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Medications that change who we are

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Re: Medications that change who we are

#141

Post by kerkeslager »

aldoushuxley001 wrote: post #129
kerkeslager wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem goes at least as far back as Plato and the allegory of the cave. Plato spread this concept that there was a difference between the body and mind or soul, and Western culture has never really recovered from the stupidity of that idea. There's really no evidence or justification for it. Your mind and your body are the same thing.

> Your mind and your body are the same thing. That is incorrect, but unfortunately a very common misunderstanding. The mind is highly correlated with the brain but it is not the brain. It’s easy to see this is the case because the brain is made up of a qualitatively different material than the mind. While the brain is composed of biological cells / chemistry / atoms, the mind is composed of things like sense-percepti…

Your argument falls apart where you claim something is abundantly clear, when you can't even clearly describe what you think is abundantly clear.

You're claiming red light isn't the perception of red. I can be on board with those semantics, but they are just semantics. In that case, I'd say the phenomenon described by the terms is that red light is the electromagnetic radiation in the long range of the visible spectrum, and the perception of red is the chemical cascade starting with the stimulation of L-cones and ending with the firing of neurons in the visual cortex.

You keep saying that red light and the perception of red are "highly correlated" with red, but I'm saying, there's no evidence for anything besides red light and the perception of red. You're saying that the brain and the mind are made up of qualitatively different material, but I'm saying, "qualitative" implies "observable", and you've yet to present an observable phenomenon that is clearly the mind.

Either the mind is indistinguishable from the brain, in which case we don't need a second term for it, or it's a distinguishable phenomenon that you've failed to actually demonstrate exists. It's not clear which is the case, because you haven't made it clear what observable phenomena you are calling "the mind".

Re: Medications that change who we are

#142

Post by kerkeslager »

mcguire wrote: post #137
aldoushuxley001 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your mind and your body are the same thing. That is incorrect, but unfortunately a very common misunderstanding. The mind is highly correlated with the brain but it is not the brain. It’s easy to see this is the case because the brain is made up of a qualitatively different material than the mind. While the brain is composed of biological cells / chemistry / atoms, the mind is composed of things like sense-percepti…

" The mind is highly correlated with the brain but it is not the brain. " ... in roughly the same way that a process is not a processor. Or a program, for that matter.

Okay, if you're saying that the mind is just the sequence of events occurring inside the brain, I certainly won't argue that the sequence of events doesn't exist.

However, I don't think that's what most people mean when they say "mind", and using the word "mind" brings with it a lot of baggage, so I'd prefer to use a more descriptive term, like "sequence of events".

Re: Medications that change who we are

#143

Post by banads »

asimovfan wrote: post #3

Everything that happens to us changes who we are. Every conversation we make. Everything we think. We are not the same person in any given moment. Also, because we are shaped by the things that happen to us, we are literally actually not ourselves but rather "everything else".

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man"

Re: Medications that change who we are

#144

Post by dr_dshiv »

aphextron wrote: post #32

>"It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains." I feel like perpetuating this mindset is the ultimate sin of modern psychiatry and the entire industry of psychiatric pharmaceuticals - your brain is your body. It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. People think they can take an a…

I take issue with the idea that we have some intrinsic essentialist self/soul/atman that constitutes "who we are" — such that it could be changed. If taking antidepressants makes one less neurotic, does that mean we have been fundamentally changed? Doubtful.

The illusion of the self is socially useful and pervasive, but there isn't much to support it.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#145

Post by jjjensen90 »

noir_lord wrote: post #138

I take gabapentin for a spinal issue (nerve damage in my spine) and it has a drastic and noticeable effect, I'm naturally quiet and introverted but when I take the higher prescribed dose that changes radically, I become outgoing and talkative, I have more confidence and I seem to be more creative (though that could just be the reduction in pain). It definitely alters my mood and I can feel it happen.

Gabapentin has an off-label use as a mood stabilizer for those with bipolar disorder and other mood disorders. I've seen it turn manic lives into successful lives.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#146

Post by mcguire »

kerkeslager wrote: post #142
mcguire wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The mind is highly correlated with the brain but it is not the brain. " ... in roughly the same way that a process is not a processor. Or a program, for that matter.

Okay, if you're saying that the mind is just the sequence of events occurring inside the brain, I certainly won't argue that the sequence of events doesn't exist. However, I don't think that's what most people mean when they say "mind", and using the word "mind" brings with it a lot of baggage, so I'd prefer to use a more descriptive term, like "sequence of events".

"Sequence of events", to me, doesn't capture the relationship between subsequent states of either the brain or the mind. Also, "states of mind" have an explanatory power that "states of the brain" don't have, even though the former are theoretically reducable to the latter.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#147

Post by dr_dshiv »

kerkeslager wrote: post #36
aphextron wrote: post #32

>"It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains." I feel like perpetuating this mindset is the ultimate sin of modern psychiatry and the entire industry of psychiatric pharmaceuticals - your brain is your body. It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. People think they can take an a…

I think the problem goes at least as far back as Plato and the allegory of the cave. Plato spread this concept that there was a difference between the body and mind or soul, and Western culture has never really recovered from the stupidity of that idea. There's really no evidence or justification for it. Your mind and your body are the same thing.

I like reading ignorant things like this because it helps show why we really need more classical education in society. If you'd actually read some Plato, as opposed to summaries, I'd be shocked if you could keep the same belief. It's just so damn good for thinking with.

But prior to Plato, the Pythagorean Philolaus wrote that sensation/experience comes from the interaction between the soul (greek: psyche) and the body. Soul, here, is not the experiencing thing but the immaterial forms. (Summary: an example of an immaterial form is the concept of a triangle — a real and meaningful form but separate from any material instance). This Pythagorean view of the soul is compelling and has similarities with the idea of computational logic being fundamentally separable from the media of computation. The same logic can run on silicon or some water pump computer.

So, from this, if mind is what we'd call the experience, then it isn't just the body. It is the material body interacting with the soul (the "computational" forms).

Re: Medications that change who we are

#148

Post by pkaye »

> the US alone buying up 49,000 tonnes of paracetamol every year – equivalent to about 298 paracetamol tablets per person

I bet many of those expire and are never consumed. There is very little pricing difference based on quantity so people buy much more than needed.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#149

Post by eivarv »

truth_be_told wrote: post #110
eivarv wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might be side effects to modern medicine, but there's no reason to assume that traditional beliefs re: health and medicine are more correct; The arguments behind them are usually epistemologically unsound, and they are often out-and-out superstitions.

Somewhat True, but "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater". Much of "traditional medicine" is empirically based. The models they came up with to explain the mechanisms may not be valid in light of today's Scientific Knowledge but they are instructive nevertheless (rungs in a ladder leading to better understanding etc.) As an example we still don't know how exactly Acupuncture works but do know that it works for…

    "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater"
Right, but we don't have any reason to assume it to be true if there's noe evidence to support it - which would be step one in determining whether its a reasonable belief, and integrating it into modern medicine.

As for your example, we do not know that acupuncture works - conclusions are inconsistent in systematic reviews, which would suggest that it's not effective. Most researchers I've heard speak about the subject seem to believe any perceived reduction in pain to be due to placebo.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#150

Post by xiphias2 »

doitLP wrote: post #92
xiphias2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the brain is not apart from the rest of the body, there is a special thing between the two: the blood-brain barrier, which is actually quite hard to cross with medications, and poses a real challange in curing brain diseases.

Sure but the list of drugs that cross that barrier is long. Everything from antibiotics to statins. And even if they didn’t, the body is a tightly interconnected system. Taking an antidepressant to “selectively affect serotonin” in the brain? Whoops, turns out your gut has at least as many serotonin receptors as the brain. Taking a statin to reduce cholesterol (which it does very well but with an NNT > 200 for heart…

I believe you, but I just wanted to read up about where serotonin receptors are expressed in the human body in what amount, but the Wikipedia page on serotonin receptors didn't write about it.

I'm not in the medical field, but try to keep up just a little bit to have some basic knowledge, but it's quite hard as often I see that Wikipedia is many years behind.

At the same time medical articles take a lot of time to read, as they are much less accessable.

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