Comments on: Evolution of the troubled mind

By: Mark(p.s.)

Mark(p.s.) — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:49:10 +0000

Mental illness is non-physical. If it were physical the illness would be treated by a neurologist.
Mental illness unlike an broken bone, infection or cancer , lasts the rest of the patients life (so say the diagnosticians-psychiatrists)
Mental illness is still real, as emotions and thoughts are real to the individual.
There will always be mental illness.
But playing along with the idea of mental illness is a defective brain and bad DNA, after the Nazis killed 250,000 genetically “bad” people in Action T4 during WW2, was there a measurable reduction of mental illness in the countries they controlled? I think not.

By: Anibal

Anibal — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:38:25 +0000

The Triune brain hipothesis also makes me bother. It is as if evolution does not take into account what already exist and proceed from scratch forming new cortical sheets without connection between each other. The confusion arised as a consequence of bad and misguided evolutionary arguments from the time of the mayor nomenclatures of the XVIII, XIX and the beginning of XX century¬¥s anatomy, such as those of Brodmann, Von Economo, Vogt and Vogt…
On the other hand, i think evolutionary psychology is most of the time trapped in wishful thinking. How can be proved many of its conclusions about past evolutionary enviroments and their selective pressures causing the appearence of new adaptive traits?
New mergings such as neuroevolutionary psychology or evolutionary cognitive neuroscience are the best way to fill the gap.

By: Sammie

Sammie — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:41:25 +0000

Sammie: Programme?
Sinclair: We’re not in Kansas anymore.
Eric Y. (bored and perceptive) : I’m sure you have a question for the noted anthropologist, Sammie.
Sammie (directing his attention towards Jay Whitlow) : Okay. Height is normally distributed.
Jay Whitlow: Yes, Sammie, physical attributes are often normally distributed.
Sammie: And intelligence is normally distributed.
Jay Whitlow: Yes.
Sammie: Is intelligence a physical attribute?
Eric Y. (suddenly more interested) :The brain is a physical structure.
Sammie: So is sanity also normally distributed?
Jay Whitlow: Assume sanity IS normally distributed. Most of us are in the middle with both extremes represented roughly equally. Does this lead to any unusual conclusions?
Sinclair (with a flash of insight that is purposly hidden by his condescending nature) :”Sanity” is socially constructed, so it would be “defined” by the middle of the curve. So both extremes would be “insane”. The “sane” cannot be “insane”, a contradiction.
Jay Whitlow: Good.
Sammie: So what is the distribution?
Sinclair (looking around) :When are we going back to Kansas?