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The Michael Shermer Show, 275. The Disrupted Mind (6)

275. The Disrupted Mind (6)

1 (1h 0m 24s):

And it's not even clear that that happened. I don't know if you followed that whole story, but it gets down to that problem of diagnoses and the power of labels.

2 (1h 0m 33s):

Yes, it does. I mean, it's, it's a, it's there, it's a bit like the, like the, you know, the prison experiment,

1 (1h 0m 46s):

Prison experiment,

2 (1h 0m 46s):

Right. That's also been shown to be, you know, all the, all these very kind of wow. Results are actually slightly yeah. As been the case with quite a few of these historical studies and since too good to be true. Right. I mean, to, to, to, to give them that gift such that I think, I think that I mean, look, it's, it's also true. However, I mean, again, we returning to what we're saying before. I think in psychiatry particular, particularly there is really a difficulty with understanding what's, you know, what is pathology in psychiatry? I mean, I think there is a line and beyond which there is such a thing. Of course there is such, there is a difference between, you know, ordinary kind of depressed state and clinical depression, where I think th th th the line really is where your, where your difficulties interfering with your daily life.

2 (1h 1m 38s):

Very quite simply. But again, even then you can be, have a few days of not functioning and be okay again. And some people can get along quite well. Just some people are highly neurotic or not particularly have a pathology. You make lots of mistakes in their lives because of their neuroses, but they still have lives. I mean, it's, how do you S how do you evaluate this is what, how do you define normality? And this is where indeed you can, you can use these, these questions, this recorded questions to try to interrogate it. But I think it's important not to become ideological about it and to, and to look at the cases as they come and true.

2 (1h 2m 19s):

Labeling is as problematic and complex and precise it because labels change with knowledge as they do in psychiatry, they do with neurology as well. And

1 (1h 2m 31s):

A little bit like the medicalization of the, the concept of addiction, you know, like with the opiod crisis, you can see what the problem is directly, but then people say, well, you know, I have a porn addiction, or I have a gambling addiction or whatever. And it's like, it doesn't seem quite the same. And yet, I suppose if your spouse leaves you, you lose your job. You know, you're in prison, you probably have a problem. Right. But people gamble or drink or, or watch porn or whatever, and they don't have a problem. They lead perfectly normal lives. So in that case, it's not an addiction, I guess there seems like the fuzzy

2 (1h 3m 7s):

Definition is different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's really it's again. I mean, can you, you can't pathologize all human dysfunction. I think maybe that's what it comes down to, because if you do that, then what is pathology categorize, Elegy for is not much lift beyond that.

1 (1h 3m 30s):

Right. Exactly. Okay. I know you, I know you, you're on a tight timeline here, so let me just hit a couple of big topics consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness, since you mentioned processes, is that your sense? That consciousness is a process. So if you ask, well, where does it go under general anesthesia? Where does it go when you during dementia in dementia, whatever. And I guess your answer would be, it doesn't go anywhere because it's just a process that's slowing and then stops.

2 (1h 3m 59s):

What can I presume to know? Right. I mean, I don't know more than anybody else. No, I, I do think it's a process. Yes. And I think it's a process that is certainly extremely complex, that it's outcome of a whole host of mechanisms that are again, not just the brain, but the brain and body. I just, before this, I was actually listening to a researcher on subjectivity and into reception at, in Paris at economics called <inaudible>, who was presenting some research on the heart brain and gut brain interactions in the formation of subjectivity and consciousness.

2 (1h 4m 45s):

She was presenting at the ECM ICM, the Institute itself, the way that I might opinion or this major research and neurology Institute and the participant here actually, as it happens, the same hospital where I was, I'd actually talked to her when I wrote my piece for Ian on interoception and she was just presenting this new data on, you know, how the brain does register changes in heart and in an even in intestinal vibrations and so on in all sorts of states. I mean, it's, it's, we really don't know there's so much. We don't know. I think I just said there's a biological phenomenon.

2 (1h 5m 26s):

I think that we share it with the rest of animals in some levels. So there's all sorts of levels of consciousness. We have this. What is interesting when you mentioned the talk about the hard problem is that we have this extremely, it seems unique capacity for meta meta cognition. When this awareness of being aware, this extremely refined symbolic language that we are discussing and now creating concepts and so forth, developing technologies, building houses, doing things that other animals just don't do at all in the same way, creating art. So are other versions of it in the animal kingdom, but it's not the same. I don't think it's a quote.

2 (1h 6m 6s):

Is it the question? Is, is it a quantitative or qualitative difference? And I think it may be more quantitative of actually, no, I don't know. Just, sorry. No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't have an answer to this question. I, and I, again, there's so much, you know, and every day there's new stuff coming out and new questions being asked, I think, yes. I mean, we meant she actually contained it on bullying her tub just before she, she was also talking about, you know, lifts of animal consciousness, as long as you have a nervous system something's happening. And there's an incremental level beyond which it's true.

2 (1h 6m 50s):

We have, then this shift into symbolic language, the philosophers was then Kate Langer, who was kind of forgotten, was a wonderful philosopher who talked about symbols, symbolic symbol making is central to all human life and to consciousness. And that, that was, that's a very important idea as well, I think. And it goes back to her saying at the beginning, meaning making, or we need to create meaning. And we do that without a biographical memories. We do that with language. We do that with art. We do that with each other and then a very important idea also that is that I talk about, and this is part of the philosophical tradition. I, I suppose, partake of is this idea that we didn't get the self doesn't exist without the other, that we are from very beginning from conception onwards.

2 (1h 7m 35s):

Even we exist. Thanks to another. We wrote out of progressively separating ourselves from the mother of the carer, but there's no given that we are as infants. We are incapable of caring for our own homeostatic needs. We have to be constantly cared for therefore. And given them these homeostatic adjustments are what goes then are exactly what interoception is signaling to us. Signaling is this persists or outputs, overweigh Mustang, homeostatic adjustments to constantly environment.

2 (1h 8m 16s):

And given that as infants, we need carers to provide these adjustments for two frauds because we can't, you know, drink ourselves when we are thirsty and so on and so forth or adjust our temperature. Our interoceptive preserve conditions are, are inherently social. So we are as embodied physiological shelves and inherently social, which means that our conscious selves really is not, not as locked in the brain as caretaker had it, but it really is about consciousness with others when a post-prison. And this is an idea that comes from the work of two psychologists in London, who, whose work inspired me much more friends to <inaudible> together with this paper on Cole homeostasis, co an Ugh, I'm sorry, embodied homeostasis, which is exactly what this, sorry, I'm actually forgetting the title of the paper right now, but it'll come back in a second.

2 (1h 9m 22s):

It's a very important paper that actually shows I cited in the book as well, which shows how, how this, which purports to show how this process has happened. So we are inherently social beings through and through, and that's an important, very, very important idea to, to always, to always remember, we are in this for each philosophy, Reem bodied embedded in that in acting and upon the environment, we are entirely within constantly adapting within the changing environment.

2 (1h 10m 3s):

And this is how we are, even our consciousnesses may be a function of those processes at work. So it's, it's, you know, this is the thing, this is where you can not go back to the Cartesian idea to talk about the conscious we're not locked inside our brains in that way. And I was sitting going to say before, when, when a person, a patient has some mental disorder, one of the, what is happening is that they're no longer being no longer able to interact in the same temporality as others to protect the sense of time itself depends upon these physiological processes. I talk about that too.

2 (1h 10m 43s):

And without in this what's happens when somebody is very depressed, like clinically depressed, there was such a thing when somebody is, has a psychotic, when something is they're divorced, they're, they're temporalities divorce and temporality of the rest of the world. It's like going back to this idea of that executive agenda. And that's really a profound thought. I mean, the profounder realization. I mean, you, we are indexed on each other's temporalities. This is what we're doing all the time. We're doing it now. Infants do it with their mothers. When they're born, before we have language, we have, you know, we sink sink, song connections. We are rhythmic in a physical way. And that's what Roe is. And to then conscious states, I think, I mean, there's a continuum, look what we're summarizing here, tons of different theories and so on, but, and the work of many other people here, but yeah, which I acknowledge in the book, but I can't acknowledge them here, but I really, this my work depends exactly as I'm demonstrating, depends on the work of all these other people.

1 (1h 11m 43s):

Yeah. Yeah. That's maybe a good place to wrap it up. Cause it will take you to your next book and we'll have you back on with that. So interoception are kind of awareness of our bodies and ourselves extra susception awareness of all that in interaction with other people. And then the environment, I guess, would be culture also. So your next study on anthropology, you're, you're going to be asking these kinds of deep questions. To what extent are we all alike, a universal human nature, but given those maps, internal maps and external maps and so on, there's got to be huge amounts of variation about the nature of self and consciousness and so on, depending very much on these radically different cultures.

2 (1h 12m 29s):

Exactly, exactly. That's exactly where, what I have to do next year.

1 (1h 12m 34s):

That sounds good. Well, I know you got a hard out here and so I'm gonna, I'm gonna sign off here. Really fascinating stuff, beautifully written book. I just loved reading this book. It's great on audio too, by the way, the readers is quite good. And, and so we'll, we'll have you back on again, when you finish the next book on Boaz. I can't wait to read that. He's a very influential figure in 20th century. Social science.


275. The Disrupted Mind (6)

1 (1h 0m 24s):

And it's not even clear that that happened. I don't know if you followed that whole story, but it gets down to that problem of diagnoses and the power of labels.

2 (1h 0m 33s):

Yes, it does. I mean, it's, it's a, it's there, it's a bit like the, like the, you know, the prison experiment,

1 (1h 0m 46s):

Prison experiment,

2 (1h 0m 46s):

Right. That's also been shown to be, you know, all the, all these very kind of wow. Results are actually slightly yeah. As been the case with quite a few of these historical studies and since too good to be true. Right. I mean, to, to, to, to give them that gift such that I think, I think that I mean, look, it's, it's also true. However, I mean, again, we returning to what we're saying before. I think in psychiatry particular, particularly there is really a difficulty with understanding what's, you know, what is pathology in psychiatry? I mean, I think there is a line and beyond which there is such a thing. Of course there is such, there is a difference between, you know, ordinary kind of depressed state and clinical depression, where I think th th th the line really is where your, where your difficulties interfering with your daily life.

2 (1h 1m 38s):

Very quite simply. But again, even then you can be, have a few days of not functioning and be okay again. And some people can get along quite well. Just some people are highly neurotic or not particularly have a pathology. You make lots of mistakes in their lives because of their neuroses, but they still have lives. I mean, it's, how do you S how do you evaluate this is what, how do you define normality? And this is where indeed you can, you can use these, these questions, this recorded questions to try to interrogate it. But I think it's important not to become ideological about it and to, and to look at the cases as they come and true.

2 (1h 2m 19s):

Labeling is as problematic and complex and precise it because labels change with knowledge as they do in psychiatry, they do with neurology as well. And

1 (1h 2m 31s):

A little bit like the medicalization of the, the concept of addiction, you know, like with the opiod crisis, you can see what the problem is directly, but then people say, well, you know, I have a porn addiction, or I have a gambling addiction or whatever. And it's like, it doesn't seem quite the same. And yet, I suppose if your spouse leaves you, you lose your job. You know, you're in prison, you probably have a problem. Right. But people gamble or drink or, or watch porn or whatever, and they don't have a problem. They lead perfectly normal lives. So in that case, it's not an addiction, I guess there seems like the fuzzy

2 (1h 3m 7s):

Definition is different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's really it's again. I mean, can you, you can't pathologize all human dysfunction. I think maybe that's what it comes down to, because if you do that, then what is pathology categorize, Elegy for is not much lift beyond that.

1 (1h 3m 30s):

Right. Exactly. Okay. I know you, I know you, you're on a tight timeline here, so let me just hit a couple of big topics consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness, since you mentioned processes, is that your sense? That consciousness is a process. So if you ask, well, where does it go under general anesthesia? Where does it go when you during dementia in dementia, whatever. And I guess your answer would be, it doesn't go anywhere because it's just a process that's slowing and then stops.

2 (1h 3m 59s):

What can I presume to know? Right. I mean, I don't know more than anybody else. No, I, I do think it's a process. Yes. And I think it's a process that is certainly extremely complex, that it's outcome of a whole host of mechanisms that are again, not just the brain, but the brain and body. I just, before this, I was actually listening to a researcher on subjectivity and into reception at, in Paris at economics called <inaudible>, who was presenting some research on the heart brain and gut brain interactions in the formation of subjectivity and consciousness.

2 (1h 4m 45s):

She was presenting at the ECM ICM, the Institute itself, the way that I might opinion or this major research and neurology Institute and the participant here actually, as it happens, the same hospital where I was, I'd actually talked to her when I wrote my piece for Ian on interoception and she was just presenting this new data on, you know, how the brain does register changes in heart and in an even in intestinal vibrations and so on in all sorts of states. I mean, it's, it's, we really don't know there's so much. We don't know. I think I just said there's a biological phenomenon.

2 (1h 5m 26s):

I think that we share it with the rest of animals in some levels. So there's all sorts of levels of consciousness. We have this. What is interesting when you mentioned the talk about the hard problem is that we have this extremely, it seems unique capacity for meta meta cognition. When this awareness of being aware, this extremely refined symbolic language that we are discussing and now creating concepts and so forth, developing technologies, building houses, doing things that other animals just don't do at all in the same way, creating art. So are other versions of it in the animal kingdom, but it's not the same. I don't think it's a quote.

2 (1h 6m 6s):

Is it the question? Is, is it a quantitative or qualitative difference? And I think it may be more quantitative of actually, no, I don't know. Just, sorry. No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't have an answer to this question. I, and I, again, there's so much, you know, and every day there's new stuff coming out and new questions being asked, I think, yes. I mean, we meant she actually contained it on bullying her tub just before she, she was also talking about, you know, lifts of animal consciousness, as long as you have a nervous system something's happening. And there's an incremental level beyond which it's true.

2 (1h 6m 50s):

We have, then this shift into symbolic language, the philosophers was then Kate Langer, who was kind of forgotten, was a wonderful philosopher who talked about symbols, symbolic symbol making is central to all human life and to consciousness. And that, that was, that's a very important idea as well, I think. And it goes back to her saying at the beginning, meaning making, or we need to create meaning. And we do that without a biographical memories. We do that with language. We do that with art. We do that with each other and then a very important idea also that is that I talk about, and this is part of the philosophical tradition. I, I suppose, partake of is this idea that we didn't get the self doesn't exist without the other, that we are from very beginning from conception onwards.

2 (1h 7m 35s):

Even we exist. Thanks to another. We wrote out of progressively separating ourselves from the mother of the carer, but there's no given that we are as infants. We are incapable of caring for our own homeostatic needs. We have to be constantly cared for therefore. And given them these homeostatic adjustments are what goes then are exactly what interoception is signaling to us. Signaling is this persists or outputs, overweigh Mustang, homeostatic adjustments to constantly environment.

2 (1h 8m 16s):

And given that as infants, we need carers to provide these adjustments for two frauds because we can't, you know, drink ourselves when we are thirsty and so on and so forth or adjust our temperature. Our interoceptive preserve conditions are, are inherently social. So we are as embodied physiological shelves and inherently social, which means that our conscious selves really is not, not as locked in the brain as caretaker had it, but it really is about consciousness with others when a post-prison. And this is an idea that comes from the work of two psychologists in London, who, whose work inspired me much more friends to <inaudible> together with this paper on Cole homeostasis, co an Ugh, I'm sorry, embodied homeostasis, which is exactly what this, sorry, I'm actually forgetting the title of the paper right now, but it'll come back in a second.

2 (1h 9m 22s):

It's a very important paper that actually shows I cited in the book as well, which shows how, how this, which purports to show how this process has happened. So we are inherently social beings through and through, and that's an important, very, very important idea to, to always, to always remember, we are in this for each philosophy, Reem bodied embedded in that in acting and upon the environment, we are entirely within constantly adapting within the changing environment.

2 (1h 10m 3s):

And this is how we are, even our consciousnesses may be a function of those processes at work. So it's, it's, you know, this is the thing, this is where you can not go back to the Cartesian idea to talk about the conscious we're not locked inside our brains in that way. And I was sitting going to say before, when, when a person, a patient has some mental disorder, one of the, what is happening is that they're no longer being no longer able to interact in the same temporality as others to protect the sense of time itself depends upon these physiological processes. I talk about that too.

2 (1h 10m 43s):

And without in this what's happens when somebody is very depressed, like clinically depressed, there was such a thing when somebody is, has a psychotic, when something is they're divorced, they're, they're temporalities divorce and temporality of the rest of the world. It's like going back to this idea of that executive agenda. And that's really a profound thought. I mean, the profounder realization. I mean, you, we are indexed on each other's temporalities. This is what we're doing all the time. We're doing it now. Infants do it with their mothers. When they're born, before we have language, we have, you know, we sink sink, song connections. We are rhythmic in a physical way. And that's what Roe is. And to then conscious states, I think, I mean, there's a continuum, look what we're summarizing here, tons of different theories and so on, but, and the work of many other people here, but yeah, which I acknowledge in the book, but I can't acknowledge them here, but I really, this my work depends exactly as I'm demonstrating, depends on the work of all these other people.

1 (1h 11m 43s):

Yeah. Yeah. That's maybe a good place to wrap it up. Cause it will take you to your next book and we'll have you back on with that. So interoception are kind of awareness of our bodies and ourselves extra susception awareness of all that in interaction with other people. And then the environment, I guess, would be culture also. So your next study on anthropology, you're, you're going to be asking these kinds of deep questions. To what extent are we all alike, a universal human nature, but given those maps, internal maps and external maps and so on, there's got to be huge amounts of variation about the nature of self and consciousness and so on, depending very much on these radically different cultures.

2 (1h 12m 29s):

Exactly, exactly. That's exactly where, what I have to do next year.

1 (1h 12m 34s):

That sounds good. Well, I know you got a hard out here and so I'm gonna, I'm gonna sign off here. Really fascinating stuff, beautifully written book. I just loved reading this book. It's great on audio too, by the way, the readers is quite good. And, and so we'll, we'll have you back on again, when you finish the next book on Boaz. I can't wait to read that. He's a very influential figure in 20th century. Social science.