Kandel, The disordered mind. Or was Descartes wrong?
It’s become almost commonplace today, at least among those impressed by the latest results of neuroscience, to say that Descartes got it backward. Not “I think therefore I am,” but “I am therefore I think.” The mind is composed of body. The brain makes mind possible.
This is the argument of Eric R. Kandel, author of The Disordered Mind and Nobel Prize winner for his research on memory storage in neurons. The reader need not be intimidated. Kandel clearly explains recent developments in neuroscience for the non-specialist. He tries, but fails, to put together the neuroscience of the injured brain with the experience of emotional distress. He knows one is incomplete without the other, he calls for a “new scientific humanism,” but all he ever says is that both brain and experience need to be taken into account. Sometimes that’s enough, but about some experiences, such as PTSD, he cannot get out of the brain.
I feel therefore I am
It’s absolutely true that brain makes mind, and yet this is not how we experience ourselves. “I feel therefore I am” is probably the first and fundamental experience of self, and it would not be wrong to say that feeling is at least as body-based as it is mind-based. The fundamental experience, or at least the experience that makes life worth living, is the feeling of being alive, filled with the vitality of existence.*
Neuroscience doesn’t capture the feeling of being human. It’s about neurochemical events responsible for this feeling, but it doesn’t capture the experience of being alive, sad, happy, depressed, in love, etc. The question is how much this matters, and how the neurological explanation can be made useful without diminishing the experience of life.
Thus, we now know that psychiatric illnesses, like neurological disorders, arise from abnormalities in the brain. (p 41)
It’s not true, at least not when stated like this. These “abnormalities,” which exist, may be the brain’s normal reaction to an abnormal environment. What goes on in the brain is caused by the environment we live in, not just autonomous neurochemical events in the brain itself. Everything I experience changes my brain. But that doesn’t mean that all, or even most, psychiatric diseases arise from abnormalities in the brain. Some do, some don’t, and many are a mix. Besides, the term “arise” is too vague.
Kandel talks about PTSD at some length, and I’ll get to that shortly. His treatment of the topic is disturbing, but the scope of the book is broader and worth considering.
A “new scientific humanism”?
As research into the brain and mind advances, it appears increasingly likely that there are actually no profound differences between neurological and psychiatric illnesses and that as we understand them better more and more similarities will emerge. (p 43)
This convergence will contribute to the new, scientific humanism. (p 43)
I have only a scant idea of what Kandel means by “the new scientific humanism.” It would have helped had he defined “humanism” to begin with. I think he means that experience still matters, particularly one’s own experience of events such as depression.
