Re: Withdrawal from antidepressants

[Christopher D. Green]

Shearon, Tim wrote: Edward Pollak wrote: =Am I the only one who thinks that the "psychological vs. physiological" distinction reeks of the kind of dualistic thinking of which I try so hard to dissuade my =students?  Do you feel the same way about the difference between, say, "biological" and "chemical." There's nothing wrong (IMHO) with pitching language at different levels of analysis, as long as you don't bring along the unnecessary assumption that there is something deeply metaphysical about it. Many psychologists (especially behaviorists, in my experience) seem to believe that Cartesian dualism ("substance dualism," as philosophers call it) is the only kind of dualism availalbe, and thus that we must work feverishly to banish it from our discourse. This is a wildly archaic position. One could instead (indeed, I suspect most people actually are) "property dualists," which involves far fewer metaphysical difficulties than its 400-year old ancestor. Do you think that there are some properties which are readily explicable at one level of analysis but not at another? Then you're a property dualist. It doesn't mean you don't believe that each "higher" property ultimately supervenes on properties at a "lower" level of analysis, but you may not think that the "higher" one is strictly "reducible" to the "lower" (because of, perhaps, "multiple realizability"). In fact, you could even believe in reducibility "in principle," but still be a property dualist because you believe that the reductions are, in all likelihood, hopelessly complex. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ============================ . --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]