Well Ulysses according to several deffinitions I know you and everyone in
the world have already experienced mental illness.
In very many cases mental illness is an exaggeration of the norm, For
example most people have fealt a degree of negative emotion or sadness, it
becomes depression however when either a, it has no visible cause or B, it's
effects cannot be countered by the individual themselves even when the cause
of the depression is known.
Same with things like schizophrenia, since you've had beliefs, fears,
perceptions of reality that weren't correct.
My one concern with a purely neurological apporach is that it can be
extremely dehumanising and can ignore the freedom and autonomy of
individuals. indeed in extreme cases I have seen strong proponents of
biological determinism adopt an epeophinomonological perspective, where they
believe the actual qualea of experienced consciousness is simply a sideline
of an underlying neurological process, and would like to for example replace
the term "sadness" in our dictionary as to just! mean low serotonin levels,
even though in practice the link between serotonin and depression is just a
corrilation not an identical one. Or to put it another way, the brain is a
physical object which possesses mental properties which are not identical
with the physical aspects of that object though they relate to it.
This is why while I find neuro psychology fascinating as a subject I'd not
want to forget the human element of mind and consciousness, indeed as one
very respected philosopher in my department who has himself studdied the
relationship of experience and consciousness from a buhdist perspective once
said to me "the biggest problem with psychologists is that they aren't good
enough philosophers"
A great book to read on this subject is Introduction tophilosophy of Mind by
E.J. Lowe, (and I'm not just recommending it because it was written by one
of my university's professors), since it goes through many of the central
issues and offers some quite unique perspectives.
Then again, unless your planning on creating a game of Brain invaders this
is probably off topic for the list so we'd better bring this discussion back
to games.
Beware the grue!
dark.
---
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