Abstract
Given that disparate mind/body views have interfered with interdisciplinary research in psychoanalysis and neuroscience, the mind/body problem itself is explored here. Adding a philosophy of mind framework, problems for both dualists and physicalists are presented, along with essential concepts including: independent mental causation, emergence, and multiple realization. To address some of these issues in a new light, this article advances an original mind/body account—Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism (DiCoToP). Next, puzzles DiCoTop reveals, psychoanalytic problems it solves, and some empirical evidence accrued for views consistent with DiCoToP are presented. In closing, this piece challenges/appeals for neuroscience research to gain evidence for (or against) the DiCoToP view.
Highlights
Frontiers Research Topic, Psychodynamic Neuroscience, calls for a deepening dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis
The Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism (DiCoToP) account resolves some of the issues associated with the mind/body problem, Section Three grapples with new puzzles that this particular mind/body account reveals and entails
Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism maintains that a specific singular mental content repeated over time—e.g., the belief “my dog is fun”—should be considered a macroproperty consisting of the conjunction of the many physical neuronal assembly microproperties entrained over the numerous instances of this particular mental content
Summary
Frontiers Research Topic, Psychodynamic Neuroscience, calls for a deepening dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. For non-reductive physicalists, the mind is strictly material/physical ontologically; but mental properties, e.g., qualia, the experience of sensations, the content of beliefs, consciousness itself, can neither be reduced to, nor explained by physical processes, not even physical laws. As with dualism, non-reductive physicalism allows such mental entities as Self, first person subjectivity, qualia, conscious attitudes and their contents (like beliefs and desires) to have real and independent downward causative powers. These are emergent properties, and water is causally autonomous and independent from those of the underlying single H2O molecule microproperties Applying this to the mind/body puzzle—emergentists aver that mental macroproperties emerge from physical microproperties. I will present my own view, which features mental goings-on as emergent phenomena, along with the sort of independent causal powers seen with other emergent macroproperties, such as the familiar example of water’s liquidity and H2O molecules?
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