1. Depleted biogenic amines? Low serotonin? Prozac.
2. Inhabited by evil spirit?
3. Bad family relations?
4. Thwarted career?
People get depressed about something.
Note effectiveness of cognitive therapy, in combination with Prozac.
For every psychological difference, there has to be a neurophysiological difference. If 2 people have the same brain facts, then they have the same mind facts.
Identity implies supervenience, but not vice versa.
Multiple instantiation: mind could be in many different kinds of matter, e.g. Martians, computers.
But this is just a thought experiment: minds like ours may in fact depend on having brains and bodies and environments like ours.
Does brain suffice to explain mind?
- need mind facts and social facts to explain depression
- e.g. low serotonin + stress + trauma -> severe depression.
But this does not undercut materialism, since the other causal factors are material too.
Conclusion: The explanation thesis may be problematic because no complete reductive explanation may be achievable (the mind/brain is too complex).
But the identity and exclusion theses may be upheld, if intentionality can be understood materially.
Gender: Le Guin's kemmer - becoming a different sex
Loss of mind
Loss of body, e.g. Christopher Reeves
Memory: autobiography, e.g. remembering childhood
Conviction of freedom: deliberation and decision
But is freedom of action just an illusion?
Dualism: we have free will because we have a non-material soul, not subject to physical causality.
Materialism: since mind is matter, and changes in matter are caused, there is no full-fledged free will. What you do is the result of electrochemical processes in your brain.
But some materialists are compatibilists, claiming that causality and freedom can co-exist: you are free when you could have done otherwise if you had chosen.
Free will is an illusion, but freedom isn't. You are free when the causality is internal, based on your own beliefs and desires, rather than external coercion.
What is the function of regret and blame?
Folk psychology: everyday explanations of behavior in terms of beliefs, desires, and emotions.
Eliminativist materialism: we don't need to reduce folk psychology to neuroscience, because folk psychology is mostly false can be rejected.
Why are some people prone to depression, while others are chronically cheerul? Possible explanations:
Is happiness a brain state?
Graham: self-respect is a crucial part of ongoing happiness.
William James: self-esteem = successes / pretensions.
Keith Oatley: happiness comes from satisfying goals.
Computational Epistemology Laboratory.
This page updated October 7, 2005