Posted by finelinebob on August 30, 2006, at 21:09:23
In reply to Re: Biopsychosocial vs Biological Reductionism » finelinebob, posted by Estella on August 30, 2006, at 3:11:03
> Hellos :-)
back at'cha
> Dualism vs Materialism is a hard one...
Because it perpetuates another philosophical mistake common in Western thought, which is to merge epistemology with ontology, knowing with being. Empiricism repudiates "true" knowledge of reality outside of studied experience and, in that, is more opposed to positivism than dualism. Dualism is somewhat of a straw man for a materialist argument because (1) the "Mind" in dualism is not subject to sensation while "Body" is, and (2) in promoting that knowing IS being, it rejects that there might be a reality currently beyond measurability.
> I remember going to a lecture a while back on abnormal psychology. The lecturer said, quite clearly, that the reason for less psychosomatic illnesses now (compared with the time of Freud) was because of the rise of dualism.Yep, that lecturer missed the boat on that. There is also caught up in the popularization of Decartes' dualism the religious importance of such a dualism. To this day, dualism is firmly entrenched in theological thought. Perhaps this where any misconception of a "rise" in dualism in modern times comes from. Particularly when compared to a much more solidified and better represented opposition to such thought, the dualism is drawn into greater focus than from times when most everyone considered such a distinction to be "natural" in a "Godly" way. It not so much a rise of dualism, but a rise in opposition to it.
> > a physicist at a recent conference was quoted as say, "The world is not as real as we think it is."
>
> Lol. Physicists don't study mind independent reality they only study inter subjective reality.
Is there any other kind? Even if you accept a role -- even a partially deterministic role -- for biology, any introduction of a sociocultural element makes our perception of reality intersubjective. As much as some scientists still cling to an examinable reality existing independent of one's sociocultural biases, that in itself (objectivity) is a sociocultural construct.
> Someone or other wrote about group minds... Can't remember who... Might be a bit much of an abuse of language, however... Searle is fairly interesting "The Construction of Social Reality". Mind is essentially social. In the sense that language is essentially social (controversial but that is meant to be the upshot of Wittgenstein's private language argument)It's too bad the references in the Amazon catalog for Searle's work mostly cite himself, but that is characteristic of books written for a broader audience than one's colleagues. Seeing a few of Gergen's books as "suggested" other readings does pin it down a little more for me, tho.
My own understanding comes from the psychologist Lev Vygotsky ("Mind in Society" and "Thought and Language") and the semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin (sorry, haven't read any original work, but this is a good one "Dialogism").
Bakhtin poses an interesting question that digs into the notion of a social mind: "When someone speaks, who is doing the talking?" The answer is at least two people: the speaker and the listener. We couch our language, our choice of words or phrases or modes of expression or even level of depth based upon who we perceive our audience to be and how we think we might best communicate to meet our needs (in the least) and their needs (at best). It's Vygotsky, though, that extends that notion to all of mind: that mind exists between people and is defined in terms of cultural and sociological circumstances as much as biological circumstances.
poster:finelinebob
thread:680731
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060825/msgs/681611.html