Re: Withdrawal from antidepressants

[Christopher D. Green]

Pollak, Edward wrote: To Chris & Peter: The problem is that the term "psychology" (i.e., knowledge of the mind or soul) is an inherently dualistic concept (sensu substance dualism). If you want to be a hard reductionist about the mental, that is, of course, your prerogative. However, to claim that there are no alternatives with respect to the mind-body problem available other than substance dualism and physiological reductionism is, quite simply, false (in the sense that the answer "There aren't any." would get one a failing grade on an intro philosophy of mind exam question that went "What are the alternative descriptions of the relation between mind and body besides Cartesian dualism and phsyiological reductionism?"). To claim otherwise is, instead, a well-known *rhetorical* move by reductionists to force people into believing that reductionism is their only rational choice (since pretty well everyone has thought that Cartesian dualism is highly unlikely since Helmholtz's paper on the conservation of energy). The move was shown up for what it is, however, back in the 1960s when people like Jerry Fodor and Hilary Putnam introduced "token identity theory"  -- roughly, the belief that every individual ("token") mental entity or process may be reducible to a "token" physiological entity or process (thus satisfying materialistic monism) but that there may well be no good mappings from mental *types* (e.g. all instances of a certain mental process, such as pain) on to to physiological *types* (e.g., the firing of C-fibers in the spinal cord), thereby breaking the relation assumed by and required for reductionism. This is *not*, note, to say that token identity theory is necessarily true (or that reductionism is necessarily false). It is, rather, to demonstrate that one *can* coherently believe that the mental vocabulary is necessary in order to understand certain things about the natural world without having to abandon materialism for substance dualism. 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]