Body/Mind Paradox Alive and Well at TWEB

[anthrogirl]

It's nice to see that TWEB has expanded its fora to include Health/Wellness and Psychology. It is interesting to note the classic biomedical paradox of mind/body separation being represented here.

I am curious...

...do you think that mind and body are two distinctly separate categories? Please explain your response in this thread.


ag

[mossrose]

:offtopic:

ag!!

:glomp:








Ahem. Carry on.......

:teeth:

[kofh2u]

It's nice to see that TWEB has expanded its fora to include Health/Wellness and Psychology. It is interesting to note the classic biomedical paradox of mind/body separation being represented here.

I am curious...

...do you think that mind and body are two distinctly separate categories? Please explain your response in this thread.


ag


Is the "physiological brain" analogous to your computer hardware, while the electromagnetic mind is comparable to the software processes that let you "see" photos on the screen?

[learning]

Well, I don't know. Since much of our senses are connected to our brain, and the nerves go from the brain to the body and vice versa, I think that it is both. The brain is very connected to the body via the nervous system, especially things like touch, seeing (extremely connected in the brain) and hearing, taste, etc. How our brain interprets and reacts to outside stimulus is what our 'mind' is all about, I think.

I guess it depends what part of the 'brain' you are talking about when you speak of 'mind', but the cognitive part of the brain takes in and interprets all the outside to inside information, so it is all connected. However, there are separations of some things, especially things that our conscious mind doesn't necessarily bother with, since another part of our brain is looking after that. eg. breathing, heartbeat, digestion. Do you mean 'conscious part of the brain' when you speak of 'mind'?

(just studying a lot of this with a child of mine for science, and also, reading a book called 'Synaptic Self' which is all about the brain and how it works.)

btw, welcome back ag! I was just starting to get to know you by some of your posts, and you left. Glad to see you back here. :)

[kofh2u]

Well, I don't know. Since much of our senses are connected to our brain, and the nerves go from the brain to the body and vice versa, I think that it is both. The brain is very connected to the body via the nervous system, especially things like touch, seeing (extremely connected in the brain) and hearing, taste, etc. How our brain interprets and reacts to outside stimulus is what our 'mind' is all about, I think.

I guess it depends what part of the 'brain' you are talking about when you speak of 'mind', but the cognitive part of the brain takes in and interprets all the outside to inside information, so it is all connected. However, there are separations of some things, especially things that our conscious mind doesn't necessarily bother with, since another part of our brain is looking after that. eg. breathing, heartbeat, digestion. Do you mean 'conscious part of the brain' when you speak of 'mind'?

(just studying a lot of this with a child of mine for science, and also, reading a book called 'Synaptic Self' which is all about the brain and how it works.)

btw, welcome back ag! I was just starting to get to know you by some of your posts, and you left. Glad to see you back here. :)


Hi,
Nice you work the homework with your child. Both will learn things, academic and otherwise, right?

The mind is fascinating just using common sense, no big academic study needed.

You already said there is the Unconscious Mind and then, "us," our Conscious Mind.

That was all there was until 1930.
Then, Freud made us aware of our Ego and Self and that sexy turned on state we experience, the Libido.
We found out after thousands of years about this Subconscious Mind.

"The kingdom of God is within."

The seven spirits before the throne (of the Homo Spaiens brain) are known to us today.

1) Lucifer = The Pleasure Principle = Id
2) Satan = Physical Drives = Libido
3) Mammon = The Aggressive Drive = Ego
4) Devil = Feminine principle of Intuition = Anima
5) Baalzebub = The Reality Principle = Self
6) False Prophet = The Logical/Mathematical Mind = Superego
7) False Shepherd = Psychic Balance = Harmony

8) The Good Shepherd = Brotherliness = Conscience


Rev. 1:16 And he had in his right hand seven stars, (the sevenfold
spirit of the psyche: Id, Libido, Ego, Anima, Self, Harmony, Superego):
and out of his mouth went a two-edged sword (cutting both secular and theological understandings): and his countenance was as the sun (of
rationality) shineth in his strength (of factual knowledge).

[learning]

excuse me, but I thought those 'seven stars' were the ' angels of the seven Churches of God.' Specific churches that God was giving messages to in that day. (though the messages can be applicable to us today, some of them)

Revelation 1:20
"This is the meaning of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches."

[Sacrificial Ram]

It's nice to see that TWEB has expanded its fora to include Health/Wellness and Psychology. It is interesting to note the classic biomedical paradox of mind/body separation being represented here.

I am curious...

...do you think that mind and body are two distinctly separate categories? Please explain your response in this thread.


ag
Welcome back. Some of distinctions you have are vague, and the choice I would make was not there.

Which is 'The mind is a function (i.e. lives) in the brain, which is affected by, and can affect the health of the body.

I have a friend who is subject to a rare blood clotting disease. She has a tendancy to have a lot of TIA's (mini-strokes), if she doesn't take her meds..and sometimes even when she does. This effects the functioning of her brain, and her abilty to think. I also am seeing a decline in mental function over time too, since each 'incident' she has seems to take away a very small bit of her abilty to think,and it seems to be having an accumlative effect. The health of her brain and her mind is being affected
by her body... and in this case, I don't think the mind could influence the
health of the body.

[Solly]

Welcome back. Some of distinctions you have are vague, and the choice I would make was not there.

Which is 'The mind is a function (i.e. lives) in the brain, which is affected by, and can affect the health of the body.

I would tend to this view too. You didn't have a category that held the middle ground. Mind and Brain are intimately related, 'causally correlated' as Ted Honderich would say. They are distinct in themselves - so no epiphenominalism - but uniquely related. Generally, you could have a brain without a mind, but no mind without a brain.

[Sacrificial Ram]

I would tend to this view too. You didn't have a category that held the middle ground. Mind and Brain are intimately related, 'causally correlated' as Ted Honderich would say. They are distinct in themselves - so no epiphenominalism - but uniquely related. Generally, you could have a brain without a mind, but no mind without a brain.
The examples of someone with a brain but no mind I think are very tragic. That woman in Flordia for one that was the center of the 'remove the feeding tube' controversy, and the Karen Ann Quinlin case.

[Solly]

I only know a bit about the first, Terry Chiavi [?], and nothing about the second. In those circumstances we tend to see honourary minds, due to their continued humanness. it's why we impute minds to animals the more they 'act' like us. Thus we like dogs and cats and horses more than sharks, worms, and cicada. And I realise I have gone for favourable mammals over non-mammals, which might play a part in it, even including dolphins.

[Cello]

I think for the purposes of discussion & thread organization, 'psychology' is worthy of its own folder and health and wellness (or fitness is how I view that) is a distinct set of discussions. Each may incorporate aspects of the other but there is certainly enough topic disparity to warrant seperate folders.

[kofh2u]

excuse me, but I thought those 'seven stars' were the ' angels of the seven Churches of God.' Specific churches that God was giving messages to in that day. (though the messages can be applicable to us today, some of them)

Revelation 1:20
"This is the meaning of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches."


"I thought those 'seven stars' were the ' angels "....

You weren't wrong, either. That they were/are.

Think about your son's growth, maturation, and development the way Jean Piaget described the process of Child Development.

Before the Terrible Two's for instance, the Pleasure Principle reigned. The powerful first "star" of this pleasure/pain manifestation in the Id is the "brightest star" in your son's head. Gradually the aggressive Ego demands control as it recognizes that it is the door to the world external to one's self. We recognize puberty, the crowni of the Libido that suddenly changes the Infant grown to a child into a Teenager. As these archetypal manifestations "walk" among the seven stages of development, explicitly defined by Eric Ericson, the person unfolds into a final maturity.

So it is/was with the Church.
It is no coincidence that the early faith of the first stage, Ephesus, was slowly corrupted by the divergnt ideas arising from the cauldron of the Id. It is confirming that the Collective Thinking within the early church was coming up with "new" ideas about the gospel, Gnosticism, for instance:
Rev. 2:5 Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen (as was Lucifer), and repent, and do the first works;

You are absolutely correct, that thel poetry of these passages are incomparable, and the cold logic of modern restatement may gain in clarity but lose in beauty!

Rev. 1:20 The mystery of the seven stars, (the meaning of the seven psychic archetypes) which thou sawest in my right hand, ("cued" on the seven bones of the palm, in the manner of the priests before Aaron), and the seven golden, (spiritually enlightening), candlesticks, (all burning continuously throughout the seven developmental stages of Christian growth).
The seven (psychic) "stars" are the angels (symbolizing the seven
psychological mental sets underlying the cultural paradigms of the Christian maturation) of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are (the seven different historical and developmental periods of Christianity), the seven churches: [(1) the Time of the Apostles, and unto (2) the Terror instigated by Diocletian (303-13), and unto (3) the recognition of Christianity in the Edict of Toleration, by Emperor Constantine I in the early 4th century, 313 AD, and unto (4) the 1000 years of Universal Roman Catholicism, and unto (5) The Reformed Catholic Church, and unto (6) Protestantism, 1630 AD, and unto (7) Humanistic Christianity, 2k4.]

[anthrogirl]

Okay, thanks for hijacking this thread--I appreciate your unique interpretations of the Bible kofh2u, but let's try to be consistant with the OP...ça va? Now...back to the original subject...


Here's what Larry Dossey, MD says about "Healing and the Nonlocal Mind":

"Nonlocal implies that you cannot localize consciousness to specific points in space such as the brain or body or even to specific points in time such as the present. Consciousness is simply indifferent to spatial and temporal limitations. It can act remotely, instantaneously, powerfully. There is a ton of evidence supporting this idea, and any medicine of the future that deserves to be called scientific is going to have to honor these facts."



So it looks as if my survey was flawed. I did not allow for the possibility of the mind to be nonlocal. I tend to agree with Dr. Dossey.

what do y'all think?

ag

[learning]

Well.... we live in a body, and it is that body and brain that give us health or not, and though 'time' can be a problem, I don't think that 'space' is when it comes to our brain and body. I am reading 'The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' by Oliver Sacks, about some problems people have with their brain causing them to act differently, and one story was about a lady who lost her ability to feel and know where her body was in space. I believe the technical word for it was/is 'proprioception' and here's a brief idea of what it is

"that continuous but unconscious sensory flow from the movable parts of our body (muscles, tendons, joints) by which their position and tone and motion are continually monitored and adjusted in a way which is hidden from us because it is automatic and unconscious."

This is in the Chapter 'The Disembodied Lady' about a lady who, after an operation, can't seem to 'feel at home in her body, to control her arms, legs, she's like a rag doll. She has learned to sit and 'look' somewhat normal, but it is all 'forced', from her having to consciously look at and work at trying to 'look normal' in her sitting, placing of arms, etc. Even her voice is affected.

So, I think we are very much a part of our body and mind, and I think that the brain really does affect how the body relates to space, as seen above.

btw, if by 'consciousness' you mean 'spirit' then I would agree, as I've read of cases of Near Death Experiences, or Out of Body Experiences at accidents and operations.
I think even in her troubled state, the young woman above was 'conscious' she had a different and scary problem with relating to her body.

[BeHereNow]

The possibility of out-of-body counsciousness creates a problem for my instinct, which is that the mind is a function solely of the brain. Nonlocal consciousness isn't difficult for me to accept right now.

[kofh2u]

Okay, thanks for hijacking this thread--I appreciate your unique interpretations of the Bible kofh2u, but let's try to be consistant with the OP...ça va? Now...back to the original subject...


Here's what Larry Dossey, MD says about "Healing and the Nonlocal Mind":

"Nonlocal implies that you cannot localize consciousness to specific points in space such as the brain or body or even to specific points in time such as the present. Consciousness is simply indifferent to spatial and temporal limitations. It can act remotely, instantaneously, powerfully. There is a ton of evidence supporting this idea, and any medicine of the future that deserves to be called scientific is going to have to honor these facts."



So it looks as if my survey was flawed. I did not allow for the possibility of the mind to be nonlocal. I tend to agree with Dr. Dossey.

what do y'all think?

ag



Yooooooo...

I only responded to a reply.

I very much perfer to keep on track about the amazing emergence of human consciousness.

Physicists are studying the phenomenon in regard to its effect on the outcome of events.

We recognize the relationship of consciousness with Free Will. Free Will is a matter of theological study.
And, consciousness is presently partial, representing 10% of our thinking, meaning that we are asleep to 90% of what goes on in your own head!

The ancient mind/body dicotomy isno longer a valid philosophical area of discussion. The brain is hardware. Mind is software. Of course! We need both, wow, really disconcerting. Not.

The brain really is a reference to the entire nervous system. Hardware includes all sensory organs.
The mind is totally energy based.
We have a clear distinction here, one element, the brain, is tangible, material, concrete matter based. The mind is spirit, immaterial, intangible, and abstract.

Yet behavior is the son of the mother of thinking that preceeds it. The most ancient thoughts on this subject are found in scripture. And, the most revealing thing about scripture is that, consciously, we do not want change behaviors and refuse discussions concerned with oir thinking. We reduce scripture to rituals, and we think it heresy to contemplate scripture outside of the orthodox dogmas into which society enculturates us at the most innocent of ages.





1) Lucifer = The Pleasure Principle = Id
2) Satan = Physical Drives = Libido
3) Mammon = The Aggressive Drive = Ego
4) Devil = Feminine principle of Intuition = Anima
5) Baalzebub = The Reality Principle = Self
6) False Prophet = The Logical/Mathematical Mind = Superego
7) False Shepherd = Psychic Balance = Harmony

[anthrogirl]

I only responded to a reply.

I very much perfer to keep on track about the amazing emergence of human consciousness.

Physicists are studying the phenomenon in regard to its effect on the outcome of events. indeed. The observer problem or the measurement problem in quantum mechanics speaks very strongly of the emergence of human consciousness. This concept, of course, is very important to wellness.

We recognize the relationship of consciousness with Free Will. Free Will is a matter of theological study. I would argue that the problem of Free Will is not exclusively a matter of theological study.

And, consciousness is presently partial, representing 10% of our thinking, meaning that we are asleep to 90% of what goes on in your own head! I don't know how you got those numbers, if consciousness is "indifferent to spacial and temporal limitations"...

The ancient mind/body dicotomy isno longer a valid philosophical area of discussion.actually, the "mind/body dichotomy" is not an "ancient" concept--it was born mostly from the work of Renée Decartes.

The brain is hardware. Mind is software. Of course! We need both, wow, really disconcerting. Not.I would argue that this is actually an insufficient metaphor for the body politic. This type of mechanistic model does not completely describe the human experience. It fails biologically and ontologically--in other words, it fails to place the human experience within the cosmos.


The brain really is a reference to the entire nervous system. Hardware includes all sensory organs.
The mind is totally energy based.
We have a clear distinction here, one element, the brain, is tangible, material, concrete matter based. The mind is spirit, immaterial, intangible, and abstract.I find it very interesting that you would say this, kofh2u--are you familiar with the work of Candace Pert?

Yet behavior is the son of the mother of thinking that preceeds it. The most ancient thoughts on this subject are found in scripture.The most ancient thoughts on the subject are found in texts that predate the Bible.

And, the most revealing thing about scripture is that, consciously, we do not want change behaviors and refuse discussions concerned with oir thinking. We reduce scripture to rituals, and we think it heresy to contemplate scripture outside of the orthodox dogmas into which society enculturates us at the most innocent of ages.interesting (and rather large and generalized) assertion. You should start a thread on it...


best,
ag





1) Lucifer = The Pleasure Principle = Id
2) Satan = Physical Drives = Libido
3) Mammon = The Aggressive Drive = Ego
4) Devil = Feminine principle of Intuition = Anima
5) Baalzebub = The Reality Principle = Self
6) False Prophet = The Logical/Mathematical Mind = Superego
7) False Shepherd = Psychic Balance = Harmony

p.s. very interesting metaphor you have presented--where did it come from?

[David Hayward]

...do you think that mind and body are two distinctly separate categories? Please explain your response in this thread.I thought I would contribute one overview to the problem. Systematised, what is outlined below becomes Idealist philosophy, which has many variants. What I want to do is point out that scientific materialism and its psychological counterpart of Behaviourism have radical alternatives.

Hold up a finger and look at it; now look beyond : in reality there is one real material finger, here two transparent "fingers" which are plainly unreal, which "exist" only in my consciousness or mind.

Now walk outside, look at the finger again; and note how houses, street-furniture, cars, cats, people, trees, mountains are like the finger, how they are mental entities not their real material counterparts. The real material houses, ... real material mountains explain ordinary everyday life as lived but are themselves absent, always absent, are non-existent unless by existence you mean existing elsewhere, if that can be called existing - they are mere explanations. We don't live in reality, we live here where the transparent fingers (etc) are.

Real things have to be good explanations, indeed excellent explanations, of course, because bad explanations are unreality, but they remain of the nature of explanation, not of actual life. Life (or this-here) is what is explained, the vast edifice of scientific material reality (and add the varieties of religious reality) the explanation.

So, to get back on track and answer the Opening Post, mind and body are two categories because both are explanation; and they are real because they are good explanation; whether they are really distinctly separate categories depends upon whether "distinct separateness" explains well in this case - which I leave to others to decide.

David

[kofh2u]

I thought I would contribute one overview to the problem. Systematised, what is outlined below becomes Idealist philosophy, which has many variants. What I want to do is point out that scientific materialism and its psychological counterpart of Behaviourism have radical alternatives.

Hold up a finger and look at it; now look beyond : in reality there is one real material finger, here two transparent "fingers" which are plainly unreal, which "exist" only in my consciousness or mind.

Now walk outside, look at the finger again; and note how houses, street-furniture, cars, cats, people, trees, mountains are like the finger, how they are mental entities not their real material counterparts. The real material houses, ... real material mountains explain ordinary everyday life as lived but are themselves absent, always absent, are non-existent unless by existence you mean existing elsewhere, if that can be called existing - they are mere explanations. We don't live in reality, we live here where the transparent fingers (etc) are.

Real things have to be good explanations, indeed excellent explanations, of course, because bad explanations are unreality, but they remain of the nature of explanation, not of actual life. Life (or this-here) is what is explained, the vast edifice of scientific material reality (and add the varieties of religious reality) the explanation.

So, to get back on track and answer the Opening Post, mind and body are two categories because both are explanation; and they are real because they are good explanation; whether they are really distinctly separate categories depends upon whether "distinct separateness" explains well in this case - which I leave to others to decide.

David


You give us all the finger.

It is true, what you say, that the "finger of God" is our only reality.

Joking aside, without the fun of pun, I agree with you.

Studies confirm that we learn to see. Eyes are not simple cameras. The digital points of light on sensory nerves must be "analyzed and background separated from our attention on specific useful forms.

Our mind constructs meaning from inputs from the senses. We learn to extrapolate meaning just like a radar system collects waves and programs interpretation from them.

This is all confirmed. Studies in psychology verify that we learn to add our sensory inputs so as to effectively create the world external to this thinking.

The truth is that only mind exists.
From birth, like Descsrtes argued, we recognize that we are, in fact, thinking. Hence, we, mentally, exist.
But, thereafter, the puzzle of sensory inputs inspires hypothesis and theory about what is external to our thinking. And magicians prove how easily we my go wrong.

The empiricism of seeing, confirmed by hearing, and supported by touching, tasting, and smelling qualifies everything in regard to the assumption of its existing. But, this suggests a practical faith in just five senses, the Pentateuch of our mind.

From necessity and practice, we forget that the world external is "imagined."

It is all a figment, a firmament of an illusion below our sense of self, outside of the conscious firmament of mind that seems in space somewhere above.
It is all "invention" by the one concrete truth, I think and therefore exist.

As nerves are severed, the physical contact with the external disappears. Sensory deprivation returns us to the deep, the prenatal submergence that isolated us from what we later invented.
The so called concrete and physical world is an illusion, an artful schmata of sensory interpretations. It is ultimately an assumption. It is not there if all sensory contact disconnects with nerve damage.

Nevertheless, we hardly can conclude that the external world is not there. In faith, we must believe our senses are discovering evidence that "scientifically" convinces us that there is "something" there. And, we can not deny that this "something" is all powerful.

It is nurture with a discernable Nature. It is not capricious. It is knowable, reliable, understandable, rational. It is total a result of the Scientific Method of empirical, sensory confirmations.

In its image, reflected in the schmata we have invented, not only is it convincing that "I am because I think," but it is ultimately clear that "it," the Universe is almighty powerful to our continued ability to do so, to continue thinking.

We theorize the external mechanism by which our thinking has come into being. We are, because of this external "world." A world we can only re-invent as a reflection. The parallel abstraction of our image of what is out there is undeniably the God over us, the Absolute God of living and dying.







Rom. 1:20 For, from the creation of the (material Universe which we know as the) world, the invisible things of him, (in pantheistic expression), are clearly seen, (empirically, by the rational application of the methods of our science), being understood (pantheistically), by (a progression of theories concerning) the things that are made, (and by our on-going observation of the natural laws appropriate to them), even his (theistic), eternal, (transcendent) power and Godhead (in Trinity); so that (even the atheists), they are without excuse:

[kofh2u]

anthrogirl:
The observer problem or the measurement problem in quantum mechanics speaks very strongly of the emergence of human consciousness. This concept, of course, is very important to wellness.

KOFHY:
Study demonstrate that Support Group for cancer and heart patients notable affect survival rates. Drug testsvverify that the placebo effect is consistently at work,r verifiable evidence that positive re-inforcement of believing one is actually being medicated works as well as the medicine, itself. Prozac, for instance, only measures a 10% better rating over those who only think they are reveiving the drug.

anthrogirl:
I would argue that the problem of Free Will is not exclusively a matter of theological study.

KOFHY:
What would we be arguing sbout?
anthrogirl:
I don't know how you got those numbers, if consciousness is "indifferent to spacial and temporal limitations"...

KOFHY:
Consider that until Freud we did ot recognize our entire Subvonscious Mind. Note that Cons iousness has long been subtly influenced by that sevenfold entity. The pervausive daily universal inputs of just the Subconscious stand as the part of the iceberg of mind that is below the surface. Then, contemplate the enormous totally Unconscious instinctual and metaboloc thinking that is inherent to our lives and the numbers sound more reasonable.

Nevertheless, my figures are merely reflecting the common sense proclamation that we utilize @ 10% of our capabilities.

anthrogirl:
actually, the "mind/body dichotomy" is not an "ancient" concept--it was born mostly from the work of Renée Decartes.

KOFHY:
Four centuries is probably not quite ancient. I believe arguments previous to Rene' were impossible due to the wide spread ignorance that mind even existed. The focus seems to have been on behaviors.
It was thought that people came in types. Astrologically analyzed or not, it seems that the idea that thinking proceeded actions and that the Christian insight, that we can control and decide before we act, was previously unknown. Anthropomorphic assumptions that men have attributes classifying them accordingly, seem to support that it was largely argued that people acted according to some inherent nature. They were largely excused from the Christian reference to Conscience.

anthrogirl:
I would argue that this is actually an insufficient metaphor for the body politic. This type of mechanistic model does not completely describe the human experience. It fails biologically and ontologically--in other words, it fails to place the human experience within the cosmos.

KOFHY:
What do you think about the evermore possible :Artificial Intelligence?"
I mean, we understand that the brain is a pattern seeking device. Those "patterns" are really software-like mental programs. The satisfactory employment of these "programs" seems to define Intelligence. When you say "it fails to place the human experience within the cosmos" I respond that it seems the opposite.
We exist be ore birth with an almost total sensory deprivation. The mind seems to be the transducer that actually connects us to the external,and previously unsuspected world external to ourmprenatal thinking.

anthrogirl:
I find it very interesting that you would say this, kofh2u--are you familiar with the work of Candace Pert?

KOFHY:
No. But how so, interesting?

anthrogirl:
The most ancient thoughts on the subject are found in texts that predate the Bible.

KOFHY:
Yes, I guess Confusius basically alerted us to Conscience and implied forethought was a virtue.

anthrogirl:
interesting (and rather large and generalized) assertion. You should start a thread on it...

KOFHY:
I'll try to restrict my references to kep on target here.






Rev. 1:16 And he had in his right hand seven stars, (the sevenfold
spirit of the psyche: Id, Libido, Ego, Anima, Self, Harmony, Superego):
and out of his mouth went a two-edged sword (cutting both secular and theological understandings): and his countenance was as the sun (of
rationality) shineth in his strength (of factual knowledge).





p.s. very interesting metaphor you have presented--where did it come from?[/QUOTE]