'I am convinced that mental process are grounded
in the brain's mappings of the body, collections
of neural patterns that portray responses to events
that cause emotions and feelings'
mental processes - ideas?
grounded in the brain
its neural patterns
and these 'portray' -
do we read 'picture' here or what?
responses to events
events that cause emotion
and feeling
- what a dog's breakfast
mental processes grounded in the brain
hard to see how this isn't a mind-brain identity
thesis
and is he suggesting this is Spinoza's view?
for Spinoza - substance expresses itself as
extension and thought
so on this view - you can take anything and see it
- explain it - in physical terms or mental terms
it's the one thing
looked at in terms of its different expressions -
this goes for the brain
the brain exists as an extended thing within a
physical system
on the other hand I can view this modification
of substance as mind
the idea of the brain -
and all this might involve -
as a system of ideas within a theoretical framework
we can explain this thing therefore as mind or as body
as mental or physical
the brain as such - as substance - is only knowable -
as body and mind
my point is - as far as Spinoza is concerned
the human brain is not essentially different to
anything else
we may as well be talking about a grain of sand
mind for Spinoza is a feature of the world -
not just some small part of it - i.e. - your brain
it is not found just in small isolated centres
for such a view re Liebnitz
'neural patterns portray events that cause emotions
and feelings'
so I can look into a brain and see a portrayal of an
event that causes pleasure?
that is I can see the neural pattern of an emotion
that is a modification of the body by which the power
of action of the body is increased and the idea of
this modification
and the idea of this modification
on Spinoza's view - emotion is the change in body
and the idea of the change
can I suggest that ideas are thought - not observed
that at the best the only correlation that might be
made is between a neural pattern and behaviour
from the point of view of science
the idea (of a physical change) is not observed
Damasio might be OK with this -
can't we infer there is such an idea - even if not
observed simply on the basis of our metaphysical
assumptions?
yes - but where is the empirical content in such
an inference?
and where can it be - how is it to be tested?
'Caute'
