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False dichotomy. There is currently no good reason other than historical precedent and religion to believe that mind is separate from body. I.e. mostly brain +

False dichotomy. There is currently no good reason other than historical precedent and religion to believe that mind is separate from body. I.e. mostly brain + gut + maybe some physical/material factors we're not aware of yet. Let's just call this "brains" but understand that I mean brain + other organs + biochemistry. Totally agree that much of what we do, what we think, what we believe, both consciously and unconsciously is a product of culture and society -- not just the individual. BUUUUT -- culture and society are created by brains and experienced by brains. So, I expect that you have in your body physical artifacts that map to your understanding of culture, and your history of experiences in society. Like a lossy shard of the whole. So to say that we can't understand all of this in terms of neuro, or even chemistry, or even physics is wrong and a false dichotomy. To say instead that psy- studies provide a different (higher) layer of abstraction that is more expressive for describing and understanding certain behaviours is correct. If you're teaching someone tennis, you tell them where to put the racquet. You don't enumerate the positions of the atoms in the racquet. In the same way, neuro descriptions should be true. In fact more true than psy descriptions, but psy descriptions should be more useful for understanding large-scale behaviour. Invariably they will be a leaky abstraction and we will often have to go down to the neuro level of detail for greater insight. The other issue is that I think there's a stigma to psy-sciences because of poor replication, and poor statistical techniques. Neuro is supposedly harder science. You can fool the people, but not the molecules. Whether this is actually true is open to debate, but the the psy-sciences definitely need to up their game.

jchanimal 5y ago
You are describing supervenience, in theory of mind it’s called anomalous monism. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/
anotherman554 5y ago
"So to say that we can't understand all of this in terms of neuro, or even chemistry, or even physics is wrong and a false dichotomy." Since we are not omniscient, we can't understand it in terms of this. Certainly not now, possibly not ever. It's not even clear that you could hypothetically attempt to understand the human mind in terms of physics without invasively doing all sorts of horrific things to human test subjects.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  That's just one form of non-dualism, there are in fact hundreds of which dozens have been popular from time to time. Right now, eliminatitive materialism is probably more popular than Donald Davidson's, epiphenomenalism another, pansychism another.
- JabavuAdams 5y ago
  You're not disagreeing with me, as far as I can tell. I am objecting to the claim that we can never understand the human mind in terms of neuro- and that psych- has some ability to explain things that neuro- can never explain. People are so short-sighted. Not you, but the author, and those who write that AI can never to X or similar things. Do we really believe that if humans or their descendants are still around 10k years from now, able to use tools and exercise creativity, that they won't have figured a lot of this stuff out? We've only been seriously at this for 400 years, and casually for say 5k years. Why would we make any "never" claims?
ceilingcorner 5y ago
> There is currently no good reason other than historical precedent and religion to believe that mind is separate from body A bit ironic, because the only reason you think this is because of the historical development of positivism and the complete ignorance of its shortcomings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism
- JabavuAdams 5y ago
  No, it's not the only reason. Also, I'm not a philosopher, I'm a pragmatist. I'm not making a strong philosophical statement, or constructing a proof (which I don't think is possible). I simply notice that the alternatives don't work, have repeatedly failed to work, and mystical claims are better explained by how human minds work than by some features of the universe, independent of humans. I could be equally snarky and ask why you weren't able to send me your message with a crystal ball, or through telepathy, or by asking a spirit to tell me. We've tried all of these things, and none of them work. But, weirdly the same culture, world-view, and process that tries to get better explanations than these legacy beliefs has furnished us with computers, smartphones, and a global communication network, which do work. EDIT> ... and which humans use unironically to try to continue to spread their legacy woo beliefs.

jchanimal 5y ago

You are describing supervenience, in theory of mind it’s called anomalous monism. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/

anotherman554 5y ago

"So to say that we can't understand all of this in terms of neuro, or even chemistry, or even physics is wrong and a false dichotomy." Since we are not omniscient, we can't understand it in terms of this. Certainly not now, possibly not ever. It's not even clear that you could hypothetically attempt to understand the human mind in terms of physics without invasively doing all sorts of horrific things to human test subjects.

guerrilla 5y ago
That's just one form of non-dualism, there are in fact hundreds of which dozens have been popular from time to time. Right now, eliminatitive materialism is probably more popular than Donald Davidson's, epiphenomenalism another, pansychism another.
JabavuAdams 5y ago
You're not disagreeing with me, as far as I can tell. I am objecting to the claim that we can never understand the human mind in terms of neuro- and that psych- has some ability to explain things that neuro- can never explain. People are so short-sighted. Not you, but the author, and those who write that AI can never to X or similar things. Do we really believe that if humans or their descendants are still around 10k years from now, able to use tools and exercise creativity, that they won't have figured a lot of this stuff out? We've only been seriously at this for 400 years, and casually for say 5k years. Why would we make any "never" claims?

ceilingcorner 5y ago

> There is currently no good reason other than historical precedent and religion to believe that mind is separate from body A bit ironic, because the only reason you think this is because of the historical development of positivism and the complete ignorance of its shortcomings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism

JabavuAdams 5y ago
No, it's not the only reason. Also, I'm not a philosopher, I'm a pragmatist. I'm not making a strong philosophical statement, or constructing a proof (which I don't think is possible). I simply notice that the alternatives don't work, have repeatedly failed to work, and mystical claims are better explained by how human minds work than by some features of the universe, independent of humans. I could be equally snarky and ask why you weren't able to send me your message with a crystal ball, or through telepathy, or by asking a spirit to tell me. We've tried all of these things, and none of them work. But, weirdly the same culture, world-view, and process that tries to get better explanations than these legacy beliefs has furnished us with computers, smartphones, and a global communication network, which do work. EDIT> ... and which humans use unironically to try to continue to spread their legacy woo beliefs.