[James]
Nevertheless, it is a seriously misguided belief, and I want to emphasize that the reasoning generally used to justify it does no stand up to careful scrutiny. The reasoning goes such, because the symptoms of mental illness can be So,alleviated by changing brain chemistry, mental illnesses must really be disorders of brain chemistry and therefore mind (and soul) must really be brain. This line of “neurophilosophical” reasoning is taken so much for granted nowadays that it can be quite startling to realize how little sense it actually makes. We could with equal logic argue that if a tree disease can be cured by changing the chemistry of the soil, then tree diseases must really be soil disorders and therefore trees must really be soil! There is no logical or scientific reason not to assume that the soul is a distinct entity, rooted in the brain and dependent on it for consciousness just as a tree is rooted in the soil and dependent on it for life. I challenge anyone to refute this! (to refute it, you have
to prove - not simply assume - that brain processes actually do cause consciousness) Taking this logic seriously we must conclude that modern psychiatric opinion is simply wrong. Mental illness cannot be just a chemical imbalance in the brain. Rather, it is a disharmony of body, brain, mind, and spirit within the whole person: an inner conflict of the soul.
[rhinoceros]
First, let me offer a lame counter-argument to a inadequate argument: So, could we say that a tree's disease is a disharmony of the trunk, the soil, and the soul within the whole tree, and that we cannot disprove it?
Granted that neuroscience cannot explain and predict *everything* about the human condition and behavior at this time. Does it make sense to fill in the missing part with a catch-all idea we believe in and ask the others to disprove it?
Anyway, scientists usually do not try to disprove something that does not produce any practically useful answers. They just cut it off with Occam's Razor and keep on searching.
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25545>
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