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Why does our not fully (or even close to fully) understanding how the brain works mean conscious vs subconscious is unscientific? Is all mental health research

by corin_ 6y ago

Why does our not fully (or even close to fully) understanding how the brain works mean conscious vs subconscious is unscientific? Is all mental health research unscientific based on the same logic? My understanding is that it's conclusive that some of our brain's processes we feel we are controlling (conscious thinking), while others happen in the background without us realising. The fact that we don't understand everything that makes that the case doesn't stop that being the case.

vinceguidry 6y ago
You're making a common mistake, that of equating "scientific" with "good". Science is a particular method for learning about the world, not a marker of moral worth. I don't want to get too far into the epistemological weeds here, but there are plenty of other, perfectly valid ways to understand the world, many of which are used and studied in academia. The easiest examples to point to are philosophy and mathematics. Mathematicians are not scientists, neither are philosophers.
- corin_ 6y ago
  I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good". I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here's the first one Google suggests: > "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." Can you explain what excludes the studying of human behaviour or mental health from how you define "science"?
  - ses1984 6y ago
    You can apply science to human behavior and mental health. The problem is trying to integrate that work into theories of consciousness, you start to blur the lines between science and philosophy.
    - corin_ 6y ago
      I agree that it can be approached from non-scientific angles (I'd hazard a guess that any subject that can be considered scientific can be approached unscientifically - sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not), but I think(?) you're agreeing with me in my responding to this comment: > The second you say the words "conscious mind", you leave the realm of science.
  - vinceguidry 6y ago
    This is what I meant by "getting into the epistemological weeds" heh. I'll requote your definition with emphasis. > the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. All three of the italicized aspects are not how the mind is studied. The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. You can obtain three samples of three different kinds of steel and perform a destructive test on all three of them, then when you're done you can obtain more. This is materials science and you can get paid a lot of money to do it. There is "neuroscience" where you do the same thing, with neurons. Neurons are not minds. You'll never learn how a mind works by studying neurons, any more than you can learn how a building works by studying steel. If you're looking to learn how a building works, steel is just one of the hundreds of topics you need to understand. There is no "building science" and there is no "mind science", because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination. Physically speaking, i.e. according to the best observation techniques the field of neuroscience can come up with, a newborn, a brain trauma victim, and a college student are all identical as your parent notes. This deficiency in understanding is what the commenter you were responding to was pointing to. People thinking they can understand the mind by doing fMRIs. And thinking any kind of rigorous exploration and study as "science" leads to this kind of mistake. Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments. Computers are not natural, nor are they physical. Silicon is, and you can study that by running experiments and observing the results. To get epistemic, knowledge comprises justified true beliefs. Science is a type of justification. There are other kinds. If you use other forms of justification, then you don't get scientific knowledge out of it, overloading science makes people believe that all knowledge that comes out of academia is scientific, i.e. made through repeated experimentation and observation, such that we can rely on it to not fail on us.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - montjoy 6y ago
      Oh come now. > The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. > ... because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination Then likewise Ecology, Geology, Biology and all other sciences that cover systems aren’t science? What is left? Surely not physics because that could be quantum OR relativity. Surely not QM because that could be particles OR waves. > Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments Ok now I know you are trolling.
akiselev 6y ago
> Is all mental health research unscientific based on the same logic? Mental health research is focused on clinical outcomes so it's not the same as basic research on consciousness. All of these fMRI studies have been useless for the latter because they're blunt tools - perfect for studying tumor blood flow or correlating which parts of the brain are kinda-sorta active during some extreme scenario (stuck in an fMRI "for science") - but useless for actually probing the nature of the mind. They tell us that there is "something" there that can be loosely called the "conscious" and "subconscious" mind in academically trained company but it's still trying to shoehorn late 19th century ideas to cutting edge neuroscience - it comes down to selling grant proposals using familiar colloquialisms. We could very well find out tomorrow that there are higher level networks within the brain that make the separation meaningless and you'd still see grant writers overuse them any chance they get. > My understanding is that it's conclusive that some of our brain's processes we feel we are controlling (conscious thinking), while others happen in the background without us realising. The fact that we don't understand everything that makes that the case doesn't stop that being the case. These papers are a lot worse than "we don't understand everything." They're often times actively harmful to our understanding. The brain is so complex that fMRI studies are the scientific research equivalent of a full body CT scan. The older you are, the more likely you are to find something that looks like a tumor. By the time one is in their 50s, full body scans are more likely to result in serious complications from unnecessary biopsies than find a malignant growth. Likewise, the more complex the brain the more room you have to find spurious correlations in fMRIs in just about any scenario where the subject is conscious or even dead if the researcher is really bad at statistics - which most are. This makes them the perfect tool for scientists under pressure to publish or perish, but not for studying the brain.

by corin_ 6y ago

vinceguidry 6y ago

You're making a common mistake, that of equating "scientific" with "good". Science is a particular method for learning about the world, not a marker of moral worth. I don't want to get too far into the epistemological weeds here, but there are plenty of other, perfectly valid ways to understand the world, many of which are used and studied in academia. The easiest examples to point to are philosophy and mathematics. Mathematicians are not scientists, neither are philosophers.

corin_ 6y ago
I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good". I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here's the first one Google suggests: > "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." Can you explain what excludes the studying of human behaviour or mental health from how you define "science"?
- ses1984 6y ago
  You can apply science to human behavior and mental health. The problem is trying to integrate that work into theories of consciousness, you start to blur the lines between science and philosophy.
  - corin_ 6y ago
    I agree that it can be approached from non-scientific angles (I'd hazard a guess that any subject that can be considered scientific can be approached unscientifically - sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not), but I think(?) you're agreeing with me in my responding to this comment: > The second you say the words "conscious mind", you leave the realm of science.
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  This is what I meant by "getting into the epistemological weeds" heh. I'll requote your definition with emphasis. > the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. All three of the italicized aspects are not how the mind is studied. The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. You can obtain three samples of three different kinds of steel and perform a destructive test on all three of them, then when you're done you can obtain more. This is materials science and you can get paid a lot of money to do it. There is "neuroscience" where you do the same thing, with neurons. Neurons are not minds. You'll never learn how a mind works by studying neurons, any more than you can learn how a building works by studying steel. If you're looking to learn how a building works, steel is just one of the hundreds of topics you need to understand. There is no "building science" and there is no "mind science", because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination. Physically speaking, i.e. according to the best observation techniques the field of neuroscience can come up with, a newborn, a brain trauma victim, and a college student are all identical as your parent notes. This deficiency in understanding is what the commenter you were responding to was pointing to. People thinking they can understand the mind by doing fMRIs. And thinking any kind of rigorous exploration and study as "science" leads to this kind of mistake. Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments. Computers are not natural, nor are they physical. Silicon is, and you can study that by running experiments and observing the results. To get epistemic, knowledge comprises justified true beliefs. Science is a type of justification. There are other kinds. If you use other forms of justification, then you don't get scientific knowledge out of it, overloading science makes people believe that all knowledge that comes out of academia is scientific, i.e. made through repeated experimentation and observation, such that we can rely on it to not fail on us.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - montjoy 6y ago
    Oh come now. > The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. > ... because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination Then likewise Ecology, Geology, Biology and all other sciences that cover systems aren’t science? What is left? Surely not physics because that could be quantum OR relativity. Surely not QM because that could be particles OR waves. > Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments Ok now I know you are trolling.

akiselev 6y ago

> Is all mental health research unscientific based on the same logic? Mental health research is focused on clinical outcomes so it's not the same as basic research on consciousness. All of these fMRI studies have been useless for the latter because they're blunt tools - perfect for studying tumor blood flow or correlating which parts of the brain are kinda-sorta active during some extreme scenario (stuck in an fMRI "for science") - but useless for actually probing the nature of the mind. They tell us that there is "something" there that can be loosely called the "conscious" and "subconscious" mind in academically trained company but it's still trying to shoehorn late 19th century ideas to cutting edge neuroscience - it comes down to selling grant proposals using familiar colloquialisms. We could very well find out tomorrow that there are higher level networks within the brain that make the separation meaningless and you'd still see grant writers overuse them any chance they get. > My understanding is that it's conclusive that some of our brain's processes we feel we are controlling (conscious thinking), while others happen in the background without us realising. The fact that we don't understand everything that makes that the case doesn't stop that being the case. These papers are a lot worse than "we don't understand everything." They're often times actively harmful to our understanding. The brain is so complex that fMRI studies are the scientific research equivalent of a full body CT scan. The older you are, the more likely you are to find something that looks like a tumor. By the time one is in their 50s, full body scans are more likely to result in serious complications from unnecessary biopsies than find a malignant growth. Likewise, the more complex the brain the more room you have to find spurious correlations in fMRIs in just about any scenario where the subject is conscious or even dead if the researcher is really bad at statistics - which most are. This makes them the perfect tool for scientists under pressure to publish or perish, but not for studying the brain.