Introducing the brain: interpreting research (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, March 05, 2021, 12:39 (1140 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Most brain research is segmental which results in improper conclusions:

https://nautil.us/issue/98/mind/that-is-not-how-your-brain-works?mc_cid=108c95fd12&...

Your statement is very clear, and the first part of the article is also clear:

QUOTE: "Pretty much everything that your brain creates, from sights and sounds to memories and emotions, involves your whole brain. Every neuron communicates with thousands of others at the same time. In such a complex system, very little that you do or experience can be traced to a simple sum of parts.”

As we learned from the “gut” entry, though, it’s not just the brain. The whole body is involved. However, her demolition of Myth Number One is clear. But I find Myths 2 and 3 confusing.

QUOTE: In every moment, your brain uses all its available information (your memory, your situation, the state of your body) to take guesses about what will happen in the next moment.

I don’t understand this. I don’t see how my attempts to work out, for instance, how life might have originated, or how evolution works, or why I forgot to buy a stir fry yesterday when I went shopping, entail a guess about what will happen in the next moment.

QUOTE: Neuroscientists have found, however, that the same brain networks responsible for controlling your body also are involved in creating your mind.

Not just the brain networks. But the idea that the body and brain create the mind is of course pure materialism (she explicitly rejects Descartes’ dualism). Fair enough to believe it, but not to say that neuroscientists have “found” it.

QUOTE: Every mental experience has physical causes, and physical changes in your body often have mental consequences...

It is a huge assumption to state that EVERY mental experience has physical causes (see below), though fair enough to say that physical changes often have mental effects. The author's following explanation is based solely on materialism. I am not advocating dualism or materialism - I simply can't follow her thinking:

QUOTES: “When thinking about the relationship between mind and body, it’s tempting to indulge in the myth that the mind is solely in the brain and the body is separate. Under the hood, however, your brain creates your mind while it regulates the systems of your body. That means the regulation of your body is itself part of your mind.”

When it comes to illness, the boundary between physical and mental is porous. Depression is usually catalogued as a mental illness, but it’s as much a metabolic illness as cardiovascular disease, which itself has significant mood-related symptoms. These two diseases occur together so often that some medical researchers believe that one may cause the other. That perspective is steeped in Cartesian dualism. Both depression and cardiovascular disease are known to involve problems with metabolism, so it’s equally plausible that they share an underlying cause.”

I find all this very confusing. I hesitate to take on an expert in the field, but what we call mental illness, as I understand it, can be triggered by changes in the metabolism, or it can itself trigger changes in the metabolism. It makes no difference whether you are a materialist or a dualist: for the materialist, a diseased, materially caused mind can trigger problems in the rest of the body, or the rest of the body can trigger problems in the materially caused mind. For the dualist, leave out the words “materially caused”. Both approaches “involve problems with the metabolism” – either as cause or as effect. Covid-19 may affect the metabolism and this may cause depression; lockdown may cause depression, and this may affect the metabolism. What has this got to do with materialism or Cartesian dualism? The effects are the same whichever -ism you subscribe to. And for good measure, how can she claim that, for instance, the depressing loneliness (mental experience) of a pensioner deprived of all social contact during lockdown has a "physical cause".

DAVID: this is where folks will jump in and say we do not have free will. the could not be more incorrect. Our amazing brain prepares you to reach decision with a huge background of information, but only a conscious you can choose the final decision.

The article expressly dismisses Descartes’ dualism, and you expressly accept it. The author is concerned here with illness, not free will, which we have already discussed several times.