain that we know can lead to all possible performances. Fourth, a complete match between observed "performance space" and derived "mechanistic explanation space" would have to be established, so that we know that the brain function can be explained fully in terms of brain state. Our ability to do all these things is roughly comparable to the ability of cavemen to explain the nuclear reactions powering the sun. I cannot totally exclude the possibility that one day this might be possible. But to claim that we have some clear insight into this now does not even rise to the level of risible.
5. There is an essential problem with studying the connection between mind and brain, that hopefully will never go away: ethics. We are very constrained in what we do experimentally and observationally in order to understand the human brain. What we can do is basically this: 1. Study animal models. 2. Use non-invasive observations in situations that do not cause ill health effects or death. 3. Use rare instances where medical intervention justifies invasive observations or where nature provides us with observations of brains in detrimental circumstances. It is far from clear that this ethical window we have on human brains is enough for us to actually figure them out. And no, it is unlikely that technological progress will ever be able to completely overcome this. Just like it is unlikely that technological progress will ever allow us to teleport. Nothing in known science suggests that we will ever have the sort of observations about human brains that we would really want. Nature has for obvious reasons protected brains against the external world, and there will always be limits to our ability to peek past these defences while constrained by ethics.

1. Experience - how do we get from registering a red dot in a mechanistic sense to experiencing it? One can certainly build a robot that detects a moving red dot and points a stick at it. But it is unclear in what sense such performance is related to experiencing the presence of a red dot, which would be integral part of our achievement of the same performance.
2. Abstraction - people appear to be able to operate on abstractions from experience, rather than experiential data itself. We can argue, for example, that parallel lines never meet in the real plane, but at infinity, though none of these statements can be experienced, or directly extracted from experience. There are no fully parallel lines in reality, much less some that would stretch across all space, or even to infinity (which is certainly not an experienced place). What we have done there is to abstract from experience into a conceptual space and then operate on that. It is unclear how this can be achieved by some mechanism.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by Dark Knight:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Of course we can discuss these things without having to talk about the basic chemical interactions that are driving them. That's what we do with virtually everything.

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FFS. This is exactly what your materialist reductionism does do. This is in fact what you DID do.

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Knowing how something works doesn't diminish the wonder of it happening. The fact that I know that it's "just" planetary rotation causing a distant ball of fusing hydrogen nuclei to come into view from my position in such a way that some of the photons released from said fusion reactions are refracted in the atmosphere and detected by the cone cells in my eye, which then pass information down my optic nerve in such a way that the visual centre of my brain interprets it as colours in the red end of the visual spectrum doesn't stop me from saying "what a beautiful sunrise".

But if someone says "mighty Apollo is riding his fiery chariot across the heavens" in such a way that I'm apparently supposed to agree with that definition of what's actually going on, I may well be moved to point out that I don't. And if they then said that my materialist reductionism is taking all the wonder out of the universe I'd fucking well tell them they're wrong.

Some people seem to think science is dull and boring. I think it's fucking awesome, and far more fascinating, exciting and wondrous than merely saying "god did it".

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Originally posted by Dark Knight:
We could talk about the difference between the brain and the mind, which despite your moronic last sentence is actually a very real distinction.

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If it wasn't, we would be at the absolute mercy of brain chemicals, and to all intents and purposes would have no free will.

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Which would make psychotherapy (other than pharmacology) basically a waste of time. Which it isn't. At least, not in my experience.

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It's like saying a cake "is" flour, eggs and water. A cake might be made of those things, but that isn't what a cake 'is.'

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Would it be better if you said "there is disturbance in my Limbic Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis"?

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Well, try it. See how you get on.

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My wife is a medical professional and I have a degree in biochemistry. We say shit like that to each other quite often, actually .

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Hail Gallaxhar

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
(And to respond to part of IngoB's post, I don't have to know exactly how it all works to make that assertion, any more than I have to know exactly how an engine works to assert that it's what's making my car move.)

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Originally posted by IngoB:
As mentioned, there are significant reasons to doubt the possibility of explaining the mind "materialistically" in terms of the brain, at least in terms of what we now consider as an appropriate description of matter.

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These reasons are philosophical, but that does not mean that they can be so easily dismissed.

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We have clear evidence that brain activity and mind activity are intimately linked, as far as we can observe. That they are one and the same thing does not follow at all, however, and it is simple faith in materialism to assert that this must be the case.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
To get anywhere near a materialistic claim for the brain, i.e., to be able to say that "I am my brain" in any sense or form beyond sophistry, roughly the following would have to be achieved...

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Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
[QB]
You see, I'm a sort of ethnographer, and it is my day job to analyse what is called "discourse". In other words, I try to understand how certain cultures at certain points in time "frame", or address, certain issues. How they talk about it. What they consider is important, and what is, or is not, allowed to be said.

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So I merely noticed that (a) there is a specific sort of discourse concerning depression that is currently common currency especially in anglo-saxon cultures;

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(b) I dared to point out that this is likely to be subject to change (it has changed in the past),

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and (c) I did, admittedly, poke a bit of fun at that discourse.

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And before you get into another fit of self-righteous indignation, I poked fun at the discourse , not the condition (depr./acedia).

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
In terms of technology and evidence gathering, I agree that we are very unlikely to ever be able to fully explain the way our brains work. But that in itself does not mean there must be some kind of non-material agency at work.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Nor does it mean they must be accepted.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
What is the difference between brain activity and mind activity?

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
What is the difference between brain activity and mind activity?

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Nor does it mean they must be accepted.

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Indeed. However, when reasonable argument is dismissed without any attempt at counter-argument, based simply on a prior conviction, then we call this "blind faith". Blind faith is intellectually ugly not just when it comes from a religious corner.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
What is the difference between brain activity and mind activity?

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I can record signals that speak to the activity of your brain, the electrical fields neural groups generate (EEG / MEG), the metabolic impact of neural activity on blood dynamics (fMRI BOLD), etc. I cannot record signals of what your mind is doing,

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At any rate, practically speaking the distinction would be between the objective reality of brain activity as measured changes to the physical states of the organ, and the objective reality of mind activity as the universally reported experience of human mental life. What we do not know is how these two can fit together.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Talking about yourself in the third person is pretty strange.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Talking about yourself in the third person is pretty strange.

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This is a total straw man. Who talks about themselves in the third person? Certainly nobody on this thread. You have allowed that saying "my" about fingers makes finger talk into first person talk. Who says "brain chemicals are doing blah" rather than "chemicals in MY brain are doing blah"? Maybe some extreme philosophical solipsists. Nobody on this thread.

You appear to be trying to have it both ways. If we talk about our hands, that's okay. If we talk about our brains, we're talking in the third person and that's just nuts.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
If there's no way to gather meaningful data, then we're all just using "blind faith".

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Theoretically, if we could do that would it change your view of all this?

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I'm not so sure the latter is an objective reality. We're all perceiving our own mind activity subjectively, and we have no real way of knowing that what we're really experiencing is the same as what anyone else is really experiencing. It's like the old "how do we know we're actually seeing the same colours" problem.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
But even allowing for that, what's to say that thw two aren't the same thing? That the brain activity isn't just the physical process by which the thing we call mind activity takes place, in the same way that the shortening of actin and myosin filament crossbridges is the physical mechanism by which muscle activity takes place?

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Originally posted by Dark Knight:
Wow, are you an idiot. There's no question mark, because that isn't a question. It's a statement.

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I'm gutted you should think so.

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Originally posted by Dark Knight:

Atheism and theism have nothing to do with this.

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Originally posted by Dark Knight:

It's like saying a cake "is" flour, eggs and water. A cake might be made of those things, but that isn't what a cake 'is.'

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Speaking as professional computational neuroscientist:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think talking in terms of hands is also quite odd, e.g. 'my hands are typing this post', compared with 'I am typing this post'. It sounds sort of disembodied, and the LHPA stuff, just dissociated.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
We know that most of us are essentially seeing the same colours by the fact that traffic lights work.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Speaking to a professional neuroscientist, what of machine learning?

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
When/if a constructed entity can reason, learn, emote in a manner similar to ours, what then? When a machine has its own, unique personality, is it then a person as well?

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Who we are as individuals is measured by our abilities, personality and character. We know we can change this by physically altering our brains.
By physically altering our brains, we can change that which makes us who we are by any reasonable measurement or observation.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Do we understand all of the process? No. Can we ever is an open question, but the answer is not more reasonably no than yes.
As we begin to delve into quantum mechanics, the classic materialist model seems a little outdated, yes, but not beyond adjustment.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Materialist and scientism are, in general use, often no more than a derisive interjection at the same level as God-botherer, bible thumper or theidiocy. And this is what prompted my post.

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Originally posted by Twilight:
I read every word of IngoB's post at 6:59 and it caused my tinnitus to flare up. He has post 10,000 coming along any minute now. I think we should do something special.

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Thanks for noticing. I hadn't.

In appreciation then, this be my post number 10,000!

Life. Such pleasure to waste it on trivialities.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Originally posted by IngoB:
We know that most of us are essentially seeing the same colours by the fact that traffic lights work.

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Try randomly switching the top-to-bottom positions of the colours on different traffic lights and see if that holds true.

Also, traffic lights don't have to work for 'most' of us. They have to work for ALL of us. Including the red-green colourblind folk.

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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.

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Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Maybe of interest mind mapping

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by Dark Knight:
Wow, are you an idiot. There's no question mark, because that isn't a question. It's a statement.

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I'm gutted you should think so.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
That's a dead link, sweetie. It's basically asking me if I'd like to buy a website.

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