glen e. p. ropella wrote circa 11-09-19 03:30 PM: > Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 11-09-19 01:07 PM: >> You are talking to a man with an insulin pump. I start to think VERY BADLY >> if anything goes wrong with it. > > Yeah, I don't know either. But part of my fascination with this topic > lies in the use of psychedelic drugs (not _my_ use of such, of course > ... the FSM knows I would never touch such stuff). We (humans and some > animals, it seems) purposefully make worse some specific body processes > in order to "think badly". > > It seems to me that a little "bad thinking" now and again can be a Good > Thing(TM).
Oh, I forgot to mention that I think this issue (mind-body problem) is intimately related to the old adage "the dose is the poison". Whether an alteration in a physiological process is "bad", "good", "better", or "worse", depends a very great deal on just how altered the process is. It seems reasonable that a little of the poisonous ethanol on a regular basis is "good" and a debilitating inhibition of dopamine production is "bad". But there is a large swatch of gray in between where "bad" and "good" are too oversimplifying to be useful. In any case, it's pretty easy for me to see a mind-body problem and to see it as a fundamental, immediate, medical issue. I've experimented quite a bit with my own mind-body dichotomy by switching hands on various tasks. I recently switched _back_ to using my right hand to brush my teeth. When I switched to my left (something like 10 years ago), I could barely finish the job without tiring out my arm. None of the muscles worked in any way that might be called efficient, even though I felt like I was telling my body to behave the same way it did when I'd use my right hand. Well, I finally got good at doing it with my left hand, although in a different way from what I remember for my right hand. I used my wrist much more with my right hand, and my elbow much more with my left hand. Well, when I switched just recently, I seemed to be using my right arm like I learned to use my left arm! I.e. very little give in the wrist and most movement in the elbow. I'm now trying to re-learn to use my wrist more with my right hand. If I do, then I'll switch again and try to do the same with my left. Although this sort of thing may not _seem_ like a mind-body problem, it most definitely is. Despite our realization that the mind is embodied, there may be some processes that can be swapped out, a perfect "impedance match", with another process (like an artificial eyeball, limb, or insulin pump). And yet, there may not be any such processes. If every little mechanism in our body has a salient impact on our mind, then the mind-body problem disappears. But if not, then the mind-body problem becomes one of requirements analysis, scaling, and the autonomy of various components. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
