If the brain is anatomy and the mind is physiology (debatable, of course) then surely the diagnosis of psychosomatic disorders is an oxymoron. This forces the question of whether or not mind can be viewed as a non-material entity, perhaps even as an independent variable that can affect the brain.
Paul,
Rigour is important here. The wine was not a unit of action, being a divisible aggregate (about 12 sips), but was a unit of alcohol. My flute glass takes 75ml without spilling and the wine is 13.5%.
More to the point, I would recommend as a way of thinking of quantum systems ('quanta') a knight's move in chess. When physicists say 'particle aspect' they mean that at the start (initial conditions) and end (measurement) a causal dynamic unit has a specific position. When they say 'wave aspect' they mean that the dynamic connection between these two positions depends on 'all possible routes' through a volume of space such that there is no fact of the matter 'where' the unit is at any time in between.
The knight's move is exactly like this. It is defined by a starting and a finishing position and a rule that requires no position in between but depends on the metric of the chessboard. A bishop's move or a pawn's move to take another piece add to the analogy in that their possibilities depend on other pieces along the way, as for quantum systems.
For a knight's move in chess nothing need be stipulated about the nature of the piece itself - jade or wood, ornate or austere - nor the board - ebony and ivory or just newsprint in a puzzle in the daily paper. Nothing need be said about 'how the knight moves' or even that there is any movement. The players may be online using a virtual board. Similarly, quanta are not made of particle or wave. They are simply connections between places in spacetime that follow certain rules. They do not travel in any intuitive sense. They have no size. They are just like knight's moves.
both: just like light is both waves and particles
it is a helpful term to describe symptoms that are caused or exacerbated by psychological issues.....it is also helpful pragmatically in that some psychiatrists (including my son Douglas J Opler, MD) are board certified in Psychosomatic Medicine, and I would hate to think that his job (being a consultation-liaison psychiatrist) might be jeopardized because psychosomatic is an oxymoron!
of course, mind (normal or abnormal) is a product of brain activity, but, akin to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, it has been argued that our minds will never be able to fully comprehend out minds either neurobiologically or psychologically.
and it is important to avoid reductionism, e.g., the neurobiologists who argue that mind is best understood in biochemical/electrophysiological terms are missing both the point and life....
i am reminded of Oliver Sacks, who died one year ago, and his discovering that his real calling was what he (and Luria) called 'romantic neurology'....Luria is best known for his many papers on neuropsychology and its neurobiological correlates, but he himself felt his "romantic neurology" (e.g, THE MIND OF A PNEMONIST/MAN WITH A SHATTERED BRAIN) was equally important, because (he argued) one must look at mind from many angles, including as a product of brain activity but also holistically....
my personal metaphor is:
one can know a beach in two ways:
1-one can examine the grains of sand and the fragments of cells
2-one can jog along the water and experience the totality in subjective but oh so important terms
Article Forms of Discourse and the Sciences of the Mind: Luria, Sack...
Interesting question. But to have the possibility to ask the question we should have a "mind". I don't know what is the mind. In the ancient time we used to have gods and maybe souls.
I personally believe that you can have a certain kind of "thought" with the help of some chemistry in your brain.
It happens sometimes, that a chemical disorder affects you so much that you can think according to what is the social norms in your cultural environment.
For convenience it could be called a "psychosomatic disorder" , May be it is only a brain chemistry disorder. This doesn't mean that you weren't able to think, according to your cultural "luggages".
So, actually and presently, I haven't drunk too much wine and I am able to say :
brain disorder is not an oxymoron.
I don't know if you will be happy with that. I will have a glass of chardonnay.
A good choice of wine Dominique. Cheers to you and thank you for your insight. Paul
Merci beaucoup, Dominique!
Article Professor Serge C. Renaud (1927-2012): French Paradox and wi...
Article Resveratrol and Cardiovascular Diseases
En chante!, even though I miserably failed high school French I am afraid to say. Paul
one of the best Chardonnay I ever had the chance to drink is somewhere in a suposed russian river, sonoma county, almost unaffordable in France !
One cannot drink chardonnay all the time so I am sipping a reasonable sauvignon blanc from Touraine.
Etymological arguments tend not to work in medicine, Paul. Systemic lupus has little to do with the wolf. Psychosomatic illness is probably not so much an oxymoron as a shaky theory. It is supposed to mean that the mind brings forth symptoms as if of the body. It does of course do that if you feel nauseous when seeing something gruesome or sweat with fear, but as to whether significant pathological syndromes arise this way is much less clear. That does not stop people having jobs in psychosomatic medicine, as Lewis says. But justifying medical science by the pay packet is not ultimately in patients' interests and unfortunately it is rather popular with psychiatrists.
An amusing development is the publication of a journal called Psychosomatic Research. In the old days people knew to avoid such clangers but clearly the etymology would suggest that this is what appears to be physical bodily research but merely brought forth by the minds of the researchers. It tends to be just that in my experience!
The issue of a non-material entity of course brings us to Descartes and I am just finishing off a chapter on the way Descartes has been misinterpreted. 'Material' in the popular present day sense is a concept that seventeenth century intellectuals had the sense to realise was empty. Descartes has a concept of 'extended matter' that is quite different from the popular modern concept. He contrasted it with spirit or action but that did not put spirit outside physics. Matter was entirely inert so all motion was due to spirit - so spirit had to be part of physics. But he noted that units of spirit are not extended in the sense of excluding anything from a space. That is entirely consistent with what we now think of as units of force or action or energy, like light and sound.
Which brings us back to your point about anatomy and physiology. Body is anatomy or for Descartes extended matter. Mind is physiology or action or for Descartes spirit - which is fine since we think it is mediated by electrical potentials and such like. There is no conflict between anatomy and physiology - of course not. One is extended structure and the other is the patterns of change influencing structure. There has for a long time been a myth that Descartes's spirit and body cannot interact, but the interaction of force and matter is what physics is all about.
Jonathan. Enjoy that splendid wine before I forget. What you seem to be saying is that conceptual rigour regarding what matter is (atoms but also spirit perhaps) is important. I think I have tended to understand matter as anything that physics is able to identify. I am still confused but hopefully on a higher level. Best wishes Paul
Yes, matter is often used to cover physics, as defined as a comprehensive account of why what we observe changes the way it does. In Descartes's day that included extended matter and spirit. It now includes Fermions and Bosons, if you like. There are no 'particles' in contemporary field theory. (Fundamental units are not waves either really - wave particle duality is a popularised fiction.) In fact we are pretty much back to Leibniz's analysis that everything is based on units of action. The intriguing thing about Descartes is that he identified two 'flavours' of action - one forming extended aggregates (now Fermions like electrons) and the other not (now Bosons like photons). Leibniz's contribution was to realise that extension must always be aggregation so extended matter is not made of units of extended matter but units of action.
I followed up with a glass of simple Australian shiraz.
how do you make out of this story? about Marc Liblin?
http://stormynighttales.blogspot.com/2013/12/did-he-live-before.html
http://stormynighttales.blogspot.com/2013/12/did-he-live-before.html
Yes, I think reconceptualisation is key here. I seem to be stuck to an a priori assumption; namely, that atoms and other constituent "stuff" (protons and such) constitute matter. Before I forget, there is a discussion in quantum field theory about whether or not particle and wave are distinct events, or if the one (the particle, I think) might be "pushing" the other. But that´s another story. Anyway, many thanks for getting me very curious indeed. I wonder if the wine is a unit (perhaps two units) of action!
Paul
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Stephens,
Likely the most popular philosophical approach would be that the brain is anatomy and physiology and the mind is a higher function (or functionally described state and process) of the brain. Then, the question would be: Can the the higher functions of the brain influence the body?; the appearance of an oxymoron for "psychosomatic" disappears.
By a tradition of translation, "mind" in English is related to Aristotle's "nous," which is the highest kind or element, or part of the "soul," (psyche, anima). Below that is the "soul of motion" and the digestive or vegetative soul. All living things have psyche. Aristotle conceives of "nous" as regulating the soul of motion, which is common to all animals. The soul is the form (shape, configuration perhaps, or Idea) of the body. Whether the mind can affect the body (positively or negatively) is self-answering.
Of course, "mind" in English also has its peculiarities, like "mind what you say," or "who's minding the children?" or "mind the gap," on the London Underground. The word is deeply rooted in ordinary speech and then adapted for more philosophical purposes. Its hard to translate exactly into some other languages.
H.G. Callaway
Has been published the other day. All interested in this discussion should find this important as a read. The brain linked to mind (embodied) and now directly to the adrenals, the organs that are most central to hormone dysregulation and the various pathologies that fall under the umbrella of 'psychosomatic'.
Follow the link for the article.
Regards,
Karlo
p.s. if you refute the idea of psychosomatic, what is the proposed alternative?
@Humberto Lucero How come there is an alteration of the mind if the brain is damaged?
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/08/11/1605044113.full
I have to concede that my poor english doesn't allow me to follow you especially H. G. Callaway. Given the likely links between the mind and the chemistry of the brain. I know this is not politically correct, but I wonder if the mind (understood as the way we think) could be different for male and female. There is probably more at play than the way the people are raised. The chemistry of the brain is partly determined by genetics
Genetics factors play a rôle in Scinophrena and bipolar disorders. Many famous painters, writers had some kind of bipolar disorders. genetics (Kay Redfield Jamison, touched with Fire) seems to indicate that there are several kind bipolar disorders
One of one most famous contemporary French writer is affected by bipolar disorder. For most of the French psychiatrists the bipolar disorder is not anymore a psychosomatic alteration of the brain.
Thank you all for interesting discussion. But how do you demonstrate it? I feel qi-gon is useful from daily listening experience to the
patients of psychosomatic disorder. We realize to be able to cure those patients in brief term by qi-gon, which made us resonant our status,
patient and doctor relationships.
Kazuo Oie
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Lucero,
I thought your reply curious. You wrote:
I refuse to think that psyche is a secretion of brain, so, YES, is an oximoron.
---End quotation
"Secretion" is a very curious word choice in this context. A secretion, after all, is something usually automatic and physiological.
I'd be much more inclined to think of the mind as a normative, cultural and educational formation of the brain in its relationship to the body and to human activities.
To say that it is a matter of functional description means that we think of the mind in terms of higher functions. For example, we think about a problem, weigh relevant evidence and values and then, perhaps, we make up our minds. Part of the point, is that we do not often or ordinarily know much about the relationship of such functional descriptions to descriptions in terms of anatomy and physiology. That is part of the reason that we think of "psych-ology" as a distinct subject-matter and field of study. Taking the "psyche-" out of psychology, is something to be resisted. Right?
H.G. Callaway
Yes, The idea of mind as a cultural - in the widest sense - formation of brain in its relationship to life is helpful. Is that not tantamount to suggesting that brain is anatomy and mind is physiology? Paul
Paul,
Rigour is important here. The wine was not a unit of action, being a divisible aggregate (about 12 sips), but was a unit of alcohol. My flute glass takes 75ml without spilling and the wine is 13.5%.
More to the point, I would recommend as a way of thinking of quantum systems ('quanta') a knight's move in chess. When physicists say 'particle aspect' they mean that at the start (initial conditions) and end (measurement) a causal dynamic unit has a specific position. When they say 'wave aspect' they mean that the dynamic connection between these two positions depends on 'all possible routes' through a volume of space such that there is no fact of the matter 'where' the unit is at any time in between.
The knight's move is exactly like this. It is defined by a starting and a finishing position and a rule that requires no position in between but depends on the metric of the chessboard. A bishop's move or a pawn's move to take another piece add to the analogy in that their possibilities depend on other pieces along the way, as for quantum systems.
For a knight's move in chess nothing need be stipulated about the nature of the piece itself - jade or wood, ornate or austere - nor the board - ebony and ivory or just newsprint in a puzzle in the daily paper. Nothing need be said about 'how the knight moves' or even that there is any movement. The players may be online using a virtual board. Similarly, quanta are not made of particle or wave. They are simply connections between places in spacetime that follow certain rules. They do not travel in any intuitive sense. They have no size. They are just like knight's moves.
That knight´s move is a helpful analogy, Jonathan. Thank you. I am starting to get my head around your explanation. The issue is about location, not about a particle or a wave as "stuff", so to speak. Complex but exciting to ponder. Paul
The exciting part for me is that the knight, pawn, bishop or quantum must be 'aware of' the other pieces/quanta in the field or domain across which it connects. Its nature is inseparable from the rich pattern it connects through. At this level of action causal relation is not billiard ball to billiard ball. In effect it is quantum to infinitely rich world. That makes some sort of sense of the richness of our experience of the world. But only if one can find some dynamic unit in a brain in modern condensed matter physics that can play the role of the experiencing subject, much in the way that Descartes's soul did.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Stephens,
Consider the following definition of "physiology":
the branch of biology dealing with the functions and activities of living organisms and their parts, including all physical and chemical processes.
---End quotation
physiology is a sub-discipline of biology. There is functional description in biology, but this is normally more organic description.
In contrast, psychological description is functional at a much higher level. In psychology, one often needn't bother with the underlying physiological processes. They may become interesting and helpful in specific contexts, but psychology can do a good deal in a more autonomous fashion. Right?
We don't expect either biology or physics to replace a distinctive science or discipline of psychology.
H.G. Callaway
Dear H.G.,
Higher level is an interesting concept. I use it myself but wonder exactly what we mean by it. Is it about aggregate patterns of events that fit types - like species or Brahms' 3rd symphony? Or is it about abstract concepts?
And I wonder about whether psychology may indeed be replaced by physics. There was a time when it was, rightly, said that chemistry could not be reduced to physics. But around 1935 it became clear that quantum physics provided an elegant explanation for all chemical facts. Physics started replacing biology in the early 20th century too and the double helix accelerated that but for the jobbing biologist like myself physics suddenly took over in about 1985. White blood cell migration stopped being a cellular behaviour and became a matter of the physics of non-covalent ligands and signal transduction etc. That would suggest that psychology might be replaced by physics in about 2035. We might be a little elderly by then but hopefully still around.
Paul is interested in psycho- in the sense of consciousness. I wonder whether in fact this is high level or whether it is the most fundamental level of all. Consciousness, as far as we can see, only applies to a totally proximal relation. I think it has to because if we follow a causal sequence back in time the possible combinations of causes rapidly become infinite. Conscious experience cannot be determined both by an immediately proximal relation AND a whole history of prior relations. That would be overdetermination. So my assumption is that consciousness is brute direct physics at its most paradigmatic. It is just that we don't have a mode of description that does not depend on all the problems of semantics and ascertainment just now.
At least this is how it seems to me after a couple of units of a modest but drinkable white Rioja and the last half measure of the shiraz from before.
Best wishes to all.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Edwards,
Well, Stephens wonders if mind should be regarded as a "non-material entity," but in the question at least, there is no mention of consciousness. I think it a bit of a stretch to bring up questions about consciousness in relation to this question. It is more a question about the nature of mind --focused on psychosomatic phenomena. It is in these terms that I have replied. I have provided some history of the concept of mind and argued against the supposition that the mind can be equated with physiology.
Various sciences and other forms of discourse may be concerned with a human being or various groups of them for example. Each will employ, typically, a distinctive set of concepts and generalizations. For physics, the claim may be that they are made up of atoms or protons and neutrons, etc.; chemistry may focus on the complexity of organic compounds and reactions involved in biological processes; biology may see members of a species with some particular evolutionary history, sociology might describe the group in terms of cultural patters or established habits and activities, linguistics focuses on distinctions or commonalities of language in actual use; psychology on perception, thought and other higher order processes. Some times it is useful to look across the boundaries, and we get recognized developments of physical chemistry, or biochemistry, or physiological biology, etc. But these special developments while often useful or illuminating don't typically replace the sciences they bridge. Full reduction of one science to another is more a matter of sketchy, unfinished proposals and programs of research than full and finished, accomplished results. QM may illuminate chemistry, for example but the chemists typically proceed in terms of their own specific concepts, generalizations and programs of research. There is good reason for this. QM often does not proceed beyond the simplest examples, and going further is extremely complicated.
The general point is that the various concepts and generalizations of the sciences don't map onto each other easily or exactly; and we are sometimes just left to wonder about their relationships. Such is the case, in particular, with descriptions of the brain and descriptions of the mind. We normally suppose that the mind makes a difference in the world, as when someone sees, thinks about what they see and then makes up their mind to do something. It would seem pretty pointless to have minds if they could have no effects in the world. But in spite of that, and I proceed for the time being in terms of common-sense psychology, we don't have any general means of correlating descriptions of minds with descriptions of brains. Minds seem very closely related to the brain, and there is good evidence of that, still not knowing the details of the relationship need not put either anatomy or psychology under a cloud.
H.G. Callaway
By means of qi-gon, I myself use forest qigong.
For example, I present a painting of tree(By Aoqi Hiroyuki) in a park.
Beginer patients bring the action of somewhat nausea or else to see the paint,
But to the end of the series of session, the patient feels ease, realizing
comfortable to see the sunrise back to the tree of rainbow colored leafs,
a girl running towards the tree, parent watch her, people take a walk in distant view.
Where, there is a kind of resonance between patient and doctor relationship.
The idea of oxymoron may include similar contradiction, we can not refuse nor avoid.
Again,
Of course, Schema therapy is designed by Jeffry Young
for treatment of personality disorders, but nowadays it seems clear
that it is effective to other mental disorders , chronic depression, general anxiety disorders and so on.
We can gain more good result with such patients when we can get resonant with patients’ feeling.
With qigong training, we could feel that everything in universe is made of super strings.
In fact, body is strictly bordered by our skin from our eye resolution, but from the point of bacteria and virus’s view
there are a lot of pores and they go through in and out, the result is infection. By far, neutrino go through every matter including our body which is thought to be consisted of super-strings by quantum theory.
We know that the heart is an organ with an anatomy and that this organ also functions; namely, it has a physiology. We also know that the anatomical brain can, when necessary, trigger a fear response, which I conceive of as physiology. What though is hard for us to grasp is that brain function is, in some very complex manner, also a part of what might be called the physiology of mind. Paul
Dear Paul,
I also can say brain functions and has a physiology, and triggering a fear response, Prof.Fox of Univ Oxford
says that amygdala become more active and swallen observed with fMRI. She calls amygdala “rainy brain, the nucleus accumbens “sunny brain” which functions antagonistic to amygdala.That is, when people feels fear, their amygdala become hyperactive and those feel easy the nucleus accumbens become rather active. So psychosomatic disorders can be expressed to be the state
that patients are worried of physical symptoms without organic signs observed. We can go as the same lebel of feeling ease or fear, by resonance with qigong namely empathy.
Kazuo Oie
John, Unfortunately your wines are so poor. But fortunately, you have still an Empire! good luck to the Empire college !
Not any more Dominique. Champagne-like bubbly wine grown and produced in England is now reaching great heights. Paul. PS Despite my own reservations, this really is true!
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