Materialist Philosophy of Mind in Psych

Hey guys,

I've been really interested in issues in theoretical psychology. They really keep me up at night and cause me quite a bit of distress. I'm always amazed at how some of the most basic problems of psychology are still unresolved. Here's one of the things I've been thinking about.

As most of you are probably aware, there have been incredible advancing in neuroscience. The neurological, biochemical and herditary basis of mental, behavioural and personality disorders has been developed in the last few decades. However, the conclusions many people are coming to seem somewhat startling and counter intuitive.

Materialist monism is a philosophical theory about the nature of subjective consciousness. The theory holds that first person ontologically subjective mental phenomenon can be reduced to their causal neurological and biochemical antecedents. The process that this occurs usually involves taking "folk psychology" concepts like memory and investigating it such that it can be determined to either have no empirical foundation (i.e the id, superego or will) or to be reducible to a number of theoretical psychological constructs (i.e semantic memory, episodic memory, sensory memory, long term memory, short term memory etcetera). These theoretical psychological constructs are then upheld as being biological attributes and the materialist conception of subjective consciousness begins to be pieced together as the empirical research adds up.

The problem with this is that I'm unsure if theoretical psychological constucts are reducible to biological attributes. The idea that "semantic memory" is a biological attribute seems to beg the question about what type of biological attribute. Also, how can "semantic memory" be a specific biological attribute if the content of semantic memory differs from person to person. I'm sure you could substitute "semantic memory" for whatever theoretical psychological construct your interested in (i.e Bipolar Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Narcissitc Personality Disorder, etcetera) and ask the same question. If the brain activity is different or the private experience is different then what is the shared attribute?

There seems to be a great discontinuity between individuals and their experience of the world and with language use and behaviour being our only way to get a picture (this is an intentionally misleading metaphor) of how someone experiences the world it seems that even if the materialist doctrine held true it wouldn't follow that we could necessarily have the kind of knowledge that they claim is possible.

There is alot at stake here. The entire medical paradigm in psychology presupposes materialist monism and if you've been diagnosed with a mental, behavioural or personality disorder then the assertion is essentially that you posess an undiscovered biological attribute. Also, they're talking about our private experience! Can it really be reduced from the phenomenal to the material?

What do you think?

(Churchland explaining her brand of materialism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzT0jHJdq7Q)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism)

Question: Why did Jones kill Smith?

Answer #1: TBA, though it will be couched in terms of neuroscience or, better still, quantum mechanics.

Answer #2: Jones hated Smith.

Only one of these is an "explanation" in any sense of the term; the other is a promissory note, if not a utopian piece of sci fi.

Our everyday notions of free will & personal identity are crude at best (thinkers diverse as Buddha & Hume have commented on this), but they constitute part of a highly useful and reliable explanatory framework. Predictions based on what people are believing & desiring work pretty well most of the time. The intentional stance (or folk psychology) can be justified on instrumental grounds alone. Whether beliefs, desires, and will power really truly exist is a subspecies of the question whether chairs and other everyday objects do (or if they're merely collections of whirling atoms).

... even if the materialist doctrine held true it wouldn't follow that we could necessarily have the kind of knowledge that they claim is possible.

Right. The necessary equations for Answer #1 might take longer to read than the universe will exist. They'd be True, but not very helpful.

There's something fishy about reductionist claims. Whether Psychology is reducible to Biology to Chemistry to Physics is an empirical question, and a question of what constitutes an explanation. The latter is a stickler.

Let me put it to you in this way: In psychology, we can't all even agree on a definition of the word "abnormal". But i like to think of studying psychology or neuroscience like trying to drive a car 60 MPH down dangerous paths, while trying to look under the hood to see how your car works when you drive it, and learn enough to understand the car's workings, while trying to drive...

I'm constantly in awe of the physiology of behavior and neuroscience, however, and wouldn't change my area of study for anything.