Finished...
The whole 'mind-body', 'subjective-objective' conundrum has driven many a philosopher crazy -- philosophers who are a lot smarter than I am....
If anything, I have this philosophy -- 'when in doubt, stay out' -- meaning stay out of any intellectual problem and/or debate that is too 'subjectively and/or objectively insurmountable to tackle and conquer' (unless you are 'cognitively masochistic' and actually want to be 'driven crazy').
It's like, would I dare try to climb Mt. Everest at my advanced age, with my present lack of physical conditioning, and lack of climbing skills and experience? No -- obviously not -- not unless I have suicidal tendencies, and want to end my life somewhere in the first 100 or 200 metres or so trying to climb up such a prohibitive mountain in such a sorry state of physical conditioning.... Now, if I had been raised in the mountains of Tibet and been taught how to climb mountains as a Sherpa...then, obviously, things would be different...)
Okay, back to my own domain that I do think I know something about -- philosophy, psychology -- and 'cognition'...And maybe I am actually trying to 'climb and conquer' the 'twin Mt. Everests' of philosophy/epistemology -- the 'cognitive conundrum' of the 'mind-body' and 'subjective-objective' splits....Where does 'the mind' start and 'the brain' end (and visa versa)? And, where does our 'subjective world' stop and our 'objective world' begin (and visa versa)?
I opt for an expistemological position that might be called 'dialectic-structural-dynamic parallelism-interactionism-and-integrationism'.
Now, I am not sure to what extent this 'epistemological position or perspective' has been developed and/or called a different name by some other individual and/or 'school' of epistelogist(s) -- I would need to do more research into the evolutionary history of 'epistemology' -- but I can tell you who my main philosophical mentors are, which, if you have been reading my work, you probably already know: Anaximander, Heraclitus ('dynamic-process-oriented-epistemologist)-Parmenides ('subjective-epistemological-structuralist'), Plato ('subjective-epistemological-idealist')-Aristotle (empirical-observational-scientific-empistemological realist)-Spinoza(subjective-objective-rational-empirical-wholist-pantheist-idealist)-Locke('rational-empirical integrative epistemologist'), Hume ('skeptical-empirical-reductionist-deconstructionist-extremist'), Kant('skeptical-non-objectivist-subjective-metaphysicist'), Fichte(subjective-reductionist-extremist), Schelling('dialectic-romantic-post-Spionzian-wholist'), Hegel (dialectic-historical-determinist-subjective-epistemologist-and-idealistic-integrative-extremist), Marx (dialectical-empirical-materialist-anti-materialist-extremist), Schopenhauer(narcissistic epistemological-cosmic-extremist), Nietzsche('subjective-narcissistic-relativist-epistemologist-skepticist-deconstructionist'), Bertrand Russell (common-sense-no-nonsense-structural-dynamic-rational-empiricist), Wittgenstein ('structual-dynamic-uncommon-sense-brilliant-academic-elephant-in-the-room-epistemologist-and-deconstructionist'), Koryzybski ('no-nonsense, common-sense, intensional-extensional-structural-dynamic-rational-empirical-epistemologist), Foucault ('subjective-narcissistic-power-epistemologist'), Derrida ('subjective epistemological deconstructionist'), Ayn Rand ('objective epistemological extremist')...
My favorite epistemologist: Alfred Korzybski, Polish, (1879-1950) -- the founder of General Semantics (and possibly influenced by some combination of Heraclitus, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Kant, Russell and Wittgenstein) -- gets my top vote...
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From the internet....
“There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.” -- Alfred Korzybski
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Now, back to my theory of 'structural-dynamic-rational-empirical-interactionist-integrationist-epistemological-parallelism'....
Think of the 'brain'. The brain is a 'physical-empirical-organic' object. If a forensic scientist does an autopsy on a dead person or animal -- and opens up the 'head' and 'skull' -- he will almost 100 percent definitely find a 'brain' (unless someone has been there before him to already have taken it out, or the animal is so minutely small, that the 'brain' of the animal is 'empirically undetectable', perhaps even under a microscope....Do all animals have brains? I posed that question to the internet...Here is what I got....)
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Do all animals have brains?
(Lansing State Journal, September 8,1993)
A brian is defined as the principal ganglion of an animal's nervous system. A ganglion is a collection of nerve cells that process information. It receives information from nerve fibers that extend throughout the body of an animal and also may be affected by a variety of hormones. The level of complexity of a central ganglion roughly parallels the anatomical complexity of the organism as a whole.
Multicellular organisms need to coordinate the activities of their individual cells. Most animals use a system of specialized cells, called neurons, to help coordinate the activities of different tissues. The exceptions include sea sponges, which are a rather like a loose collection of cells. Other primitive animals such as jelly fish, do have neurons organized into networks.
While all of these organisms can sense their environment in some way and respond to it, they do not have brains. Only animals with distinct body cavities possess brains. This includes life forms as diverse as earth worms, clams, fish, insects, birds, and of course, human beings. As a general rule, animals with more tissue types have more intricate brains.
Both invertebrate and vertebrate animals can have complex brains. Of the invertebrates, squid an octopuses have the most developed brains, in part to process information coming from their highly sophisticated eyes. A medium sized octopus will have a brain containing over 100 million neurons, and can show learning behavior. Still, this is a far cry form mammalian brains that contain on the order of 10 billion neurons.
Our human brains are remarkably facile in learning, dependable in recollecting and can be quite creative in thinking and expressing a variety of thoughts and emotions.
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask_st/090893.html
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Now the second, bi-polar, half of the first question about the 'empirical existence of the brain' in animals, and particularly in man, becomes this:
Does man have a 'mind', and if so, what is it?
This becomes a much more difficult question because what we generally call 'the mind' is essentially 'invisable' and contains 'invisible thoughts' rather than 'bio-chemical, physical, firing neurons or nerve cells'....The idea that 'physical, empirical nerve cells can somehow contain, transport, and communicate invisible, non-empirical thoughts- ideas' -- is one of the most amazing, explanation-defying, mysteries of life....and one that no scientist, philosopher, and/or psychologist has been able to completely get his or her head around...
Freud tried to understand the 'nature and essence of the physical-ideational connection in 'The Project for a Scientific Psychology' (1895) -- and he gave up, although many of the ideas contained within this early work became the central foundation of all of his 1895 and later philosophy-psychology that we have come now to call either 'Pre-Classical' or 'Classical' Psychoanalysis'....depending on whether we are talking about his work written either before 1897 ('Pre-Classical-Traumatic Psychoanalysis') or after 1896 ('Classical-Instinctual Psychoanalysis').
The reason that Freud failed to complete his 'Scientific Project' was because it was essentially 'reductionistic' and 'unilaterally one-sided' in its approach. Freud was walking a philosophical tightrope between Aristotle and Hegel. The Aristolean part of Freud's thinking was 'empirical' -- and even 'empirically extremist, one-sided, and reductionistic' in the more direct and immediate influence of the famous German phsyiologist at that time, Ernst Brucke -- the main scientific influence behind Freud's 'Project for a Scientific Psychology'...
However, ironically and paradoxically, Freud was not a very good 'scientist' -- he was far too much of an 'obsessive-abstractionist' to be a good scientist -- because Freud was 'constantly losing sight of the earth below him' that he was trying to 'fly high, high above'....both metaphorically and literally as the 'cocaine' he was still absorbing into his body in 1895 (from 1884 -- some 12 years of cocaine use/abuse)...probably wasn't helping Freud 'come back to earth'...which his 'polarized-more common sense-and scientifically-grounded-friend, co-worker, and mentor', Joseph Breuer, in the end, failed to bring back...
I should compromise these remarks...Freud was a far more creative and brilliant theorist than Breuer -- Freud's 'double-sided and essentially non-integrated theory of traumacy, impulse, and defense' remains the cornerstone of probably all 'individual schools of psychotherapy' that exist today... whereas Breuer's theory of 'hysteria and hypnoid states' has essentially disappeared into 'historical oblivion'....This is what generally happens, sooner or later, to 'bad -- non-useful -- ideas'...
On the other side of the 'pseudo-scientific coin', Freud was 'obsessed with the sexual etiology of all neuroses'...However, this theory became much easier to defend -- via 'definitional and circular reasoning' -- when Freud 'interpreted' almost everything 'sexually'...except, of course, his 'smoking a cigar'...and his famous 'After all gentlemen, sometimes a cigar is only a cigar', quote....
'Dora' -- one of his pseudonyms for a particular client -- had a 'cough' in her throat, and to this, Freud attached an 'instinctual desire' of her wanting 'oral sex'....Remember that, all of my dear readers, out there, who may have a 'cough' that seems to have no 'organic, empirical explanation' for the cough... In Dora's case, this is what 'allegedly' made the 'cough' -- 'hysterical' -- its lack of 'emprical, organic explanation'....I have a better 'psychoanalytic explanation' -- although I have to go back over the concrete details of the case material, and I am 'speculating' more than 100 years removed from the actual clinical case (somewhere between 1900 and 1905 -- 1905 being when it was published).
Freud had the closest contact with all of the actual clinical details of the case -- but by this time, Freud was extremely 'narcissistically biased and blinded by the subjective boundaries and limitations of his one-sided, instinctual theory'.... His earlier Pre-Psychoanalytic Traumacy Theory (1895) had been left far behind...like dust in the wind...in the words of Bob Dylan...'one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind'...
A lot of young girls that Freud was treating back then were in effect 'nurses to their own fathers', some of whom had bacterial and/or viral infections like tuburculosis...resulting in 'coughs'....of the sort that Dora, if she was actually attending to her sick father in this regard, might 'identify with the symptom(s) of her sick father'...like Anna O. also...back in the 1880s...I have to review the exact details of the case in this regard...
I was partly waylaid.....let's get back to the main 'epistemological' elments of what I am talking about here...
Our 'brain' has a 'physical existence'....it's existence is 'empirically based'...
Our 'mind' has 'no physical existence'...'it's existence is 'metaphysically based' -- 'beyond physics', based in 'conceptuology' -- without a solid, empirically based, visible 'organic structure' supporting its existence... It's existence is based on 'personal and/or community assumptionism' -- and has more of a 'spiritual connection' to the idea of 'The Self' which is also 'metaphysically -- not physically/empirically/observationally --based'....
Our 'brain' pertains to the realm of 'physiology' and 'neurology' and 'biochemistry'...
Our 'mind' pertains to the realms of concepts and ideas and thoughts and beliefs and values....none of which are directly and empirically visible...which does not mean that they do not exist...It is just that they 'exist' in a 'non-empirical, invisible world' that most of us believe in but that none of us can 'empirically prove'....
However, even so-called 'empirical proofs' have their limitations as our 'senses are limited, prone to mistakes some time, and narcissistically biased by their owners'...
Kant went so far as to say that we 'Kant Know' our so-called 'objective ('noumenal' in his words) world' because it is a world that is beyond our senses...
Thus, in 'Kant's World', there is really no such thing as 'physics' -- just 'metaphysics'...However, Kant was extremely 'anal-retentive', 'perfectionistic', and 'uncompromising'....If I see this box of Kleenex in front of me on my desk, I 'assume' the 'physical existence' of this box of Kleenex to be 'empirically and observationally proven'....If I pull a couple of Kleenexes out of the box and 'blow my nose' with them, I am not 'blowing my nose' with 'metaphysics'...The Kleenex does have an 'observable and feelable structural substance to it'... It belongs to the world of 'physics', not 'metaphysics'...Similarily, our 'brain' belongs to the world of 'physics' while our 'mind' belongs to the world of 'metaphysics'...And our 'brain' and our 'mind' have a mysterious interconnection to them -- if my 'brain' is 'damaged' in some fashion, then so too, my 'mind' and my 'thinking' is likely to also be 'damaged' in the particular area of the brain that is 'associated and interconnected' with the type of thinking that comes out of this area of the brain... Or I could start to have massive 'migraines' or 'headaches' that stop me from WANTING to think...I'd sooner just lie down, take an aspirin or two, perhaps put a cloth on my head, and either watch tv or go to sleep...
Thus, the dialectic-integrative concept of 'mind-brain' is born...emphasizing the dialectic interaction and integration between the two of them...
Now let us move on to the concept of 'parallelism' before we stop for the day...
The 'psyche' is another 'metaphysical' concept in that it is 'physically invisable'...
However, we can 'parallel' the existence and the functioning of 'the human psyche' (in the metaphysical world) to the 'human body' (in the physical world). If we say that they 'function similarily' -- and yet in two different dimensions -- then this is 'parallelism' as opposed to 'reductionism' which attempts to say that the one is simply an 'extension of the other'...Paralllelism says that the two types of 'organs' in two different dimensions (say, the 'brain' and the 'mind' or 'the body' and 'the psyche') -- one visable and the other invisable -- 'function along similar structural and dynamic patterns'; whereas 'reductionism' says that the two different dimensions -- of 'visability' and 'invisability' -- function on the exact same principles of the one...usually 'materialist reductionism' and/or 'scientific-empirical reductionism'....Or like Berkley and Hume argued -- as well as the 'Behaviorists' today, 'the invisable dimension simply does not exist'...'If you can't see it, it doesn't exist'...
When I use a 'parallelist model' of the human psyche, I compare it to the functioning of the human body....'Defenses' are like 'white blood cells' and 'impulses' are like 'red blood cells' unless the 'impulses' are 'defensive' in nature...
Similarily, I say that the human psyche is like the body in that it has 'metaphysical organs' like 'The Central Ego' and 'SIGGY's Cave' where 'SIGGY' is an anacronym that stands for: 'Secret Interest Groups and Ghosts of Yesterday'....I also call this 'metaphysical organ' 'The Shadow-Id Group' (SIG) Compartment'....Another largely unconscious metaphysical organ is 'The Dream-Fantasy-Nightmare Catcher/Weaver'...
Another metaphysical organ is our 'Personal Impulsive Transference Template'...our 'PITT'...
Another metaphysical organ is our 'Genetic Mythological-Symbolic Unconscious' (our 'GMSU') which is pretty well the same concept as Jung's 'Collective Unconscious'...
Another metaphysical organ is our 'Genetic Potential Self' -- our 'GPS'....
To summarize...in DGB terminology...we have 5 unconcious/subconscious/preconscious 'metaphysical organs' in the psyche, starting from the deepest level of the unconscious and working upwards into the conscious personality:
1. The Genetic Potential Self (GPS);
2. The Mythological-Symbolic Unconscious (MSU);
3. The Personal Impulsive Transference Template (PITT);
4. The SIG ('Secret Interest Group' or 'Shadow-Id Group') Compartment or SIGGY's Cave (Secret Interest Group and Ghosts from Yesterday);
5. The Dream-Fantasy-Nightmare Catcher/Weaver (DFNW);
In the conscious personality, we have 10 different 'ego compartments' or 'metaphysical sub-organs' that make up 'The Ego-as-a-Whole'...
Including....4 different 'Super-ego-States', 4 'Under-ego-States', and 2 'Mid-Zone-Ego-States';
A/ Different Superego States
6. The Nurturing Superego;
7. The Dionysian Superego;
8. The Narcissistic Superego;
9. The Righteous Superego;
B/ Different Underego States;
10. The Nurturing (Approval-seeking, Compliant) Underego;
11. The Dionysian Underego;
12. The Narcissistic Underego;
13. The Righteous-Rebellious Underego;
And Two 'Mid-Zone' Ego-States...
14. The Dialectically Integrative (Bi-polar/Bi-partisan) Ego-State;
15. The Central-Mediating-Executive (CME) Ego-State...
That is enough for today...
-- dgb, April 22nd, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
