Nicole Rust on Nostr: What is mind/brain reductionism, in practice? In Kandel's 2005 book, he lays out 5 ...
What is mind/brain reductionism, in practice?
In Kandel's 2005 book, he lays out 5 tenants to "outline an intellectual framework designed to align current psychiatric thinking and training of future practitioners with modern biology". I regard this as a good snapshot of the "reductionism" that many quibble with, as it is practiced by the neuroscientists who adopt it. Would anyone disagree (either that this is reductionism or that this is a good snapshot of it?). Here are the principles.
Principle 1. All mental processes derive from operations of the brain.
Principle 2. Genes and their proteins are important determinants of the pattern of interconnections between neurons and how neurons function.
Principle 3. Alerted genes do not, by themselves, explain all of the variance of a given major mental illness. Social or developmental factors also contribute very importantly. Just as combinations of genes contribute to behavior, including social behavior, so can behavior and social factors exert actions on the brain by feeding back upon it to modify the expression of genes and thus the function of nerve cells. Learning, including learning that results in dysfunctional behavior, produces alterations in gene expression. Thus all of "nurture" is ultimately expressed as "nature".
Principle 4. Alternations in gene expression induced by learning give rise to changes in patterns of neuronal connections. These changes ... are responsible for initiating and maintaining abnormalities of behavior that are induced by social contingencies.
Principle 5. Insofar as psychotherapy or counseling is effective and produces long-term changes in behavior, it presumably does so through learning, by producing changes in gene expression ...
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-05732-000
(Also available at archive.org).
In Kandel's 2005 book, he lays out 5 tenants to "outline an intellectual framework designed to align current psychiatric thinking and training of future practitioners with modern biology". I regard this as a good snapshot of the "reductionism" that many quibble with, as it is practiced by the neuroscientists who adopt it. Would anyone disagree (either that this is reductionism or that this is a good snapshot of it?). Here are the principles.
Principle 1. All mental processes derive from operations of the brain.
Principle 2. Genes and their proteins are important determinants of the pattern of interconnections between neurons and how neurons function.
Principle 3. Alerted genes do not, by themselves, explain all of the variance of a given major mental illness. Social or developmental factors also contribute very importantly. Just as combinations of genes contribute to behavior, including social behavior, so can behavior and social factors exert actions on the brain by feeding back upon it to modify the expression of genes and thus the function of nerve cells. Learning, including learning that results in dysfunctional behavior, produces alterations in gene expression. Thus all of "nurture" is ultimately expressed as "nature".
Principle 4. Alternations in gene expression induced by learning give rise to changes in patterns of neuronal connections. These changes ... are responsible for initiating and maintaining abnormalities of behavior that are induced by social contingencies.
Principle 5. Insofar as psychotherapy or counseling is effective and produces long-term changes in behavior, it presumably does so through learning, by producing changes in gene expression ...
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-05732-000
(Also available at archive.org).