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Our conversations regarding the effects of culture on cognition (shared subjectivity) and science stuck out to me the most from this past semester.  We addressed how mental illness fads, such as the one surrounding depression, could trigger higher levels of the illness just because people are more aware of and sensitive to it. Moreover, the concept of an illness is also culturally defined and we only see illnesses through the lenses established by society. We use science to defend and justify these labels that we create. Thus, in this way culture also shapes science research in determining its direction and adding a certain level of bias. I feel like people tend to see what they want to see, and while science follows an “objective” process, this can also hold true for science to some extent.

In some ways, I think social influences on human behavior and thinking is larger than the biological/neural determinants. For example, if the biological determinants of depression constitute the largest component of determining if someone has depression, then we wouldn’t have witnessed this sudden surge in depression rates in recent years. There is the argument that people’s neural structures may have changed to become more prone to depression, but I think culture has played a large role in bringing about this phenomenon. Similarly, while in our discussion of the neurological basis of pair bonding we discussed the biological components of mate finding and attraction, I think people tend to use social guidelines more in their search for love than their biological signals. While we may be unconsciously attracted to the pheromones of a good potential match, I think these instincts are largely overridden by desires and images of love created by society.

Thus, this shared subjectivity created by society/culture plays a very significant role in how people think and what direction science goes. This brings me to another interesting point covered during the semester, which was the individuality of the brain. No matter how much we try to localize function to areas of brain, can we ever really generalize these findings across all people? Maybe people just have different neural networks that can give rise to similar processes (and a shared subjectivity) in different, unique ways.

While culture is important because it gives us a method in which to think about things, it is also a disability in that it is hard to go outside of this shared subjectivity and see things in a different way. I think this class was a great exercise in doing exactly this—trying to see things from perspectives that are not normally taken and to challenge the accepted.

My questions:

1. Can depression be subdivided into smaller categories? Or is it the smallest category which we can use to describe a group a symptoms? Is depression an individualized condition and are we moving farther away from finding effective treatments by trying to develop generalized diagnoses and treatment plans? (This question applies to all major mental illnesses but i just wrote it in the context of depression).

2. Pheromones vs. social guidelines in finding love. I dont know how ethical this kind of research would be, but do relationships that start from pheromone compatibility do better than those that are established following social guidelines (finding someone who is attractive and a good mate in terms defined by society). THis would speak to the effectiveness of our innate ability to find a good mate.

3. How does consciousness arise? What makes the different levels of consciousness possible (unconscious, the state of sleeping, etc.)?