Comments on: Neuroessentialism

By: tom

tom — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 07:59:51 +0000

You are obviously an eliminative materialist. One alternative perspective is that the complexity of neuroscientic data — the overwhelming number of facts that we can and will be able to discern about any particular brain state — will mean that we will resort of higher-level concepts in our causal descriptions. Then it will make as much sense to say “Jon shouted because he was angry” as “Jon shouted because of brain fact X”. Both will be true.

By: Jonathan Lyons

Jonathan Lyons — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:50:46 +0000

Yes, part of the reason is that I do think that there will be more objectivity, certainty and detail in investigations that aren’t mediated by the subject’s own subjectivity, but involve looking at the brain directly. But another reason is this: psychological explanations falsely endow mental states with causality. An example: to explain my motivation for doing something, you have to say, “Jonathan shouted at Fred because he was angry.” But a closer examination of the brain will disentangle this cause-effect relationship. It will show not that my anger caused me to shout, but that Brain State A (in which I experience anger) led directly to – caused – Brain State B (in which I shout.) I think the falsity of the cause-effect relationship here – which can be resolved when looking at the brain directly – is a big reason why psychological statements can never be completely accurate, or as accurate as their neuroscientific counterparts might eventually be.

By: tom

tom — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 07:46:39 +0000

Yes, Jonathan, what you say is correct. To the extent that it becomes possible to map from psychological concepts to neural factors – and back – information about neural factors will be informative about psychological concepts. Why, though, do you think knowledge of neural factors will be intrinsically more accurate than knowledge of psychological factors? Possibly you imagine that this knowledge of neural factors will have a certainty or objectivity that isn’t possible about psychological factors?

By: Jonathan Lyons

Jonathan Lyons — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 04:24:23 +0000

You said ” – everything psychological is represented somehow in the brain,” – YES, but then you immediately say “knowing that conceptual frames exist in neural circuits doesn’t help us figure out anything about their properties.” Um, I think you forgot the word “yet.” The first clause seems to contradict the second. Once we’ve mapped all psychological states to brain states, does the first clause not mean that psychological statements are just higher-level approximations of what’s represented in the brain at the neurological level? And if so, can we not glean a higher level of detail than a psychological statement can ever achieve by looking directly at what’s going on in the brain?

As of right now, before scientists have decoded the exact relationship between neural activity and mental representation, everything you say is true. But if such a relationship is ever fully mapped out, then wouldn’t such a description be intrinsically more accurate than a psychological one can ever be?

By: Alex Fradera

Alex Fradera — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 09:46:15 +0000

Nice Tom. Perverse how us MindHackers seem to be coining the least generous neurologisms, eh?