This discussion brings to mind Bruce Perry's book "What Happened to you" co-written with Oprah Winfrey, in which Perry describes his work with children who have witnessed unimaginable horrors such as being present when their parents were murdered before their eyes. Reactions such as sleeplessness, unremitting nightmares, dissociation, hyper-alertness and so on are undeniably processes of mind. No one could dispute the 1:1 causal relationship between a "mental disorder" with these kinds of clinical signs and symptoms and the events known to have preceded them. That a child who until that catastrophe, had been to all intents and purposes, enjoying a relatively untroubled childhood, could hardly be expected to react otherwise.
Psychiatrists often ask "How are you?" but almost never "What happened to you" .
The first question enables an observer to calibrate behaviour ( clinical signs) against a category of illness, i.e. a medical condition, whereas the second question invites a relationship in which parties can engage with curiosity and collaborate to resolve inner conflicts, address existential threats, and/or other sources of anxiety.
The child in the example above has obvious cause to be extremely anxious.
That said, that we all live in a toxic culture should be the starting point for any attempt to understand how the gamut of people's life experiences affect them. People respond in different ways and with different intensities. Many of us are enmeshed in circumstances that are beyond our control. The grind of a hand to mouth existence, lack of access to meaningful employment or secure accommodation are becoming hallmarks of our society for a sizeable proportion of our population if not for most people. Navigating the cut and thrust of daily living involves processes of the mind.
People easily become prey to politicians who promise simple answers to complex problems.
Reductionism posited the most microscopic as the most fundamental level of physics.. Thereby implying that information about the holistic context could not have a determinative influence on subatomic behaviour, as in Bohm's pilot wave theory.
We don't have an adequate account of what should count as physical or nonphysical, nor an exhaustive ontology of all physical properties. So it's not clear what reductionism reduces to. Or what it would mean to call a mental state nonphysical.
I agree about the limits of reductionism. Stoljar reaches the same conclusion from a different approach.
I propose that the mind is an emergent informational "space" with recursive power, generated by the brain's computational capacity, meaning it is real, natural and causally efficacious. That's set out in the "Natural Dualism" book, now available on Kindle.
This discussion brings to mind Bruce Perry's book "What Happened to you" co-written with Oprah Winfrey, in which Perry describes his work with children who have witnessed unimaginable horrors such as being present when their parents were murdered before their eyes. Reactions such as sleeplessness, unremitting nightmares, dissociation, hyper-alertness and so on are undeniably processes of mind. No one could dispute the 1:1 causal relationship between a "mental disorder" with these kinds of clinical signs and symptoms and the events known to have preceded them. That a child who until that catastrophe, had been to all intents and purposes, enjoying a relatively untroubled childhood, could hardly be expected to react otherwise.
Psychiatrists often ask "How are you?" but almost never "What happened to you" .
The first question enables an observer to calibrate behaviour ( clinical signs) against a category of illness, i.e. a medical condition, whereas the second question invites a relationship in which parties can engage with curiosity and collaborate to resolve inner conflicts, address existential threats, and/or other sources of anxiety.
The child in the example above has obvious cause to be extremely anxious.
That said, that we all live in a toxic culture should be the starting point for any attempt to understand how the gamut of people's life experiences affect them. People respond in different ways and with different intensities. Many of us are enmeshed in circumstances that are beyond our control. The grind of a hand to mouth existence, lack of access to meaningful employment or secure accommodation are becoming hallmarks of our society for a sizeable proportion of our population if not for most people. Navigating the cut and thrust of daily living involves processes of the mind.
People easily become prey to politicians who promise simple answers to complex problems.
What will become of the children of Gaza and Lebanon and Syria and now Iran ...?
Reductionism posited the most microscopic as the most fundamental level of physics.. Thereby implying that information about the holistic context could not have a determinative influence on subatomic behaviour, as in Bohm's pilot wave theory.
We don't have an adequate account of what should count as physical or nonphysical, nor an exhaustive ontology of all physical properties. So it's not clear what reductionism reduces to. Or what it would mean to call a mental state nonphysical.
I agree about the limits of reductionism. Stoljar reaches the same conclusion from a different approach.
I propose that the mind is an emergent informational "space" with recursive power, generated by the brain's computational capacity, meaning it is real, natural and causally efficacious. That's set out in the "Natural Dualism" book, now available on Kindle.
Thanks. Been a long time since I was reading papers on the metaphysics of mind.