November 13, 2017
Reading considered today:
Damasio Chapters 5 and 7
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Chapter 5
Body and Mind
How do the body's neural circuits relate to mental processes?
How does Damasio's work on emotions and feelings relate to the mind/body question?
Substance dualism and aspect dualism
Disruption of neural pathways show the mind is grounded in the body-proper
Neurology and introspection as sources of knowledge re body and mind
The construction of reality
Passive mirror images?
Organism - object interactions through an ensemble of sensory detectors
Top-down and bottom-up processing
A piece of music, an idea
the brain's rules
influence of ongoing mental activity
neural correspondences
What's real? Can we know the thing in itself?
The neurology of seeing, forming images
Hubel & Wiesel
Starfish
Body to nervous system signaling
The retinal ganglion cell layer and the hypothalamus
Day and night
Conscious processing?
The origins of mind
Some qualifications
Mind can manipulate images
Mind is not a blank slate (tabula rasa)
Hunger drive example
The mind is "body-minded" (p 206), a servant of the whole body
A rationale for the mind (evolution emphasis)
Could neural maps alone do the job?
Suspensions of consciousness
Akinetic mutism
"mental images would allow an ease of manipulation of information" (p 207)
Sense of self provides an orientation to the problems of life, an orientation that facilitates survival
Spinoza's contributions and insights
Aspect dualism, two aspects of God/nature
“The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body.” “The Mind does not have the capacity to perceive … except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications (affections) of the body.” (p. 211)
In Damasio's words,213-215, 217
Images from the body-proper, ideas of ideas
Mind and body as correlated faces of the same thing
Mind’s ideas can double up on each other
Evolution of consciousness
Dr. Tulp - the mystery revealed
Chapter 6 – not assigned, provides details of Spinoza’s life and philosophy
Chapter 7 – Who’s There?
Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
The search for contentment, fulfillment, happiness
How do Damasio's ideas about emotions/feelings help in the search?
Salvation (p 268) – protection from harm, risk, destruction, sin and its penalties
moral conduct
love, family, friendship
doing a job well
possessions
personal identification
yearningfor the meaning of life
Yearning , striving, as a deep trait of the human mind
Conatus
Homeostasis and the reality of suffering
Empathy opens the door to sorrow
Consciousness and memory
Redress the balance (attain well-being) with joy
Yearning for homeostatic correctives and evolution (p 271)
Acceptance of natural events, but substituting ECS's (p 275)
Spinoza's view of God and nature
Hamlet's "Who's There?" No one?
Spinoza as mental immunologist
Reducing dependencies on the object-emotional needs that enslave us (p 276)
Combining reason and affect in a modern way (William James)
"... a pleasurable feeling that is a source of completion, meaning, and enthusiasm for life." (p 282)
Damasio's path to a contented life
Doesn't want to neurologize religious experience, but
Damasio's sense of the spiritual (p 284, 285)
Evolution
Homeostasis
"... new treatments will aim at correcting specific impairments of a normal process ..." (p 287)
Self-regulation
Sociocultural regulation
Free will????
Damasio's TED Talk on consciousness
Invisibilia's Locked-in Man
Religions
"... the sublimity of the spiritual is embodied in the sublimity of biology" (p 286)