These are examples how differences in how brain>mind versus mind>brain approaches function. This is central to what I’m saying. You can’t perform brain surgery by thinking really hard. You can’t change your attitudes and relationships by undergoing brain surgery.
both of these things are wrong. thinking can change neural wiring. changes in the brain from external sources (lobotomy for example) can change attitudes and relationships (after the surgery anyway)
Hmm, yes I agree. But I guess we’re saying somewhat different things. I mean, it’s a different kind of brain surgery. The results will be different. You really don’t change your relationships in a unified and extensive way just by having surgery. I go back to my aspirin example.
“You really don’t change your relationships in a unified and extensive way just by having surgery.”
I think Phineas Gage did, except for instead of surgery it was a lot of iron through the brain. For at least a few months, probably longer, his personality and subsequently the relationships he had with coworkers, neighbors, etc changed dramatically. There is controversy as to when (or if) he ever returned to normal but the primary sources seem to indicate that there was a period of time where the injury significantly altered his behavior without diminishing (to the same degree) neural function.
I guess that’s not what I’d consider “unified and extensive”. Sure, a dramatic change changes everything. And such a change can even be of a positive sort. But to be of a constructive sort, a person has to more or less unify intention, outlook, emotional health, thought, action, etc.
The idea was that his ability to form intentions was significantly impaired. Inhibitory functions of the frontal lobes were fucked, and it took him a long time to regain control. The point being that it isn’t a far cry from what you just suggested, given that it was done by launching a tamping rod in the general direction of some guy’s face. You have to imagine that with some tinkering and scalpels instead of sticks we might have some greater changes, were we unethical enough to try them.
Are you suggesting that we could create good citizens out of, say, hardened criminals through tinkering with their brains - were we unethical enough to try this? It seems important that you have been describing change of the degraded sort - towards death, in a way. Which makes sense given the injury.
Yeah, I’m suggesting that it could be possible. I wouldn’t do it for ethical (moral) reasons but for the sake of argument here, I’ll bet it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
I guess that makes one of us. I don’t think it’s possible even in theory. I could try to convince you, but that would require a much longer response. I do hope, anyway, that even if a person does think such a thing is possible in theory, they are sensible enough to understand which kinds of options work best for which kinds of things. That also becomes an involved conversation though…
Would it be necessarily unethical to alter the brain of a hardened criminal if it led to her/his social adaptive skill ‘rehabilitation?’ Forgetting Phineas Gage for a minute (and there’s been a lot written that questions his so-called ‘behavior changes’ after his accident that put them in question), there are stroke victims who need a recovery period in order to find neural routes that differ from what they used before stroke. We do have redundancies in our brains.
We just don’t know enough about the brain, yet, or social science, to be able to pin point the areas that would need to be altered and we’d have to know just how much to laser away. Then the patient would have to go through a lot of repetitive re-training So, yeah, it could be possible, but perhaps not for a while–a long while.
Is all this possible to contemplate if you’re not a materialist–at least to a certain extent? There has to be some sort of dualism, such as you can’t have thought without a brain and the two are separate, mustn’t there?
Liz, I think you make a good and interesting point regarding how to effect a desired outcome through what I’d call external means (drugs are included under “external”) given plasticity. “Training”, as you’ve pointed out, would be a mandatory part of this process, if it were to work. And training is what I would call “internal”.
Well, it’s the physical processes which are taking place as we think, that are changing the brain, not the mental experience.
If we said hypothetically that the brain gives rise to the mental state, then it seems to me like saying, the mental experience is just like a movie which we watch, but have no influence on.
A relevant question is, if there’s a lapse between the two, then why is it the body appears to be able to react to our thoughts as quickly as it can react to being hit by a bat.
If there’s a gap, then all actions which constantly adjust to feedback, ie Hand/Eye coordination, would be ridiculous unless the time between was very short.
And yes, if there’s no lapse in time, then it wouldn’t seem as though one could cause the other.
It’s easy to see how the physical environment affects the mental environment. For example, physical damage to one’s ears or eyes, results in a distinct change of one’s experience of these senses. We can also see how based on the structure of the brain, the propensities an individual has.
It’s harder to see how the mental experience changes the physical environment beyond our perception of it.
I haven’t read any responses, so I don’t know if anybody has pointed this out to you, but this is equivocation. The two uses of the word ‘real’ are not synonymous. In the top paragraph, ‘real’ is meant as ‘genuine’ – not as in ‘reality’. To any realist, all of those things exist in reality without question, so the ‘reality’ domino hasn’t been affected at all. Only the question of genuine-ness has ‘tumbled’ – genuine compared to what? is the question you were asking.
Thought that was worth pointing out, in case no one else had.
You seem to be suggesting that there is a fundamental separation between mind and matter. Are you claiming that mental processes are illusory? Are you removing them from your account of how sentient life functions, i.e. they are like vestigial organs, except that there was never any function to mental processes in the first place?
To be clear, this last possibility is what I believe.
Hi FJ. It’s unclear to me where the equivocation is. My argument is exactly this - that there can be no meaningful concept ‘reality’ that isn’t based on first assuming or producing criteria that isn’t, in itself, necessary. Other paradigms are always possible. This can be argued, certainly. I argue with myself about it. But I don’t see how I’ve equivocated.
I explained it pretty clearly, but I’ll try again.
“Tofurkey is not real turkey” is not a statement about whether or not tofurkey exists in reality. It’s a statement about tofurkey’s genuineness. Real = genuine in that situation.
There is a DIFFERENT meaning of ‘real’ which means ‘exists in reality.’
Saying ‘tofurkey isn’t genuine turkey’ is obviously a competely different thing from saying ‘tofurkey doesn’t exist in reality’
In other words, there are two different meanings of the statement ‘tofurkey isn’t real’
but you’re treating the two meanings of real as the same in your OP.
That’s a mistake.
I understand your point. I did all along. MY point Is that there is no ‘in reality’ to be described that isn’t exactly as problematic - because it is the same in that sense - relative to criteria.
You could argue my point, instead of just alluding to some mysterious second definition that you presume I must believe in.
My point is like the one I made in the relative truth thread, where i said that truth is a form of belief, it’s not something completely different.