The Physical Mind

It's remarkable how deeply ingrained our common-sense dualism is. For example, a comment on an old post marvelled that "willpower alone can reshape the connections in [our] brains." Talk of 'mind over matter' seems almost magical to us, until we recall that the mind is matter. As I responded to the above comment, "It's certainly interesting that the brain can modify itself in such a way -- but it's no more metaphysically remarkable than the fact that I can scratch my own hands."

Anyway, I just wanted to reinforce Dr Lisa Saksida's lament:

I wish people understood that there is no mind/brain duality. Specifically, I wish people understood that there is no such thing as a purely psychological disorder. Every event in your psychological life, and therefore every psychological change, is reducible in theory to events and changes in your brain. We should therefore not judge people differently, according to whether they are considered to have a 'psychological' as opposed to a 'neurological' problem.

Though as Chris sensibly adds:

we also have to recognize that just because something is manifested physically doesn't mean we can treat it by just throwing medicine at it.

Which brings us back to the 'mind over matter' issue -- it might well be that the best way to solve a physical problem is through psychological means. There's nothing "magical" about this, we simply need to recognize that the mind is one way among many (cf. drugs or surgery) to interface with our brains. I find this interesting because it's so easy to forget.