I must say, I really liked the conclusion of your piece 😉

Thanks! 😊                                                                                                  

I had no clue that Brentano was an inspiration for both Gestalt psychology and phenomenology

Once you go looking for stuff like intentionality you can’t get around Brentano really

Yeah, intentionality always seemed like a topic that was too technical

Do you think I explain it OK?  😊                                                             

As far as I can see, yes, but I’m no philosopher. The way you link it consciousness works really well though

We seem to leave the thinking subject out of the equation when we just look at the brain

Yeah, we can see the stimulus, the thing in the world that causes our impressions

and we can see the chain of effects it has on the brain                      

but it seems like we don’t really look at the one doing the thinking, having the thoughts anymore.😏

Brentano helps a lot there, since he makes it clear it is precisely not the soul or spirit or whatever that is the problem

Right, the whole “psychology without a soul” thing you quote

Yep: Lange’s History of Materialism from 1866.                                   

Ha! You certainly know your stuff.😊

The main point is that phenomenology reminds us that it is not just objects affecting objects, the world affecting the brain

but objects affecting subjects, the world appearing to a conscious mind.

I still think that the last bit might be a bit abstract for a lot of readers, but as I said: I liked it! 😊

So you think the magazine will accept it?                                               

I think so, but there will no doubt be some requests for changes and copyediting to deal with

Great! I look forward to how people will react to it! 😊                     

I think I’ve got the final part worked out now                                        

I agree, this makes for a nice closer to the series😊

Since you mentioned Descartes _twice_ I just had to include him😊 

Ha! But I couldn’t believe what you wrote at first and had to look it up 😄

That Descartes is not actually a dualist? I was surprised too at first

Yeah! I always thought he was the main example for completely separating mind and body

Well, in a sense you’re right, but he also does say that “I and the body constitute one single thing”

Sounds perfectly logical, but the way he explains the link …

He just points out that mind-body interaction works differently from body-body interaction

So looking at how matter and energy bounce around in the brain …

… can’t tell the whole story about the mind and consciousness        

I think I actually agree, but isn’t that very sceptical? 😏

A bit: “Ignoramus et ignorabimus” (Du Bois-Reymond 1872)             

My French might be rusty, but my Latin is non-existent

“We don’t know and will never know” how the brain causes the mind

And that gives you the jumping-off point to discuss alternatives

Indeed! Do you think it works?                                                                 

As long as you keep the Latin to a minimum … 😊

I’ll just paraphrase him then and reference the original                     

That would be better. 👍

OK, I got your draft, read it through, and I have some suggestions

First of all: it is too long and too detailed, I suggest we split it up 😉

So I can elaborate and explain?                                                              

Indeed. But I did like the setup of the argument a lot! 😊

Nice! I noticed there were so many early breakthroughs thanks to experiments on the brain 🧠

that this became the dominant paradigm and we kinda forgot about consciousness

Exactly! And then there is the bit at the end about the alternatives

OK, you should work those out in a separate article, and you have to explain about Darwin first

“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind”                    (Darwin 1871, 106)

This basically allowed us to translate what happens in animal brains to human brains

and since for the longest time animals were seen as barely more than machines …

… basically we’re back to Descartes, who thought our bodies were biological robots. 🤖

It basically enabled the whole paradigm: to understand the mind, we investigate the brain, humans are sufficiently like animals, so …

we can learn about humans by studying animals, and reduce the whole shebang to biological mechanisms. Clever.

And then I introduce some alternative approaches and critiques    

William James said that despite all the biological explanations it is still a complete mystery “how a motion became a feeling”.

You do need to explain that a bit more though …

Basically by reducing the mind to the brain we try to explain consciousness by matter in motion …

… basically we’re back to Descartes. Sorry, I’m repeating myself 😄

Well, Descartes thought that this couldn’t be done at all, that we needed something other than matter to explain the mind

Thank you for the instructions, I’ve started writing and have some questions

Shoot! 😊

Do you think I can quote some of the old texts in the article or is that too boring?

Well, that depends. A short, punchy one-liner should be fine.

OK, here’s a few I was thinking about using:                                         

“Thoughts stand in the same relation to the brain as urine to the kidneys” (Vogt,1846)

“No thought without phosphorus” (Moleschott ,1852)                        

“The brain creates a conscious field just as the stomach and digestive tract create digestion.” (Searle ,2005)

Holy moly! Last one’s a bit long, but those are certainly fine!

Yeah, I was doubting that last one, but I wanted to show how we still think in those same terms about the brain and the mind  😊

They do sound similar, but are they really the same, more than a century later?

I found someone saying literally the same thing as Searle, but it’s in French:

“Pour se faire une idée juste des opérations de la pensée, il faut considérer le cerveau comme un organe particulier, destiné spécialement à la produire; de même que l’estomac et les intestins à faire la digestion” (Cabanis ,1802)

OK, that is too long and too French … my high school French is quite rusty, but that does sound like literally the same, yeah. 😊

Cabanis is basically saying that the brain produces though like the stomach produces digestion, so …

You could just reference it, without the whole quote.

I guess that would work too.                                                                    

Good find, those quotes are quite thought provoking. So are you arguing against progress in neuroscience?

Oh no, not at all! Just that there’s some very basic assumptions we’ve kept since the beginning. 😊

OK, even more looking forward to your draft!