(January 3, 2019 at 7:49 am)Belaqua Wrote:(January 3, 2019 at 6:52 am)Thoreauvian Wrote: So you seem to have the same problem as Bennyboy, since you seem unaware of what consciousness studies have actually studied.
What have I said which indicates to you that I have a problem?
All I have said so far is that we have no idea how electrochemical activities present themselves to us as experiences. And you seem sort of to agree with this.
What indicates to me that you have a problem with scientific consciousness studies is that you seem to be taking a reductionistic approach. This is indicated by the way you frame your questions, like "How do electrochemical activities present themselves to us as experiences?" In other words, you seem to want some simple answer to this question, when the answer must necessarily be very complex and discussed a bit at a time. You guys therefore seem impatient with a point-at-a-time approach. Bennyboy especially keeps saying, "What does that have to do with anything?" in so many words.
(January 3, 2019 at 7:49 am)Belaqua Wrote: Adam Phillips, a British psychoanalyst, has many interesting things to say about literature. Most recently, he published a fascinating reading of King Lear. But this is exactly the sort of analysis that people do when they read the Bible, taking an old narrative and using it to explicate how people think. I'm fine with that; I do it too. But it's nothing to do with what we were talking about.
I agree. I do not consider psychoanalysis based on Freudian assumptions a science, since many of Freud's assumptions were proven incorrect by later research. See, for instance, Dr. Hobson's book 13 Dreams Freud Never Had.
As an emergentist rather than a reductionist, I think all subjects should be studied at their own level of complexity. For me this means that poetry can't be reduced to neurophysiology, just as you say -- though it may indeed have psychological or sociological aspects which can be studied productively.
