Now I call these “narratives” because they are deliberate oversimplifications; riparianx is right that it may well be that some mental illnesses are “mind” and some are “brain,” and some a bit of both.
Or that distinction simply doesn’t make any sense.
If I hug a person and the person feels better I can explain that with a raise in oxytocin or with changed unconscious thoughts about how the person feels liked. Making that distinction isn’t useful for guiding actions.
Any psychopharmaceutical is going to affect thinking patterns.
Furthermore there are issues in depression that are neither mind nor brain.
Above I spoke about releasing a trigger against my neighbors drilling machine. That involved noticing that part of my head get tense in response to the sound and releasing the tension. There’s no mind-body dualism in that approach.
No-one’s saying anything about mind-body dualism—except you.
Maybe a building is toppling over because of faulty design. Or maybe because the materials are substandard. These are separable issues, even though it is quite true that the design of the building is completely explicable in terms of materials.
Yes, psychoparmaceuticals affect thinking patterns, and yes, thinking patterns are fundamentally explicable in terms of biochemical states. But it is nevertheless the case that no amount of talking is going to fix someone’s pre-synaptic uptake processes.
Or that distinction simply doesn’t make any sense.
Do you really think it doesn’t make sense to make a distinction between:
Mental illnesses are caused by negative patterns of conscious and unconscious thought.
Mental illnesses are caused by biochemical imbalances in the brain.
Or are you just trolling?
If I hug a person and the person feels better I can explain that with a raise in oxytocin or with changed unconscious thoughts about how the person feels liked. Making that distinction isn’t useful for guiding actions.
Any psychopharmaceutical is going to affect thinking patterns.
Furthermore there are issues in depression that are neither mind nor brain.
Above I spoke about releasing a trigger against my neighbors drilling machine. That involved noticing that part of my head get tense in response to the sound and releasing the tension. There’s no mind-body dualism in that approach.
No-one’s saying anything about mind-body dualism—except you.
Maybe a building is toppling over because of faulty design. Or maybe because the materials are substandard. These are separable issues, even though it is quite true that the design of the building is completely explicable in terms of materials.
Yes, psychoparmaceuticals affect thinking patterns, and yes, thinking patterns are fundamentally explicable in terms of biochemical states. But it is nevertheless the case that no amount of talking is going to fix someone’s pre-synaptic uptake processes.
Using substandard materials is itself a design flaw.
Distinguishing the mind from the brain is what mind body dualism is all about.
I have no reason to believe that’s true. Talking can trigger hormonal release and those hormons can change pre-synaptic uptake processes.