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Article 4265 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott)
Subject: Styron on depression
Message-ID: <1992Mar5.041449.2980@cs.yale.edu>
Summary: There'll always be a dualism
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Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1992 04:14:49 GMT
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For a change of pace, I thought I'd share the following quotation from
William Styron's book "Darkness Visible," about his experience with
depression:

   ...Depression, in its extreme form, is madness.  The madness
   results from an aberrant biochemical process.  It has been
   established with reasonable certainty (after strong resistance from
   many psychiatrists, and not all that long ago) that such madness is
   chemically induced amid the neurotransmitters of the brain,
   probably as the result of systemic stress, which for unknown
   reasons causes a depletion of the chemicals norepinephrine and
   serotonin, and the increase of a hormone, cortisol.  With all of
   this upheaval in the brain tissues, the alternative drenching and
   deprivation, it is no wonder that the mind begins to feel
   aggrieved, stricken, and the muddied thought processes register the
   distress of an organ in convulsion.  [p.47]

I mostly liked this book, but I was struck by how deep-rooted dualist
intuitions are.  It seems so clear to me that *if* depression is
explained by neurotransmitter imbalances, then it exactly *not*
explained by the mind's reaction to "the distress of an organ in
convulsion."  I mean, it might be appropriate to say, "The patient's
mental distress is a reaction to the convulsions of his liver," but it
seems quite anomolous to say that mental distress is a *reaction* to
the convulsions of the brain, when it is *constituted* by convulsions
of the brain.  I predict, however, that this way of talking is too
deeply ingrained for the average person (or even the average famous
author) to get over it.

                                             -- Drew McDermott


