Philosophy Now Forum

Skip wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:There is no "remedy" for mental illness, as the "disease" is "YOU". Treatments for most mental illness are a remedy for the person as the person embodies the ailment.

Not necessarily. There are too many possible causes of too many mental illnesses to make that blanket statement.

I'll stand by that statement. "Mental Illness" is not like other ailments. When you treat it you are saying that the person is faulty, as the personality resides in the mental process that generates it.
There are no exceptions for the personal embodiment of the disease in the case of the mental realm.

This is one reason why treatment can be so hard to initiate. When you break a leg, it's not hard to admit that you need help; when your 'self' is faulty that is a harder think to admit.

So do I.
If your brain is impinged-upon by a cyst, tumour or ice-pick, removing the foreign agent will put you "self" back to normal and affect a cure, just like a cast cures the broken leg. If the dysfunction is caused by a toxin, taking away the child's lead-painted cot may cure his mental illness.

Skip wrote:So do I.
If your brain is impinged-upon by a cyst, tumour or ice-pick, removing the foreign agent will put you "self" back to normal and affect a cure, just like a cast cures the broken leg. If the dysfunction is caused by a toxin, taking away the child's lead-painted cot may cure his mental illness.

A Head injury is not normally put in the category of mental illness.

No, but the symptoms of mental illness can result from a head injury that wasn't documented. Or rabies. Or a parasite.
Disturbed cognitive function can be caused by any number of physical sources, many of which we're not aware of. Until a condition is correctly diagnosed, you don't know whether it's part of the personality or superimposed; whether it's transitory or permanent; whether it's curable, treatable or manageable, or by what method. I prefer not to put everything that looks similar into a single, absolute category.

Skip wrote:No, but the symptoms of mental illness can result from a head injury that wasn't documented. Or rabies. Or a parasite.
Disturbed cognitive function can be caused by any number of physical sources, many of which we're not aware of. Until a condition is correctly diagnosed, you don't know whether it's part of the personality or superimposed; whether it's transitory or permanent; whether it's curable, treatable or manageable, or by what method. I prefer not to put everything that looks similar into a single, absolute category.

"Superimposed" pah!
The brain generates the personality.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Skip wrote:No, but the symptoms of mental illness can result from a head injury that wasn't documented. Or rabies. Or a parasite.
Disturbed cognitive function can be caused by any number of physical sources, many of which we're not aware of. Until a condition is correctly diagnosed, you don't know whether it's part of the personality or superimposed; whether it's transitory or permanent; whether it's curable, treatable or manageable, or by what method. I prefer not to put everything that looks similar into a single, absolute category.

"Superimposed" pah!
The brain generates the personality.

The brain does indeed generate the personality. For that reason if the brain suffers trauma one's personality may not be immune to its consequences.

This dualist notion of the brain and body as separate entities has been comprehensively debunked by both philosophy and science. Significant personality changes have also been documented as a result of organ transplants and the loss of limbs. The alternative notion of the human mind as being an embodied construct is nowadays regarded as mainstream in biology, as indeed it should be.

A realist is what a pessimist calls himself when he wants to sound opptimistic.

Obvious Leo wrote:This dualist notion of the brain and body as separate entities has been comprehensively debunked by both philosophy and science. Significant personality changes have also been documented as a result of organ transplants and the loss of limbs. The alternative notion of the human mind as being an embodied construct is nowadays regarded as mainstream in biology, as indeed it should be.

With respect to personality changes or multiple personalities, they also occur when people drink or do drugs (and can still occur even in-between when the victims don't drink nor do drugs).

PhilX

Jaded Sage wrote:A realist is what a pessimist calls himself when he wants to sound opptimistic.

There are realists and idealists in the everyday world, and the those that go by the same name in the philosophical world - THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:This dualist notion of the brain and body as separate entities has been comprehensively debunked by both philosophy and science. Significant personality changes have also been documented as a result of organ transplants and the loss of limbs. The alternative notion of the human mind as being an embodied construct is nowadays regarded as mainstream in biology, as indeed it should be.

With respect to personality changes or multiple personalities, they also occur when people drink or do drugs (and can still occur even in-between when the victims don't drink nor do drugs).

PhilX

Sometimes I wonder if Bob and Bill are not the best candidates for village-idiot of the Forum.
Bob and Bill are too obvious.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Jaded Sage wrote:A realist is what a pessimist calls himself when he wants to sound opptimistic.

There are realists and idealists in the everyday world, and the those that go by the same name in the philosophical world - THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.

Okay...

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:This dualist notion of the brain and body as separate entities has been comprehensively debunked by both philosophy and science. Significant personality changes have also been documented as a result of organ transplants and the loss of limbs. The alternative notion of the human mind as being an embodied construct is nowadays regarded as mainstream in biology, as indeed it should be.

With respect to personality changes or multiple personalities, they also occur when people drink or do drugs (and can still occur even in-between when the victims don't drink nor do drugs).

PhilX

It seems that you're accidentally agreeing with me. The notion that the mind operates independently of our biochemistry is simply bollocks. Mind is an embodied phenomenon which is both ACTOR and ACTED UPON in the processes of consciousness and this is a completely uncontroversial position in science. Even though cognitive neuroscience is still a science in its infancy many of the basic electro-chemical mechanisms of these processes are nowadays reasonably well understood and major advances are expected over the next few decades as increasingly more powerful computers become available to analyse the enormous wealth of data being generated by new technologies such as fMRI.

An embodied non-linear computer with 100 billion neurons connected by up to 100 trillion synapses which can fire across a wide range of different action potentials is a complicated piece of kit, particularly since every cell in the human body is linked to this network, including the trillions of cells embodying the thousands of species which live in symbiosis with us. One clever geek managed to work out that this allows for more binary logic gates in a human embodied mind than there are ATOMS in the entire universe so we might be wise to exercise some humility before we leap to too many broad conclusions about exactly how it all works. We're not just a single organism, Phil, we're an entire fucking ecosystem.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:This dualist notion of the brain and body as separate entities has been comprehensively debunked by both philosophy and science. Significant personality changes have also been documented as a result of organ transplants and the loss of limbs. The alternative notion of the human mind as being an embodied construct is nowadays regarded as mainstream in biology, as indeed it should be.

With respect to personality changes or multiple personalities, they also occur when people drink or do drugs (and can still occur even in-between when the victims don't drink nor do drugs).

PhilX

It seems that you're accidentally agreeing with me.

Seriously I don't think he'll ever know why.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:This dualist notion of the brain and body as separate entities has been comprehensively debunked by both philosophy and science. Significant personality changes have also been documented as a result of organ transplants and the loss of limbs. The alternative notion of the human mind as being an embodied construct is nowadays regarded as mainstream in biology, as indeed it should be.

With respect to personality changes or multiple personalities, they also occur when people drink or do drugs (and can still occur even in-between when the victims don't drink nor do drugs).

PhilX

It seems that you're accidentally agreeing with me. The notion that the mind operates independently of our biochemistry is simply bollocks. Mind is an embodied phenomenon which is both ACTOR and ACTED UPON in the processes of consciousness and this is a completely uncontroversial position in science. Even though cognitive neuroscience is still a science in its infancy many of the basic electro-chemical mechanisms of these processes are nowadays reasonably well understood and major advances are expected over the next few decades as increasingly more powerful computers become available to analyse the enormous wealth of data being generated by new technologies such as fMRI.

An embodied non-linear computer with 100 billion neurons connected by up to 100 trillion synapses which can fire across a wide range of different action potentials is a complicated piece of kit, particularly since every cell in the human body is linked to this network, including the trillions of cells embodying the thousands of species which live in symbiosis with us. One clever geek managed to work out that this allows for more binary logic gates in a human embodied mind than there are ATOMS in the entire universe so we might be wise to exercise some humility before we leap to too many broad conclusions about exactly how it all works. We're not just a single organism, Phil, we're an entire fucking ecosystem.

We still have quite a way to go as this article shows:

http://qz.com/653084/microsofts-disastr ... ers-of-ai/

Just like humans when they start out, AI/robots are taking their first baby steps. This is a rapidly developing area so what is true today may not be true five years from now. The potential to do good far outweighs the potential to do harm. It's a technology that feeds on itself so it's growing exponentially.

PhilX