QUOTES IV
Quotations about
HUMAN
PSYCHOLOGIGAL
'INFRASTRUCTURE' and 'SUPERSTRUCTURE'
- i.e. about 'the mind-body problem'
HOWEVER MEASURED OR CONCEIIVED, CAN PEOPLE'S PSYCHOLOGICAL
DIFFERENCES BE TRACED TO UNDERLYING PHYSIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
IN THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM? INDEED, MIGHT STUDY OF THE BRAIN
EVEN PROVIDE A HIGH ROAD TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF PERSONALITY ITSELF?
TRADITIONALLY, THE LONDON SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY HAS TENDED TO ANSWER
'YES' TO THESE QUESTIONS. BUT IS THIS TO RISK ABJURING PERSONALITY
FEATURES THAT DO NOT YIELD TO EARLY PHYSIOLOGIZING-AND EVEN TO
RISK MISSING THE INFLUENCE OF 'MIND' ON 'BODY'?
What is the relationship between people and their bodies
(and brains)? How can a person's activities exhibit both 'possession
of', yet also 'dependence on', the body and its brain? How is
'the mind' related to the brain? And how do individual differences
in personality relate to differences in brain structure and function?
Such are perhaps the largest and least straightforward questions
of psychology and the philosophy of mind. The mind and the body
(especially the brain) exert effects on each other. But how?
On the one hand, a reasonably normal, intact brain provides a
necessary condition of the only forms of mentality with
which we are reliably familiar. Our minds as we know them-at least
via objective, scientific enquiry -seem to be substantially
dependent on our brains being roughly as they are. [As to the
existence of mentality in any envisaged after-life, we can hardly
be said at present to 'know'-or even to have been told-much about
what either our minds or our (resurrected) bodies and brains
would be like in such conditions. - How old would we be, for example?]
On the other hand, there are several ways in which the mind provides
a sufficient condition of many physical states of the body
and brain: my arms normally rise because I decide to raise them,
or because of some larger decision ('to dive into the pool', 'not
to appear babyish by using the steps') of which raising my arms
is a largely automatic ingredient.
Yet what is the nature of these connections? On the one hand,
there are thoughts and feelings, which have the essential property
of 'being about something'-they exhibit intension {sic}.
On the other hand there exists the realm of matter and purely
physical processes-having spatial extension. How can events
in these two realms ever 'connect'? The problem becomes no easier
when we recall that any 'thought' that just occurred to us has
already involved a physical process of an electro-chemical
nature-a process that presumably has its own continuing physical
ramification throughout the nervous system, with or without further
particular thoughts occurring in parallel.
Today there is available a familiar analogy for the mind/brain
relation. This is the relation between computer 'software' and
'hardware'. Computer and word-processor users know there is an
already strange language (of key-presses) into which they must
convert their thoughts and instructions if they are to address
a computer satisfactorily; but beyond this are still further translation
systems allowing the immediate conversion of these already coded
instructions into strings of binary digits (111000100001111010111
etc.). (To code instructions thus mimics the operations of the
nervous system itself-for the activity ('firing') of each nerve
is basically 'on' or 'off' ('0' or '1') at any one time.)
Nevertheless, instructing a microcomputer is still a far cry
from dealing with one's dog. For the computer has 'a mind of its
own' only in the sense that it operates (largely obsessionally,
for better or worse) within the set of rules with which it appears
to have been programmed. No-one believes the computer 'experiences'
anything, 'knows' anything (including 'the rules'), 'has inclinations'
or 'has opinions'-except in so far as aspects of these processes
may have been mimicked into it by its programmer. - Whatever we
ourselves may feel if a computer screen displays "YOU'RE
INCOMPETENT!", we know this is a programmer talking,
not a programme or a computer. Unless self-starting robots are
one day programmed with powerful imperatives towards self-preservation
and reproduction, with intelligent orchestration of such instincts,
and have had the experience of striving to achieve their goals
by free-ranging movement around a changing world, it is entirely
unlikely that we will credit them with mentality-for all that
it is handy to anthropomorphize the programmed computer
as 'having memory', 'following rules' and 'needing' particular
input at some particular stage of our work with it.
Some of this is a great bother to philosophers, 'cognitive psychologists'
and neuroscientists-and to anyone else who is not quite happy
to join Aristotle in admitting both mind and matter as
fully-fledged realities that, while in some ways interdependent,
are not going to be 'reducible' to each other. - As some of the
Quotes suggest, much of the mystification of 'the mind-body problem'
arises from imperialistic attempts at 'reductionism' or from the
'radical dualism' (involving a complete separation between mind
and matter) that invariably culminates in a requirement at some
point of a virtually magical translation of mind into matter.
(Renée Descartes-normally considered the father of 'dualism'-thought
the mind-body interaction occurred in the pineal gland of the
brain.) But there is perhaps less of a problem of conceptualisation
for the differential psychologist who is interested in explaining
identifiable dimensions of human behaviour and experience by reference
to underlying needs or abilities. For although computer
hardware operations are plainly not characterized by conscious
mentality, the programmed computer can be said, without notable
violence to ordinary language, to 'possesses' abilities and needs
of a kind-even if not of the human kind because of the absence
of conscious awareness.
There is thus no need for the differential psychologist to become
bogged down in the mind-body problem. The London School has,
admittedly, over the years, seemed rather more inclined than have
other personological approaches to search for (or at least to
hope that others would find) 'brain bases' for personality dimensions;
and to strike physiological terra firma may seem a confirmation
of the 'reality' or personality differences. However, once it
is appreciated that the current physical state of one's brain,
hormones and neurotransmitters will itself reflect experiences
(past and present), naïve, biology-dependent psychophysiological
realism will not serve for long. - In 1991, the 'gay' Californian
neuroscientist, Simon Le Vay realized his aspiration to find a
difference in brain anatomy between homosexuals and heterosexuals.
He had been partly motivated by the wish to prove (to his own
father) that homosexuality was 'biological' and not a matter for
which the homosexual could in any way be 'blamed.' However, in
correspondence in Nature, Le Vay eventually gave it as
his (re-)considered opinion that the anatomical difference (in
the mid-brain) that he had discovered could in fact have
developed in response to experiential differences in early childhood.
More important to everyday notions of 'real', lasting, biologically
based personality differences are findings of genetic control,
and of people's 'environments' and cultures being under their
own control. {These topics are considered in Quotes V-though
which genes get through to subsequent generations will itself
depend to some extent on cultural arrangements and on people's
thoughts and feelings. The role of conscious (and perhaps unconscious)
thought in personality processes and personality structure is
discussed in Quotes VI and XVIII.}
Introducing the mind-body problem.
"The cutting edge of Cartesianism....is a radical
distinction between mind and matter. By insisting that the properties
of selves [self-sufficiency, ready-made-ness, and self-containedness]
are totally unlike properties of material things, the Cartesian
makes it hard to believe that a material thing could be a mind."
David BAKHURST & Jonathan DACY, 1988, 'The dualist
straitjacket'. Times Higher Educational Supplement 22
iv.
"By the artificial separation of soul and body men have invented
a Realism that is vulgar, and an Idealism that is void."
Oscar WILDE, cited by R.Ellman, 1987,
Oscar Wilde. London : Hamish Hamilton.
"Few things are more firmly established in popular philosophy
than the distinction between mind and matter. Those who are not
professional metaphysicians are willing to confess that they do
not know what mind actually is, or how matter is constituted,
but they remain convinced that there is an impassable gulf between
the two and that both belong to what actually exists in the world."
Bertrand RUSSELL, 1921, The Analysis of Mind.
"Psychology is necessarily the most philosophy-sensitive
discipline in the entire gamut of disciplines that claim empirical
status."
Sigmund KOCH, 1981, American Psychologist 36.
"Why is there a mind-body problem when there is no digestion-stomach
problem?... Mental phenomena are caused by brain processes....
Mental states are biological phenomena.... They are no more mysterious
than life."
J.SEARLE, 1984, Reith Lectures (published in The Listener).
"Man is not an either\or creature. He is a both/and individual,
both noble and base, both spiritual and material, both generous
and avaricious, both kind and cruel. Through therapeutic intervention
he is rendered free to choose. This liberation is the essence
of healing."
Lipot SZONDI {1893-1986}.
"Reality is multi-layered and "there is no sense in
which subatomic particles are to be graded as 'more real' than,
say, a bacterial cell or a human person or, even, social factors".
I applaud such robust good sense. A.Peacocke (God and the New
Biology, Dent)....inclines to a "qualified identist"
position which seeks to recognise a physical basis for mind but
also seeks to preserve "the autonomy of man as a free agent"."
John POLKINGHORNE, 1986, New Scientist, 23 x.
"The absence of a mind-body dichotomy [in Chinese philosophy
and science] is clearly seen in the traditional Chinese medicine
of the literate classes.... Widely differing disorders ('mental'
as well as 'physical') would be shown to have a similar type of
manifestation and thus receive similar treatment, such as herbal
drugs or acupuncture."
H.AGREN, 1987, in R.Gregory, The Oxford Companion to the
Mind. Oxford University Press.
"Psychology is often seen to lie between biology and the
humanities in the traditional academic hierarchy. Biology speaks
of the body, largely in the language of causes, while non-scientists
tend to use the language of mind and reasons. It is psychologists'
uneasy task to mediate between these realms, between the biological
discourses of evolution, function, mechanism and physiology, and
the political and ethical discourses of persons and acts. Psychology
serves, in short, as a sort of disciplinary pineal gland."
Susan OYAMA, 1993, Theory & Psychology 3.
(i) The role of the brain (or 'body') in yielding universal
features of personhood.
"Democritus (c. 460-370 B.C.) thought that those
atoms that were smaller, smoother and livelier than others made
up the soul, or the seat of human reason.... In his search for
one primary substance to which even mind could be reduced, Democritus
was the first of many to suggest that, at root, psychology is
merely a branch of physics."
Mary S. VAN LEEUWEN, 1985, The Person in Psychology.
Leicester : Inter-Varsity Press.
"For Aristotle, soul and body were not two substances, but
two aspects of the real living objects with which the world was
populated. 'Substance is the composite of matter and form. Matter
is potentiality; form is actuality or realisation....The soul
is the form of a natural body endowed with the capacity of life.'
....This was realism, but not materialism, since structures (forms),
potencies and purposes were as much a part of the composition
of things as matter, motion and causal forces. Moreover it ruled
out any simple reductionism, as proposed by the atomists of Greek
times, or the behaviourists today, since potencies were as much
to be reckoned with as actualities. ....Within this hylomorphic
framework, soul manifested itself at various levels, of which
Aristotle distinguished principally three - the nutritive, sensitive
and rational."
L.S.HEARNSHAW, 1987, The Shaping of Modern Psychology.
London : Routledge.
"I am now dissecting the heads of different animals to explain
the make-up of imagination, memory, etc."
DESCARTES, 1632.
"....the brain, after a fashion, digests impressions and
organically secretes thought."
Pierre-Jean CABANIS (1757-1808). Cited by R.J.Richards,
Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories
of Mind and Behavior. Chicago University Press.
"Experience shows that the problem of mind cannot be solved
by attacking the citadel itself-the mind is a function of the
body-we must bring some stable foundation to argue from."
DARWIN, 1838, in one of his notebooks.
"The behaviourist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme
of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and
brute. The time seems to have come when psychology must discard
all references to consciousness."
J.B.WATSON, 1913, Psychological Review.
"Recently there has been a plethora of psychological schools
striving to explain the action of the mind by forcing it to fit
every conceivable theory. Psycho-analysts have ceased to be concerned
with the slow investigation of the anatomy and physiology of the
brain and have irresponsibly postulated not only the soul and
the will, but have invented every kind of attribute for them-
complexes, fixations, repressions, libidos. Let us cut
out all this and consider what a man's brain actually is: it is
a mass of nerve cells and fibres whose function is to co-ordinate
the response of the individual to alterations in his surroundings
and maintain the chemical and physical balance of his blood, linking
up the behaviour of every part of his mechanism with every other
part."
J.Y.DENT (Editor of the British Journal of Addiction), 1941,
Anxiety and its Treatment, with Special Reference to Alcoholism.
London : Skeffington.
"The mind is nothing but the brain." D.M.ARMSTRONG,
1968, A Materialist Theory of Mind.
"Self-hood is, in a sense, even biochemical. The body's immune
system 'recognizes' bacteria, viruses, transplants, and other
foreign intrusions, as 'non-self'."
B-A.SCHARFSTEIN, 1980, The Philosophers. Oxford : Blackwell.
"In the May issue of Psychology Today, eleven of "the
best minds in the field" describe what each considers to
be "the most significant work in psychology over the last
decade and a half". The results are astonishing: it would
seem that there has been none. "Significant work" implies
work generally agreed to be important; but the Eleven Best Minds
in psychology agree on hardly anything.... Almost the only recent
achievement hailed by more than one contributor is the discovery
of endorphins, the brain's natural painkillers. This is certainly
an interesting development, but the credit belongs to pharmacologists
and physiologists; psychology had little to do with it."
Nicholas WADE, 1982, New York Times.
"....by tying theories about cognitive processes to the functioning
of well-defined structures in the brain, one can derive much more
testable predictions than would otherwise be possible."
Jeffrey GRAY, 1985, Bulletin of the. British Psychological
Society 38.
"....[a 47-year-old Radio 3 producer] was struck by a permanent
amnesia under the diagnosis of a viral encephalitis. His effective
memory span was reduced to a matter of seconds and he retains
no memory whatever of any specific event in the past. Yet his
manner and personality appear almost unchanged and his musical
ability remains uncannily untouched by his illness."
George HILL, 1986, The Times, 25 vii.
"'Designer drugs', chemical analogues of existing prohibited
substances...., have been available in the USA for some years.
The best known is 'ecstasy' (MDMA), a less raunchy version of
the psychedelic MDA. Said to generate feelings of openness and
empathy, it was being used with some success by therapists in
the USA until recently outlawed."
T.MALYON, 1986, New Statesman, 17 x.
"....it is time that people stopped talking about reductionism
as if increased knowledge somehow subtracted from human dignity."
J.Z.YOUNG, 1986, Philosophy and the Brain. Oxford University
Press.
"[The philosopher] Peter Hacker says that "it makes
no sense to speak of the brain containing knowledge or information
written in its own language". On the contrary, neuroscientists
are beginning to give good sense to that statement. Jeffrey Gray
has no doubts: "all human languages are stuffed full of rules....
The rules, then, must be contained in the heads of those speakers
and hearers.""
J.Z.YOUNG, 1987, Nature 330, 19 xi.
"Philosophers of physics....are expected to know some physics.
Why is it that philosophers of mind seem to feel that an afternoon
in quiet meditation is a sensible alternative to learning what
has actually been discovered about the structure and functions
of the mind/brain?"
J.C.MARSHALL, 1987, Nature 330, 19 xi.
"Richard Morris has been building models of hippocampal function.
He shows that [the chemical] AP5 [which blocks the NMDA receptor]
interferes with the rat's ability to learn the position of an
object but not with its ability to learn to perform a straightforward
visual orientation task. Morris sees a parallel between the spatial
task and 'declarative' learning. In other words, the rat's ability
to indicate where something is in space is analagous to the ability
to name an object. Morris also sees parallels between the visual
orientation task and procedural learning [i.e. learning
how to do something]." 'Who knows how the brain works?'
Conference report, Nature, 6 x 1988.
"The outstanding feature of human and primate puberty is
the extremely long interval between birth and the onset of sexual
maturity. The teleological explanation for such a prolonged reproductive
hiatus, in which physical growth is stretched out to a very low
rate, is to accommodate the maturation of the large brain and
to optimise the opportunities for the transmission of learning
and language from one generation to the next. These attributes
have enabled man to inherit acquired as well as genetic characteristics.
This exogenetic heredity and cultural selection are the key to
the success of man in mastering the environment and achieving
supremacy over other species (R.V.Short, 1976, Proc.Roy.Soc.London).
The critical mechanism on which this strategy of deferred reproduction
is based is the brain-mediated inhibition which restrains the
hypothalamic drive to the reproductive axis. The limits of variability
in the prolonged juvenile period are genetically determined. Within
these limits, however, the onset of puberty can be advanced or
delayed by factors such as nutrition, energy demands, body size
and social interaction."
F.C.W.WU, 1988, in P.Diggory et al., Natural Human
Fertility: Social and Biological Determinants.
Basingstoke, Hants : Macmillan.
"....the fact that the median age at sexual debut [in Danish
girls] closely follows the median menarcheal age indicates that
the behavioural aspect of sexual maturity among females is heavily
influenced by this purely biological index of maturation."
Hann B. WIELANDT & J.L.BOLDSEN, 1989, Biology & Society
6.
"New techniques of brain imaging allow the correlation between
brain and mind to be mapped out in a way which was inconceivable
to Sir Charles Sherrington (e.g. 1940, Man on his Nature)
or his predecessors. Dynamic studies of brain function allow the
psychophysiologist to assert more confidently than ever that mind
is a function of brain."
T.D.RODGERS, 1989, Encounter 73, ix/x.
"The more you drink, the more your mental capacities will
suffer damage- loss of intellectual sharpness, trouble with problem-solving,
with hand-eye co-ordination and memory. If you are over forty,
the likelihood of the brain being able to repair itself is progressively
reduced."
Ian ROBERTSON, 1989 Sunday Times (Magazine), 26 ii.
(Advising relatively heavy drinkers, i.e. those who drink
weekly as much as 1½ bottles of spirits.)
"....doses of nicotine....greatly improve the performance,
particularly in working memory in the spatial task, of the ibotenate-lesioned
animals.... We have exactly the same kind of data for animals
that have been rendered memory-impaired with chronic alcohol.
One should not forget that nicotine has some very useful properties
in affecting cognitive performance, as well as giving rise to
the dependence problem."
Jeffrey A. GRAY, 1990, in The Biology of Nicotine Dependence.
(CIBA Foundation Symposium 152.) Chichester : Wiley DePublisher.
"[The] sum of productive forces, capital funds, and social
forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds
in existence as something given, is the real basis of what the
philosophers have conceived as the 'substance' and 'essence' of
man."
Karl MARX, German Ideology.
|
"Both G.H.Mead and J.B.Watson accepted Darwin, and so they
accepted that there was both continuity and discontinuity
[between man and other species]. It makes a dramatic difference
to one's model of man, however, depending upon where the stress
falls.... Language, after all, is a species-specific form of behaviour.
The social psychology of Mead is more firmly grounded in evolutionary
biology than is the behaviourism of either Watson or Skinner."
Robin FARR, 1987, Presidential address to the British
Psychological Society, Bulletin of the B.P.S. 40.
"The ghost has been [driven] further back into the machine,
but it has not been exorcised."
J.A.FODOR, 1983, The Modularity of Mind.
"The field of brain and behaviour (neurology) surely has
a legitimate place within the world of science, but it is not
psychology."
R.RAMSDEN, 1985, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society
38.
"....although the secret of how the brain subserves vision
has for some time appeared just round the corner, it still remains
elusive. How, for instance, does my brain calculate that my typewriter
lies to the left of my gin bottle?"
N.S.SUTHERLAND, 1986, Nature, 31 vii.
(Reviewing S.Pinker, Visual Cognition)
"One of the leading themes of functionalism is the view that
there are generalizations about psychological processes-couched
in terms of representation and computation-which apply to systems
that are built out of very different materials.... Neuroscience
can cope with the more mundane operations of the brain, but the
higher cognitive functions require a more abstract treatment."
P.KITCHER, 1986, Nature, 31 vii.
(Reviewing Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy:
towards a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain.)
"[The motto of Patricia Churchland (Neurophilosophy: toward
a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain, MIT)] might be crudely
put as 'if you can't find it in neuroscience, that's because it
isn't there'.... it might well turn out, for example, that there
are no such things as beliefs and desires, or indeed pains and
emotions, since these common-sense psychological categories do
not map neatly on to neurobiological categories.... She then consigns
most of the best work in philosophy of mind this century (and
earlier) to the rubbish heap.... one can only assume that she
has succumbed to a severe case of scientism."
C.McGINN, 1987, Times Literary Supplement, 6 ii.
"....Jeffrey Gray, with more modesty than most [neuroscientists]
reminds us that we haven't the slightest idea how "the properties
of brain actually give rise to the mind.""
John MARSHALL, 1987, Times Higher Educational Supplement,
No. 784. Reviewing C.Blakemore & Susan Greenfield, Mindwaves.)
"....the notion that frontal lobe lesions are associated
with a signal picture called 'frontal lobe syndrome' is, in fact,
not supported by clinical experience."
Maria WYKE, 1987, Behaviour Research & Therapy 25.
"Darwin pointed to the importance of biological nature as
the basis of society, although it is more difficult to work out
the precise connection between human nature and the different
forms of human culture. A strong hold on Darwinian theory certainly
acts as an effective antidote to the relativism which suggests
that each society must be understood in its own terms, and that
there is nothing in common between societies separated by time
and space. [Thus] some modern neo-Darwinians are....inclined to
explain morality wholly in evolutionary terms. Such an exercise
is misconceived. Human reason, as a capacity, may be the product
of evolution; but it is sufficiently flexible and free-ranging
to detach itself from the direction of our natural inclinations.
It can even sit in judgement on them. Certainly, evolutionary
theory is more adept at dealing with the origin of our natural
sympathies and aversions, our likes and dislikes, than in explaining
the operation of human reason. Since it is itself the product
of the latter, it is wise not to over-reach itself."
Roger TRIGG, 1988, Ideas of Human Nature.
Oxford : Blackwell.
"In the past, psychologists have tried to "account for"
human behavior through reductions to underlying biological mechanisms.
This Newtonian ideal has not worked, and modern science is pulling
away from the efficient-cause bias on which such reductionism
ultimately rests.... The author proposes that we distinguish between
two realms of explanation-the BIOS and the LOGOS.... It can be
recognized that the BIOS is necessary for behaving organism to
exist, and thereby to take part in the LOGOS. The LOGOS relies
on formal and final causation via patternings and orderings
of meaningful relations."
J.F.RYCHLAK, 1988, to 24th International Congress
of Psychology in Sydney (S450)
"One basic theme [of R.A.Hinde's Individuals, Relationships
and Culture] is that while biological science has much to
offer at the lower levels of social complexity, it has severe
limitations at higher ones." J.P.RUSHTON, 1989, Personality
& Individual Diffs. 10.
"Could we, if we sieved that [brain] stuff sufficiently carefully,
come across consciousness, or thoughts, or subjectivity?.... Descartes
and a million others have implied [this]. But to me this seems
to be not even a factual but a logical error: rather like thinking
that, because mirror images are "in" a mirror, you would
only need to slice a mirror sufficiently thin to get a mirror
image without the mirror."
D.C.STOVE, 1989, Encounter 73, vii/viii.
"We, that is our brains, are separate and independent enough
from our genes to rebel against them."
R.DAWKINS, 1989, The Selfish Gene (2nd edition).
Oxford University Press.
"The only important thing to know about brains is how to
cook them."
T.G.R.Bower, quoted by J.R.Morss (Department of Education,
University of Otago), 1989, New Ideas in Psychology 7.
"....if we now find ourselves experiencing ourselves as self-contained,
self-controlled individuals, owing nothing to others for our nature
as such, we need not presume that this is a fixed or 'natural'
state of affairs. Rather, it is a form of historically dependent
intelligibility requiring for its continued sustenance a set of
shared understandings. It is a moment in a still ongoing historical
process and may be reconstituted as understandings change."
J.SHOTTER & K.GERGEN, 1989,
Texts of Identity. London : Sage.
(ii) The role of the mind (or 'intentions' and 'mental
causation') in yielding universal features of
personhood.
"Soul is one of the first existences and prior to all
bodies; and more than anything else is what governs all the modifications
and changes of bodies."
PLATO, Laws
"The body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason
of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases
which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it
fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all
kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away
from us all power of thinking at all.... It has been proved to
us by experience that if we would have true knowledge of anything,
we must be quit of the body-the soul in herself must behold things
in themselves."
PLATO, Phaedo{?}.
"The sovereign good of man is a mind that subjects all things
to itself, and is itself subject to nothing; such a man's pleasures
are modest and reserved, and it may be a question whether he goes
to heaven, or heaven comes to him: for a good man is influenced
by God himself, and has a kind of divinity within him."
SENECA.
"The minds of men are mirrors to one another."
David HUME.
"Animalism is nothing; inventive spiritualism is all."
Thomas CARLYLE.
"Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that,
for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the
sinews like steel, so that the weak become mighty."
Mrs STOWE.
"These limbs, - whence had we them; this stormy force; this
life-blood, with its burning passion? They are dust and shadow-a
shadow-system gathered round our me; wherein, through some moments
or years, the divine essence is to be revealed in the flesh."
Thomas CARLYLE.
"Intention may be at issue philosophically; but it is a necessity
for the biology of complex behaviour."
J.S.BRUNER, 1974.
"The more practically-minded the human being, the more inclined
he or she is to avoid....the irreducible fact of the presence
in the human body of an element in addition to flesh, blood and
electricity, and so not to think about such a fact.... Such persons
deliberately confine the rationalising of things experienced to
a narrow range of fact, that is all. But the greater part of humanity
is more open and willing to engage with the basic fact of an apparently
"immortal" element in itself and to think about it.
Its codified speculations constitute the scriptures and rituals
of the world's religions."
William OXLEY, 1989, Encounter 73, vii/viii.
"[Julian Huxley, one of the fathers of genetic and eugenic
thought in Britain, and the first Secretary-General of UNESCO,]
was well aware that man was not 'just another animal' and that
human culture added a totally different dimension to the human
experience. Some of this is because culture itself provides innumerable
new and diverse environments which must act as selective agents.
But much more important is the release culture provides from solely
biological processes and the speed with which cultural change,
as compared with biological evolution can occur. Further, in a
sense that has no equivalence in any other organism, human beings
can control their own destiny, since they can totally determine
natural environments and create cultural environments to their
will."
G.A.HARRISON, 1989, in M.Keynes et al.,
Evolutionary Studies. London : The Eugenics Society.
"Opposition to reductionism is now a popular pose among
sociologists and people with a rather literary outlook on science."
P.B.MEDAWAR, 1984, Nature 19 vii.
"[Popper and Eccles, The Self and its Brain] are unable
to disprove the thesis that behaviour and the structure of experience
are wholly determined by the organisation of the brain. The problem
is an empirical one and our present level of ignorance does not
justify the postulation of a homunculus who looks at the brain
and helps it out."
N.S.SUTHERLAND, 1977, New Scientist 15 xii.
"The human spirit is its own greatest mystery."
J.HAUGELAND, 1978, Behavioral & Brain Sciences 1.
"....the "reality" of most of us is constituted
roughly into two spheres: that of nature and that of human affairs,
the former more likely to be structured in the paradigmatic mode
of logic and science, the latter in the mode of story and narrative.
The latter is centered around the drama of human intentions and
their vicissitudes; the first around the equally compelling, equally
natural idea of causation.... we manipulate or operate physically
upon that which is in the domain of cause and effect; but
we interact or try to communicate with those who seem governed
by intentions. Or, as the Navy adage had it, "salute it if
it moves, otherwise paint it"."
J.BRUNER, 1986, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds.
|
"Jerome Bruner is to psychology what the Bishop of Durham
is to the Church of England: genes, IQ tests and conditioned reflexes
are relegated to the past by Bruner just as the Right Reverend
David Jenkins urges the modern faithful to dispense with unduly
literal, 'cultist' and 'idolatrous' beliefs in the Virgin Birth
and 'conjuring tricks with bones'. Bruner is a higher type of
environmentalist- the type that disdains the messy effort of trying
to prove that environmentalism is actually true. To Bruner, the
major realities of the human condition are quite obviously products
of ourselves, our languages and our 'speech acts': any heritability
estimates, even if they came out at zero, could only sully this
great a priori truth....
Bruner's perverse detachment of the human superstructure from
its infrastructure does human nature a double disservice. It is
not just that we are cut off from our biology and from the guidance
of our evolutionary history- serving to weed out the more inane
'constructions of reality' as this history surely does. Worse
than that, Bruner's ideas about the human superstructure are narrowly
cognitive, rejoicing as they do in the transcendent possibilities
only of 'mind'."
C.R.BRAND, 1987, Behaviour Research & Therapy 25.
"....the social structure is [arguably] not at all the gossamer
affair that it is sometimes portrayed to be. It has strengths
which are all the greater because they are unseen. It may seem
odd to claim that faith in a religion, or a code of conduct in
science, in the English common law, or the United States constitution
rests on habits of mind with a genetic base to them. But, however
much it may go against the grain of modern thinking to admit that
some of the triumphs of human reason are buttressed by semi-automatic
forces, at least it has to be accepted that the triumphs are likely
to be more stable if they are."
Michael YOUNG, 1988, The Metranomic Society. London :
Thames
& Hudson. (Extract in New Society 84, 27 v 1988.)
(iii) The brain and individual differences.
"....the identification of a low cardiac level associated
with stress among decorated [bomb-disposal] operators has been
confirmed. Taken in conjunction with earlier findings of a distinctive
psychometric profile in decorated operators (R.Hallam & S.Rachman,
1980 Person. & Indiv. Diffs.), the results suggest
that, as with fear, there may be consistent physiological indices
of courage."
K.O'CONNOR, R.HALLAM & S.RACHMAN, 1985,
British Journal of Psychology 76.
"A deficiency of serotonin in brain neurons has been suggested
as a possible factor in depression.... to assess the extent of
serotonin uptake in the brain, the level of tryptophan compared
with levels of competing amino-acids must be taken into account....
Tryptophan ratios in various countries in western and southern
Europe were estimated from the per caput supply of the
amino acids in these countries.... lower tryptophan rations were
associated with a greater tendency for suicide."
M.KITAHARA, 1986, Biology & Society 3.
"[R.Green, The 'Sissy Boy Syndrome' provides] convincing
evidence that prenatal levels of male hormones influence behaviour
'such as timidity, aggressivity, participation in rough-and-tumble
play, and interest in newborns (and perhaps in their surrogates,
baby dolls)'. We do not know why hormonal levels vary in this
way; but these findings strongly suggest that biochemistry is
a powerful determinant of how 'masculine' or 'feminine' a boy
turns out to be. If these differences are determined at such a
basic level, it may explain why psychotherapy is ineffective at
preventing the progression from 'feminine' boy to homosexual or
bisexual man."
A.STORR, 1987, The Spectator, 7 ii.
"[Children affected by phenylketonuria, primarily involving
a deficiency of phenylalanine hydroxylase] are severely retarded,
with a degree of microcephaly. At birth they are normal; but their
IQ falls off sharply in the first couple of years and then more
gradually thereafter. [The first child to be treated with a low
phenylalanine diet, after diagnosis at age two, showed a startling
improvement.] When, for a short time, phenylalanine was added
to her diet again she rapidly reverted to being a blank, dribbling,
ataxic, eczematous, miserable child.... Initially the diet was
extremely difficult and unpalatable; but over the years the increasing
ingenuity of commercial manufacturers and dietitians, together
with increasing knowledge of the composition of foods, has made
it more acceptable."
Editorial, Biology & Society 5, 1988.
"It is widely held that behavioural planning and goal setting
occur in the prefrontal area. Lesions in this part of the brain
result in failures of goal-directed behaviour such as finding
the solution to finger mazes, problem-solving, and switching from
one strategy to another. In addition, prefrontal leucotomies often
lead to apathy and inertia {7 refs}."
C.D.FRITH & J.D.DONE, 1988, British Journal of. Psychiatry
153.
"Tabakoff and his colleagues (1987, New England J. Medicine)....found
that their enzyme measurements could diagnose alcoholism correctly
in three out of four cases. This accuracy level, much higher than
in previous studies, implies that natural, individual variation
in the sensitivity of [the enzymes monoamine oxidase and
adenylate cyclase] to alcohol may be close to the heart
of the matter [of the biological basis of alcoholism].... Tabakoff
and his team admit that inheritance in only one explanation for
their results."
Henry GEE, 1988, The Times, 3 ii.
"Scientists [in Montreal] have identified a brain chemical
[cholecystokinin] that causes panic attacks when injected into
panic attack patients, suggesting that the substance may play
a role in [this] disorder that afflicts 1.2 million Americans."
The Times, 13 v 1988.
"The findings of the U.S. study [of autism], published in
the latest issue of The New England Journal of Medicine,
suggest that brain damage occurs before birth, perhaps from exposure
to a virus or chemical, preventing the brain from developing properly."
Pearce WRIGHT, 1988, The Times, 30 v.
"Olweus has shown correlations of .50 between adrenaline
secretion and both introversion and neuroticism....and
quite a strong negative correlation has been established between
platelet MAO and extraversion in general. The evidence
is surveyed by Zuckerman et al. (1984).... The outcome
of these studies leaves little doubt that there are important
biological foundations for differences in personality, and this
fact by itself suggests that genetic factors might be involved
in an important way in causing differences in behaviour, with
neurobiological structures and secretions mediating this relationship."
L.J.EAVES, H.J.EYSENCK & N.G.MARTIN, 1989, Genes, Culture
and Personality: an Empirical Approach. London : Academic.
"Mercury can cause mental disorders, the best example of
which was the legendary madness of hatters. They used mercury
compounds in making felt for hats."
John EMSLEY, 1989, New Scientist, No. 1651, 11 ii.
(Reviewing J.Lenihan, The Crumbs of Creation.)
"Functions of the mind (such as the appreciation of identity
[self-boundaries], will, even common sense) hitherto only suspected
because of the existence of psychopathological entities in which
they were assumed to be disordered, are now given not only psychological
status but neuropsychological representation." J.CUTTING,
1992, British Journal of Psychiatry 160.
"[In 1,592 men and women, aged 55-74], serum tryglyceride
concentration was related, especially in men, to hostile acts
(r = .13) and domineering attitude (r = .12) independently
of age, total and HDL cholesterol, cigarette smoking, and alcohol
consumption.... A mechanism linking serum triglyceride concentration
and personality is hard to imagine."
F.G.R.FOWKES et al., 1992, The Lancet, 24 x.
(iv) Mental origins of differences.
"Pathology has shown cases where an individual has lost
the ability to read or write through an injury to the left hemisphere
of the brain, but has been able to regain this ability by training
other parts of the brain to take over this function.... If the
mind can exercise such an influence over the brain {it is as if}
the brain is no more than the tool of the mind-its most important
tool, but only a tool nevertheless....
Properly psychology does not involve sticking pins into a child
and seeing how high she jumps, or tickling her and seeing how
much she laughs. These enterprises, so common among modern psychologists,
may in fact tell us something of an individual's psychology, but
only in so far as they give evidence of a fixed and personal life
style. Life styles are the proper subject matter of psychology
and the material for investigation; and psychologists who treat
any other subject matter are occupied, in the main, with physiology
or biology. This holds true of those who investigate stimuli and
reactions, those who attempt to trace the effect of a trauma
or shocking experience, and those who examine inherited abilities
and observe how they develop. In {my movement of} Individual Psychology,
however, we consider the psyche itself, the unified mind."
Alfred ADLER, 1931, 'Mind and Body', in What Life Could Mean
To
You. Oxford : Oneworld, 1992.
"....the constructivist view....proposes that personality
cannot be seen as having an existence independent of the cognitive
constructions of the observer."
Sarah E. HAMPSON, 1986.
"Memories are a person's most durable characteristic. During
our lives, every molecule in our body is replaced may times over;
we may change our appearance through age or disease, lose access
to sight or hearing, and yet, while we remember, we still exist
as individuals."
Steven ROSE, 1987, Molecules and Minds.
Milton Keynes : Open University Press.
"....when tested with a range of [food] additives commonly
said [by one person in twelve] to cause adverse reactions-but
with neither themselves nor the investigators knowing until after
the experiment what they were eating-fewer than one in a thousand
showed a response. Dr Richard Cottrell, science director of the
British Nutrition Foundation....said....[the condition of most
'food allergy' sufferers] was clearly psychogenic....-a real physical
response, generated by anxiety or the expectation of a reaction."
Reported in Sunday Times, 3 vii 1988.
"The search for a "scientific" aetiology of sexual
orientation is....a homophobic project....Just as scientific inquiries
into biological and neurological differences between males and
females are starting to fall into disrepute, so, too, will the
effort to discover a genetic or hormonal basis for sexual preference
eventually come to nothing, not so much for lack of scientific
progress (which has never stopped research if other motives for
it remained) as for lack of credibility."
David M. HALPERIN, 1990k, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality.
(v) Reciprocal dependency of mind and brain (or 'body').
"[In Plato's Phaedo] Simmias suggests that the
soul may be related to the body as the attunement of the strings
of a musical instrument to that instrument; but when the instrument
is destroyed, so is the attunement."
D.W.HAMLYN, 1988, A History of Western Philosophy.
Harmondsworth : Penguin.
"[For Aristotle], talking of the soul of something is....to
refer to some ability of an organism, and not to a 'thing' hiding
in the body.... The soul is the final cause of the body, in that
it gives it its purpose, thus making it what it is. He uses the
analogy of an eye, arguing that if an eye were an animal, its
soul would be its sight.... just as Aristotle made the forms present
in things, instead of separated from them, he also made the soul,
which he said was the form of the body, inextricably linked with
the body. The result is a psychosomatic unity, which would find
favour with many philosophers of mind today. All the faculties
of the soul are, Aristotle recognizes, linked to the complex of
body and soul."
Roger TRIGG, 1988, Ideas of Human Nature. Oxford : Blackwell.
"We cannot command nature except by obeying her."
Sir Francis BACON.
"The concept of interaction between biological and psychosocial
variables seems to be one of the most frequently praised ideas
in psychology...."
K.UNGER, 1984, Science.
"....this metaphor of structure and superstructure is quite
inappropriate for the historian, who will be at a loss how to
decide if one particular event belongs to the structure, and another
to the superstructure. Is Lenin's leadership of the Bolshevik
revolution superstructural? Is Cleopatra's nose structural? If
changes in the price of gold are structural in sixteenth-century
Europe, are they also structural in the twentieth-century world-and
if not, why not?"
E.KEDOURIE, 1984, The Crossman Confessions
and Other Essays. London : Mansell.
"Naloxone {an endorphin-blocker} removed the pain-killing
effect of [a placebo, itself given to counteract strong
post-operative dental pain]. That means that the patient stimulated
his own endorphin production just by believing he had taken a
real pain-killing drug (Levine & Fields, 1979). Naloxone also
blocks other effects, such as pain relief from acupuncture (Berger
et al., 1980). These findings have led many researchers
to wonder whether psychological factors such as emotional state,
mood, "will to live", and the doctor-patient relationship
may not turn out to be as important as drugs in that they promote
the synthesis of endorphins and perhaps other compounds in the
brain."
R.E.ORNSTEIN, 1985, Psychology: the Study of Human
Experience. Orlando, FL : Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
"The Christian can, I believe, agree with Rom Harré
and Paul Secord that one of the significant features of human
personhood is "the capacity to monitor control of
one's actions.... The person is not only an agent, but a watcher,
commentator and critic as well....
our desire to free psychology from the confines of an amoral
and deterministic paradigm must not make us revert to an idealistic
monism that rejects our 'downward' relationship with the rest
of creation. Moreover, if psychology's current paradigm places
too little stress on reflexivity, meaning, and the wholeness
and integrity of the self, it is also possible for a 'humanized'
psychology to stress these three things too much."
Mary S. VAN LEEUWEN, 1985, The Person in Psychology.
Leicester : Inter-Varsity Press.
"Instead of the romantic disjunction between two selves,
an ethereal mental ghost and a physical machine, the modern Anglo-Saxon
philosophers now present us with a picture of a human being as
a self whose mental and physical aspects are intrinsically connected
with one another."
Oliver LETWIN, 1987, Ethics, Emotion and the Unity of the
Self. London : Croom Helm.
"The long-held view that the cortex is a hard-wired neural
machine with its operations shaped mainly by evolution and development
is giving way to a concept of basic processes continually modified
by feedback and lateral interactions.... It is only now being
appreciated that the complexity of cortical function cannot be
determined solely by building up from the responses of single
units, and that the reductionist approach must be married with
the 'top down' analyses provided by ethology and psychophysics."
Jennifer ALTMAN, 1987, Nature 330, 19 xi.
"The brain is the organ of the mind, but the dependence works
both ways. If you want to understand the brain, you had better
understand the mind."
P.JOHNSON-LAIRD, 1988, Nature 318.
"When two animals are subjected to a frustrating situation,
they both show a plasma cortisol peak and they behave aggressively
towards each other, if they are taken from two different groups.
On the other hand, if they come from one and the same group and,
therefore, had prior social interactions, neither of them will
show any cortisol peak and they will not show any aggressiveness
(Dantzer, 1981, La Recherche 12). The aversive character
of the situation may possibly be attenuated by an enhanced release
of endorphins due to the previously established inter-individual
bonds.... the reciprocal character of brain-behaviour relationships
should be stressed. Not only does a blockade of opiate receptors
provoke separation distress, but, in return, early maternal deprivation
was found to affect the maturation of opiate receptors in the
young rat's brain (Olgiati & Pert, 1982, Neuroscience)."
P.KARLI, 1989, European Journal of Personality 3.
"Social practices are concept-dependent; but, contrary to
the hermeneutical tradition in social science, they are not exhausted
by their conceptual aspect. They always have a material dimension.
This is an important consideration, as reflection on the prevalence
and impact of the phenomena of hunger, homelessness and war upon
so much of human history shows.... The two crude philosophical
distinctions, between mind and body and reasons and causes, have
done untold damage here. Thus the social structure is embedded
in, conditioned by and in turn efficacious on the rest of nature,
the ecosphere. At an epistemological level, this means that reasons,
and social forms generally, must be causes (as well as effects)."
Roy BHASKAR, 1989, Reclaiming Reality. London : Verso.
"What many people don't realize is that the cause-and-effect
relationship in mental disorders is a two-way shuttle: it's not
just that an a priori [chemical] imbalance can make you
depressed. It's that years and years of exogenous depression (a
malaise caused by external events) can actually fuck up your internal
chemistry so much that you need a drug to get you working properly
again."
Elizabeth WURTZEL (1994). Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed
in America - A Memoir. New York : Houghton Mifflin.
"Reification converts a dynamic process into a static phenomenon....{making
it} appropriate to seek a single causative agent.... We must abandon
the unidimensional view of the causes of human action."
Steven ROSE, 1995, 'The rise of neurogenetic determinism'.
Nature 373, 2 ii.
(vi) The notion of mind as an 'emergent' and 'higher' property
(of brain).
"The idea of emergence is not a novel one. Leibniz outlined
a hierarchical organization of entities in which new capabilities
come into play at the higher monadic levels. J.S.Mill in his Logic
spoke of 'the composition of causes', and the emergence of new
properties and laws to generate altogether new phenomena. With
the coming of evolution the doctrine took on new significance
and acquired an extra dimension. It received support from philosophers
like Bergson and S.Alexander, and from psychologists like Lloyd
Morgan, who popularized the term 'emergent evolution'."
L. S. HEARNSHAW, 1987, The Shaping of Modern Psychology.
London : Routledge.
"A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy,
is capable probably of more acute suffering, and is certainly
accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type;
but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to
sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence."
John Stuart MILL, cited by B-A.Scharfstein,
The Philosophers. Oxford : Blackwell.
"....the celebrated English neurologist, Hughlings Jackson
(1835-1911), working at the Queen Square Hospital in London....[came
to the conclusion that] the brain was organized vertically in
levels. Jackson recognized three main levels of nervous organisation:
the lowest, reflex level; that of the 'middle centres'; and the
highest, voluntary level. The function of the highest level not
only included the most complex co-ordinations, but also the control
and inhibition of the lower centres. When the highest centres
were damaged there was a release of lower functions. In normal
functioning, the highest centres were 'protected' and partially
insulated from the lower, while in cases of brain damage they
were the first to suffer dissolution."
L.S.HEARNSHAW, 1987, The Shaping of Modern Psychology.
London : Routledge.
"In a very real sense the organism effectively transcends
physical laws-even while obeying them.... The necessary information
[for behavioural novelty to occur is] present, but unexpressed
in the constituents. The epigenetic building of a structure is
not a creation, it is a revelation."
J.MONOD, 1972, Chance and Necessity.
"Once the elementary, basal needs for sheer preservation
are satisfied, the human mind is capable of experiencing a higher
set of needs: social, spiritual and intellectual. Among these
are the needs for community, for identity and, above all, for
meaning-of the cosmos, of existence, and of the human estate."
R.NISBET, 1982, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary.
Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press.
"With the demise of dualism, and of its two offspring, introspectionism
and behaviourism, there has arisen a new form of psychology-broadly
'cognitive psychology'-which attempts to grasp mind and behaviour
together. Mind is regarded not as a strange ethereal process running
alongside (mechanistic) behaviour, but rather in terms of the
organization of particularly 'higher' behaviour, with its basis
(in some sense) within the central nervous system."
D.BOLTON, 1985, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society
38.
"Psychology tells a story, and that story follows the course
of our lives.... Think of it this way: at the beginning is biology....,
followed by the normal processes of socialization and development
out of which develops the mind.... Then, our life with other individuals:
how we communicate, how we express feelings, how we get into trouble....
Finally, there is the "world" of society and of our
adult life. Each state is more complex and filled with more challenges
than the last."
Robert ORNSTEIN, 1985, Psychology: the Study of Human
Experience. San Diego : Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
"What is needed is something we do not have: a theory of
conscious organisms as physical systems composed of chemical elements,
and occupying space, which also have an individual perspective
on the world, and in some cases, a capacity for self-awareness....
The strange truth is that certain complex, biologically generated,
physical systems, of which each of us is an example, have rich
non-physical properties. An integrated theory of reality must
account for this.... If and when it arrives, probably not for
centuries, it will alter our conceptions of the universe as radically
as anything has to date."
T.NAGEL, 1986, The View from Nowhere. Oxford University
Press.
"However lofty the superstructure of human nature, its basis
is biological."
L.S.HEARNSHAW, 1987, The Shaping of Modern Psychology.
London : Routledge.
"The neural infrastructure of any brain process mediating
conscious awareness is composed of elements within elements and
forces within forces, ranging from subnuclear and subatomic particles
at the lower levels upward through molecular, cellular, and simple-to-complex
neural systems. At each level of the hierarchy, elements are bound
and controlled by the enveloping organizational properties of
the larger systems in which they are embedded. Holistic system
properties at each level of organization have their own causal
regulatory roles, interacting at their own level and also exerting
downward control over their components, as well as determining
the properties of the system in which they are embedded. It is
postulated that at higher levels in the brain these emergent system
properties include the phenomena of inner experience as high-order
emergents in the brain's hierarchy of controls."
R.W.SPERRY, 1987, in R.Gregory, The Oxford Companion
to the Mind. Oxford University Press.
"What makes parapsychology at once so controversial and so
important is that it alone can provide the relevant evidence in
deciding between an epiphenomenalist as opposed to a radical dualist
(interactionist) position on the mind-brain relationship."
John BELOFF, 1987, Behavioral & Brain Sciences 10.
"....how can an individual be both free and determined? David
Levy [Political Order] draws on the ontology of Nicolai
Hartmann, who showed that real being is composed of a number of
superimposed layers. In every case the lower layers make possible
the emergence of the higher, and thus limit, but do not wholly
determine, their nature."
Francis DUNLOP, 1988, Times Higher Educational Supplement,
22 iv.
"We are beginning to escape from the Cartesian chains in
Western thought, by looking at the mind as "what the brain
does". (By "Cartesian chains", I mean the implied
"mind/body" dualism....) Once this Copernican Revolution
is made in Western thought-I shall not say philosophy-many conceptual
problems may find their solutions, not least in coming to terms
with dyslexia, schizophrenia, and many other human problems."
Robin FRANCIS (Society of Dyslexians, Marlborough), 1989,
correspondence in Encounter 73, ix/x.
"To stop with the blissful word "emergence"
in not in itself an explanation"
C.L.BURT, 1961, British Journal of Statistical Psychology.
"[Wittgenstein wrote that] "the sentence, 'A machine
thinks (perceives, wishes)' seems somehow nonsensical. It is as
though we had asked 'Has the number 3 a colour?'" ....Wittgenstein's
point [is not that] thinking is an emergent property of sufficiently
complex material structures, whether biological or electrophysical.
For it is not as if, once the 'machinery' of the brain becomes
exceedingly complicated, a super-physical 'world' of experience
springs into being.... ....Clearly, psychological faculties are
empirically related to cerebral development, "for the amoeba
certainly doesn't speak or write or discuss, whereas we do."
Nevertheless, the picture of the mental as an emergent 'world',
as it were, is wholly misconceived.... ....the presuppositions
and conditions of [the application of psychological concepts]
concern issues logically independent of neurological complexity,
or indeed of the 'computational' complexity or power of a machine."
P.M.S.HACKER, 1990, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind.
Oxford : Blackwell.
"Dualism (specifically body-mind dualism) is regularly characterized
[today] as a doctrine that is 'not now available' or 'appeals
only to the senile.' The idea that there could be 'deep facts'
about personal identity or about morality is said to rest on infantile
misunderstandings of 'our' ordinary speech. ....There is no genuine
opposition to the [new] favoured creed, since no one admits to
understanding what the opposition says. ....One obvious retort
to anti-realism is that some things simply cannot be magicked
away. If there are any 'palpable untruths' at all, then truth
is not determined just by what we say. If anti-realism
is correct, 'what is to stop us eliminating death, poverty and
unhappiness by conceptual revisions?' (Robinson, 1982, Matter
and Sense, CUP)."
S.R.L.CLARKE, 1992, Philosophy 67.
"[Searle's (1992, The Rediscovery of Mind) 'biological
naturalism' (a version of epiphenomenalism) envisages 'emergence'
of mind from matter] but not emergence as the epiphenomenalist
had assumed, i.e. as something radically different from brain
processes, but "in the same way as solidity and liquidity
are emergent features of systems of molecules." This analogy,
however, gives the game away. We have, after all, a coherent physical
theory which connects the motion of molecules with such macroscopic
properties as solidity, liquidity, heat, etc.... ....there just
is no comfortable solution to the mind-brain problem. Weak dualism
[epiphenomenalism]....is bound to be paradoxical and counterintuitive
while strong dualism [interactionism] remains shrouded in mystery.
As for the monistic [materialist] position, even though it has
been defended by some of the most powerful intellects of the past
hundred years, it must be dismissed as sophistry."
J.R.BELOFF, 1994, 'The mind-brain problem.'
Journal of Scientific Exploration 8.
"Anglo-American philosophy....has tended to concern itself
with problems of language or else has embraced outright materialism
that equates mind with brain. In either case, evidence for the
paranormal is either ignored or derided or shelter is sought behind
the barrage of professional sceptics."
John BELOFF, 1996, Times Higher, 26 vii.
Epilogue.
"Of the natural sciences, it is now clear that psychology
is closer to the biological sciences than it is to the physical
sciences. I would argue, therefore, that progress would have been
more rapid had our forefathers taken biology rather than physics
as the natural science on which to model itself. Note, for example,
the advanced state of present-day neuropsychology and behavior
genetics."
J.R.ROYCE, 1987, New Ideas in Psychology 5.
"As the primitive had spiritualized nature, so the psychiatrist
now animalizes man. It seems that when we try to explain the human
condition, we-human beings-have a hard time finding a happy medium
between making too much or too little of intentionality: when
we are culturally underdeveloped, we treat objects as agents;
when we are culturally developed, we treat agents as objects.
Thus, the primitive tries to understand Nature in terms of human
nature, while the psychiatrist tries to understand human nature
in terms of Nature. In our roles as modern scientists, we have
corrected the savage's mistake. Who will correct the psychiatrist's
mistake, and ours for supporting it?"
Thomas SZASZ, 1987, Insanity: the Idea and Its Consequences.
New York : Wiley DePublisher.
"Purported solutions to the [mind-body] problem have tended
to assume one of two forms. One form we may call constructive,
attempts to specify some natural property of the brain (or body)
which explains how consciousness can be elicited from it. Thus
functionalism, for example, suggests a property- namely causal
role-which is held to be satisfied by both brain states and mental
states; this property is supposed to explain how conscious states
can come from brain states. The other form, which has been historically
dominant, frankly admits that nothing merely natural could do
the job, and suggests instead that we invoke supernatural entities
or divine interventions. Thus we have Cartesian dualism and Leibnizian
pre-established harmony. These 'solutions' at least recognize
that something pretty remarkable is needed if the mind-body relation
is to be made sense of: they are as extreme as the problem. The
approach I favour is naturalistic but not constructive:
I do not believe we can ever specify what it is about the brain
that is responsible for consciousness, but I am sure that whatever
it is it is not inherently miraculous. The problem arises, I want
to suggest, because we are cut off by our very cognitive constitution
from achieving a conception of that natural property of the brain
(or of consciousness) that accounts for the psychophysical link.."
Colin McGINN, 1991, The Problem of Consciousness.
Oxford : Blackwell.
"No one wants to talk about nature now. Meanwhile,
the entire student population of the world is thinking about nature,
the environment, they're thinking globally; but our faculty are
off in their little corners talking about social constructionism.
They haven't thought about nature in twenty years, okay, they
are so behind. You mention the mere word "nature"-"Essentialism!"
That's it. What-? I mean-!.... It is appalling,
the situation now, that you could think about talking about
sex without thinking about nature. That you could claim that you
are an expert in gender without knowing about hormones! The contempt
for science that's going on among humanists is contemptible."
Camille PAGLIA, 1992, Sex, Art, and American Culture.
New York : Random House (Vintage Books).
"....we can easily be brainwashed [e.g. by Paul Churchland,
1995, The Engine of Reason, MIT) into thinking that the
mind-body problem has been solved when it hasn't."
S.HARNAD, 1995, Nature 378, 30 xi.
"[Lauren Ayres' The Answer is Within You] is a very
useful book which spreads the message that body and mind are not
two entirely separate entities, but that we always deal with a
body-mind continuum, just as physicists had to learn the fact
that they were dealing with a space-time continuum."
H.J.EYSENCK, 1996, Behaviour Research & Therapy.
FINIS
(Compiled by Chris Brand, Department of Psychology,
University of Edinburgh.)