As they say, if the brain were simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.

Then again, the great mystery is how the virtually infinite complexity of the brain resolves itself into the simple, unitary experience of an "I." It doesn't get any simpler than that, and yet, what an extraordinary tangle of complexity to make it possible!
Gagdad Bob | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 9:06 am | #

My postgrad degree is in classical philosophy - from Aristotle to Aquinas, but I worked for years with clinical psychologists (no, not as a patient!)... there are very interesting overlaps between some of the medieval theories about man (especially in Aquinas) and things modern psychologists believe they've 'just discovered'.

The funny thing is - the medievals were totally on board with their believe of garbage in = garbage out... that the body (diet, habits, environment, stimuli, or simple malfunctions) play a tremendous role in the healthy functioning of the mind, emotion, and soul. So the practice of Psychiatry is - in the estimation of classic Philosophers - a "no brainer"; perfectly OK as a PART of the puzzle.

But only a part, just as the body is only a part of the whole of the human person.

Psychology focuses on the mind - and interactions with other minds.... but its theories fail to the degree they ignore what we know about the body as well as what we know about values and virtues - things of the spirit. Disengaging the mind from TRUTH, i.e. objective, 'there no matter how I feel about it' reality has tended to make psychology solipistic; therapy to remove guilt or discomfort rather than helping the person re-integrate with the bigger reality (in which that guilt or discomfort might actually be a sign of a perfectly healthy and functioning conscience!)

Unless you have a global view of a given situation or thing, you won't fully understand it...and unless you have a good grasp of where you are coming from and where exactly you're going to, the idea of calling yourself or your actions "progressive" is insane.

Getting back to the concept of evil.... while the body (including the brain) can be diseased and thus lead an individual to do harmful things, there is more at work in psychopaths like Hitler or Osama or President "Imamadnutjob", than mere malfunction. There are values and vices - willfully indulged in and accepted, identified with and gloried in at work too...

In sofar as they each made a free choice they are morally culpable (i.e. evil not just 'bad') but at the same token, insofar as they remain free, there is the possibility - however remote and historically extremely rare - for a change of heart and conversion.

Human beings are amazingly complex - something we tend to forget in our often simplistic objectification of them as "pure evil" or 'pure good' calling them either 'orcs' or angels. We are neither. Body and soul, "perilous estates" better than any animal, the apex of the created universe, and in a way, precisely because we straddle the material and spiritual dimensions, far more versatile than angels/demons...we can choose and then unchoose, commit and then repent... create our own destinies or change them.
John | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 9:47 am | #

Psychiatrists, Intellectuals and philosophers often remind me of those people who jump into attempting to fix an interesting machine that maybe seems to be running a bit rough. They dive into taking it apart, tearing it down to all of it's smallest pieces.

When done, they'll find themselves looking at what seems like just a bunch of random parts and they start picking up pieces, turning them over "hmm...uh-huh, ok I see what this does" and onto the next. After feeling a bit odd about the parts scattered all about, they re-assemble them "This one looks like it goes with this one" - and "I don't see what this is for, must not be necessary" or "I can get these pieces to do what that was doing" & they toss it aside.

They are usually puzzled, frustrated & soon angry when the machine won't run anymore. Only slowly, reluctantly, do they turn to the handful of "spare parts" with the idea of "Maybe there is something to these".

Analysis is important, but Synthesis is important too - putting it back together & trying to understand the whole. You can't pretend that the mysteries you don't yet understand, don't exist. Good and Evil are there, and if you don't understand their source yet, like Newton said about forces operating at a distance, you have to say "I don't understand how it works, but I know that it does".

I suspect that what eventually snowballs into recognizable "Good" or "Evil" behaviors, patterns, forces... each began as a series of choices to do what was right over what was easy, or what was easy over what was right. Whether they have their roots "out there" or not I haven't a clue, but I do know you need to actively recognize either one when you come across them, and respond appropriately - trying to ignore, or explain away (which amounts to the same) either Good or Evil, strengthens the Evil.

Why? I don't know, but I can see it happening. All around us.
Van | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 10:38 am | #

You must be an excellent psychiatrist, Dr. Sanity.

Belief in truth and non-truth, the insistence on separate objective emotional realities that exist independent of one's subjectivity, is the greatest gift we can give to our patients.
Kohut/Kernberg | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 11:25 am | #

Though I usually roll my eyes at long posts in a comment section, I have to say I found both John's and Van's comments worthwhile. Our actions are multideterminated, and following single threads back to their origins often provides us with an inadequate picture (though the single-thread method is usually the only way to arrive at the foundational data).

An interesting related item I was reading last night in CS Lewis's The Problem of Pain. Lewis was explaining something about human choice with reference to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. He noted some information we have received from evolutionary study. He skipped quickly past the story of the magic apple and the tree of knowledge at first, pointing out that the "great doctors" of the church had allowed those parts to drop out of sight, barely touching on them in their commentaries. He then doubled back, pointing out that the original story was likely of greater depth and profundity in understanding human nature, but despite his respect for myth and long study of it, he believed himself inadequate to explain more.

When a commentary on such deep matters is completed, the original myth no longer looks to be necessary. But a story, in all its impossibility and ambiguity, seems to be the only place a human being can start to ponder these things. Without it, we don't seem to bother with the questions.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 1:28 pm | #

I suppose the issue is knowing if the piano will burst into flames when you hit the d-flat below middle c.
ed in texas | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 1:35 pm | #

Boy, sometimes I feel like a mental midget around you folks. You give me much food for thought.

With that said I would like to add -- You Can Tune A Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish...
The Dude | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 2:46 pm | #

Nice analogy. Extreme reductionists seem like people who would argue that, in a computer, there is no such thing as an "operating system" or a "compiler," only the gates and latches on the processor chip.
David Foster | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 3:07 pm | #

I like the way you think!
anonymoushrink | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 3:16 pm | #

Wonderful and insightful post, Doctor. All who have genuine empathy experience the shared pain of existence and creation. And that is the nut of it: we are creators. Some of my favorite quotes from my favorite physicist, John A. Wheeler:

"We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense this is a participatory universe.... We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

Consciousness itself is an act of creation. Remember God told Moses His name is, "I am that I am".
M.Capulus | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 3:30 pm | #

As a professional pianist, I like the metaphor.

A piano is just a machine made of shaped wood, metal strings, springs and parts, felt, and a few other little gizmos.

Most pianists make it sound like just that, and most pianos are poorly maintained and tuned.

Yet when it is kept in optimum condition, under the control of a disciplined player who balances art and technique, it is a miracle.

Since we have choices in how we use our minds, if the brain is the piano, the "player" has choices about the condition of the piano.
jodetoad | Email | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 4:34 pm | #

I vote this be included among your "BEST" list.
DS | Email | Homepage | 08.26.06 - 3:43 pm | #