This chapter starts out by telling the story of Dr. Samuel Johnson. One day, he woke up and found that he had lost the ability to speak. He quickly found that he still had language capabilities by writing a prayer in Latin, but could not form audible words. He drank wine, seeing if he could “loosen his tongue,” but all that did was put him to sleep. When he awoke, his speech still not accessible to him, he called upon his physicians who diagnosed him with a “disturbance in the vocal apparatus.” To treat this, they blistered each side of his throat. His speech returned with only a slight impediment. Dr. Johnson passed away the next year.
Philosophers and psychologists have spent centuries debating the relationship between mind, soul, and body. During these centuries, scientific research has both came up with, and put to rest many theories about the mind and body. Around four-hundred B.C., Aristotle theorized that the mind was located in the heart. Around the same time, Hippocrates theorized it was located in the brain. In the second century, autonomist Galen theorized that the mind was in the fluid filled ventricles of the brain. In the nineteenth century, a German physicist by the name of Franz Gall stated that the different regions of the brain served different bodily functions. It wasn’t till 1865 that French physician, Paul Broca, discovered that damage to the left side of the brain impeded speech ability. With this information, we can conclude that Dr. Johnson suffered a mild stroke that damaged the left side of his brain in the process. This conclusion was possible through this advancement of research, which was unfortunately too late to help Dr. Johnson, but could help others with his condition.
As neuropsychology advances, so does our understanding of how the mind and brain connect. Today, we can see how certain brain regions interact to different stimuli, something we have not been able to do before. As this research continues, so does our understanding of how the brain affects personality. Phineas Gage’s horrific accident contributed much to this area of research.
While working for the railroad, Mr. Gage’s frontal lobe was skewered by a tamping rod. After this accident, his personality, morals, and ethics changed. Once a kind, upstanding citizen, now has turned aggressive and temperamental. Mr. Gage’s case is not the only one we base this theory of brain-personality connection on. There was a case in Edinburgh of completely sane people throwing themselves our windows ending their lives. It is said they did this because of swelling in the brain caused by a bacteria or virus. With these as examples, we can conclude that changes in the brain results in abnormalities in thinking, feeling and behavior.
With the research we have gathered, and the technological advances we have today, we can now link abnormalities in neurotransmitters to psychological disorders like schizophrenia and depression. Because of studies pertaining to these abnormalities in brain chemistry, we now can treat these disorders more effectively by altering the brain chemistry in a way that brings everything back into balance.
With all these advances in neuroscience, we are still debating the link between the body and the mind. The authors talk about many views on this subject, the first being dualism.
With dualism, the mind and body are two separate entities, the mind being a nonphysical entity and the body being a physical one. The mind resides in the body and interacts with it, but is not of the body. Neuroscientists find this view hard to accept because this means the mind is a material thing which science cannot observe.
Instead of dualism, neuroscientists prefer monism, also referred to as reductive materialism and determinism. In this, the mind and body are one entity, where the mind is described as brain activity. However, this view contradicts religious views of mind and body.
Another view, more compatible with Christian theology, is a version of monism called nonreductive physicalism. This view states that the mind is located in the brain, which is in the body, but the mind can exert its own influence over the brain. However, this view is still being debated.
The authors tend to lean toward monism, but believe that it needs to be expressed differently. Monism needs to address the interdependence of what we think, see, and how we express our feelings with what is happening in our brains. Instead of interdependence, we should label this as intrinsic interdependence. In doing this, we must remember that it is not the brain that speaks, smells, and thinks, but rather the person. To go a step further, we should label intrinsic interdependence as irreducible intrinsic interdependence. Though a longer name, we use it to avoid labels like monism, dualism, and physicalism in which people already have their presumptions set.
We cannot separate mind and body because both are needed to give a full account in what is happening. The “brain-mind system might be a united system, but are not reducible to its physical parts.” In the end, we are unified systems of mind and body.
I found this chapter tedious. It felt like I was being jerked around with different ideas right up until the end. In the end, I came to the same conclusion as the author, the mind and body are unified systems. I believe the mind is our personality. My thoughts are that the mind and soul are connected, and the mind is part of the body, so the soul must be part of the body. All my life I always have been taught that the body is no more than a vessel to which we use to get through this life and into the next, but that, maybe, is not the case. Our personality is linked through the brain. This was shown in Mr. Gage when his personality changed from one of kindness to one of aggression. If our personality, morals, and ethics, are basic attributes for the mind, and these can be affected by damage to the brain, then the brain and the mind are one entity. The more pressing question is: Is the soul related to the mind, and if so, is it related to the body and how?
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