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

yearning for 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)