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ilja's picture

I was not raised in

I was not raised in absolutes or in true science, in fact I was never really a science person. I was more the humanities kind and there everything is subjective. I therefore don't like absolutes, I don't like complete truths. As for the question whether I belief Descartes or Dickinson in their analysis of the brain I tend to choose Dickinson since it helps us move forward and investigate more.  

If I understand Descartes correctly he beliefs that besides our body there is some immaterial part of us that makes us who we are. Guides our behavior, creates our beliefs and desires. To me that just sounds weak, why have all the material body if we can do it all based on this immaterial soul? And how do these two interact? Where is it? Who is it influenced by in making decisions? Since it is very hard to answer these questions if the answer is an immaterial soul that we can’t see or measure it is hard to find any answers. I know that this is not a very strong argument for saying that Descartes is wrong. But well, it is more of a gut feeling that I’m following anyway.

So if we look at Dickinson the “the brain = behavior” we can start to look for some answers in the physical mass that is our brain. But also here I have a gut feeling against the idea that our brain is completely subjective and that we thus create our individual worlds on our own. I like to think that HOW we see things (as beautiful or ugly, as blue or green) is the subjectivity of our brain but that there in fact is a physical world out there that we interact with. The world just looks different to everybody because of their individual, subjective perspectives of it.

In the end the most important conclusion that I have right now is that I just don’t know enough about the brain, the physical one that I belief creates our behavior somehow, to really give more details about why I belief what the brain and behavior is.

 

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