modern technological difficulties… please stand by…
The philosopher Richard Rorty wrote,
“To suggest the mind is of the brain is to suggest we secrete theorems and symphonies as our spleen secretes dark humors.”
There is something burrowing deep here for mental health. For, its fulcrum opens up the human being itself, to reveal uncomfortable feelings about what is happening.
the origins of modern medicine and mental health
A long time ago, a guy named Galen came up with the notion of ‘humors’ for the understanding and treatment of the human maladies. Basically, the idea was that there were 4 humors in the body, each with an associated secretion, such as “bile”, and that sickness was due to an imbalance in the humors, too little or much bile from a particular humor. This medical notion was the mainstay for hundreds of years.
Rorty is suggesting that in the same way that illness is not caused by an imbalance of humor biles, mental health is not brought about by a secretion of the brain called a Mind.
It there a teleological suspension of the brain-mind correlation?
Is it necessary that I think my brain is making my mind?
I say no. But it is sufficient to have a real world. There is no requirement for me to think that my mind has basis in a physical brain for me to have mental health, but I can if it helps to be happy, healthy, content, able, and what have you.
Now, if this is indeed the case, that my brain is not creating my mind, then something really strange and miraculous happens.
I can be free.
The issue then is really existential: for the most part, people do not really want to be free. They want to be told if the way they are doing things is correct, and this, arguably, roots down into the deep soil of mental issues. We see this with the prevalence of popular mental health social media in the “5 things” or “three tips” that can help a person with the anger or depression, say.
But, this is not wrong. It simply is the way people exist in reality.
Freedom is not necessary for mental health, and in fact, often makes the is mental issue worse.
If the state of my mind is determined by brain secretion, whether it be serotonin, symphonies, or stories, then certain, particular, and predictable feature must necessarily arise and correlate for meaning.
And this is the reason why modern science must have a semantic correlation between brain and mind. Psychology simply has no basis or way to help us unless this exists.
Further. In order for psychology to work, it is not simply that one must believe in it. For indeed psychology works much of the time regardless of what we think – this post is proof of that!. The issue is when it does not work, what do we do with it? What happens when psychology shows its flaws?
Well, usually we just double down and insist that the meaning we have is not simple meaning. We see some meaning as (somehow) extending beyond meaning to be something that is ‘not’ meaningful, like, as we say in the philosophical world, “neutral lumps of matter”, in our case, such as the brain. As though my brain is behaving badly and I then have no power to be more that it give of me, and I resort to psychology and its kin to fix me.
As the Existentialist authors have told us (for example Kiekegaard) when people are forced to come upon their freedom, they sort of trip out and run away from it. This creates problems; but I say this problem is reality itself.
Why do I matter?
You matter, because you are mattering!
The contemporary and New Materialist philosopher Karen Barad coined this phrase in her book meeting the universe half way, about how material matters, and what matters is material.
In this sense, mental health is the mattering that you are and the issues that you face are the matter that has meaning to you.
In the case of mental issues, though, it is not simply a case of meaning, not simply the way we are making meaning of things because, to bring in Thomas Nail, the meaning that we are making is a dynamic presence of historical motion. All of these things exceed (they do not transcend and they are not immanent) meaning.
What is happening here?
Once we begin to notice that the universe is indeed showing up in this way, then we can begin to have an authentic relationship with what is happening.
The epistemological ramifications of this kind of awareness could have many appearances, which I get into elsewhere.
But for now.
Stay. Here.