On medical materialism and the value of subjective experience

In summary, the conversation explores the distinction between two orders of inquiry concerning anything: its nature and its importance. This leads to a discussion of the intellectual preoccupations of existential and spiritual judgments, which cannot be deduced from each other. The intellect then seeks to uncover the causes of things, often reducing spiritual experiences to mere physical or psychological phenomena. The conversation raises questions about the validity of this reductionist approach and the impact it has on our understanding of spiritual value. Ultimately, the conversation highlights the complexity of the mind and the limitations of trying to explain its mysteries through purely physical or scientific means.
  • #1
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"In recent books on logic, distinction is made between two orders of inquiry concerning anything. First, what is the nature of it? how did it come about? what is its constitution, origin, and history? And second, What is its importance, meaning, or significance, now that it is once here? The answer to the one question is given in an existential judgment or proposition. The answer to the other is a proposition of value, what the Germans call a Werthurtheil, or what we may, if we like, denominate a spiritual judgment. Neither judgment can be deduced immediately from the other. They proceed from diverse intellectual preoccupations, and the mind combines them only by making them first separately, and then adding them together.


[ ... ]

The next thing the intellect does is to lay bare the causes in which the thing originates. Spinoza says: "I will analyze the actions and appetites of men as if it were a question of lines, of planes, and of solids." And elsewhere he remarks that he will consider our passions and their properties with the same eye with which he looks on all other natural things, since the consequences of our affections flow from their nature with the same necessity as it results from the nature of a triangle that its three angles should be equal to two right angles. Similarly M. Taine, in the introduction to his history of English literature, has written: "Whether facts be moral or physical, it makes no matter. They always have their causes. There are causes for ambition, courage, veracity, just as there are for digestion, muscular movement, animal heat. Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar." When we read such proclamations of the intellect bent on showing the existential conditions of absolutely everything, we feel- quite apart from our legitimate impatience at the somewhat ridiculous swagger of the program, in view of what the authors are actually able to perform- menaced and negated in the springs of our innermost life. Such cold-blooded assimilations threaten, we think, to undo our soul's vital secrets, as if the same breath which should succeed in explaining their origin would simultaneously explain away their significance, and make them appear of no more preciousness, either, than the useful groceries of which M. Taine speaks.

Perhaps the commonest expression of this assumption that spiritual value is undone if lowly origin be asserted is seen in those comments which unsentimental people so often pass on their more sentimental acquaintances. Alfred believes in immortality so strongly because his temperament is so emotional. Fanny's extraordinary conscientiousness is merely a matter of over-instigated nerves. William's melancholy about the universe is due to bad digestion- probably his liver is torpid. Eliza's delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical constitution. Peter would be less troubled about his soul if he would take more exercise in the open air, etc. A more fully developed example of the same kind of reasoning is the fashion, quite common nowadays among certain writers, of criticising the religious emotions by showing a connection between them and the sexual life. Conversion is a crisis of puberty and adolescence. The macerations of saints, and the devotion of missionaries, are only instances of the parental instinct of self-sacrifice gone astray. For the hysterical nun, starving for natural life, Christ is but an imaginary substitute for a more earthly object of affection. And the like.

We are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting states of mind for which we have an antipathy. We all use it to some degree in criticising persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained. But when other people criticize our own more exalted soul-flights by calling them 'nothing but' expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made to hold its tongue.

Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle's organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh. All such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover.

And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined.

Let us ourselves look at the matter in the largest possible way. Modern psychology, finding definite psycho-physical connections to hold good, assumes as a convenient hypothesis that the dependence of mental states upon bodily conditions must be thorough-going and complete. If we adopt the assumption, then of course what medical materialism insists on must be true in a general way, if not in every detail: Saint Paul certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure; George Fox was an hereditary degenerate; Carlyle was undoubtedly auto-intoxicated by some organ or other, no matter which,- and the rest. But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance? According to the general postulate of psychology just referred to, there is not a single one of our states of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its condition. Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind. So of all our rapturer, and our drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs. They are equally organically founded, be they of religious or of non-religious content.

To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possesses superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.

It is needless to say that medical materialism draws in point of fact no such sweeping skeptical conclusion. It is sure, just as every simple man is sure, that some states of mind are inwardly superior to others, and reveal to us more truth, and in this it simply makes use of an ordinary spiritual judgment. It has no physiological theory of the production of these its favorite states, by which it may accredit them; and its attempt to discredit the states which it dislikes, by vaguely associating them with nerves and liver, and connecting them with names connoting bodily affliction, is altogether illogical and inconsistent."

- excerpted from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
 
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  • #2
[continued]

"Let us play fair in this whole matter, and be quite candid with ourselves and with the facts. When we think certain states of mind superior to others, is it ever because of what we know concerning their organic antecedents? No! it is always for two entirely different reasons. It is either because we take an immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them to bring us good consequential fruits for life. When we speak disparagingly of 'feverish fancies,' surely the fever-process as such is not the ground of our disesteem- for aught we know to the contrary, 103 degrees or 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for truths to germinate and sprout in, than the more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees. It is either the disagreeableness itself of the fancies, or their inability to bear the criticisms of the convalescent hour. When we praise the thoughts which health brings, health's peculiar chemical metabolisms have nothing to do with determining our judgment. We know in fact almost nothing about these metabolisms. It is the character of inner happiness in the thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their consistency with our other opinions and their serviceability for our needs, which make them pass for true in our esteem.

Now the more intrinsic and the more remote of these criteria do not always hang together. Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. What immediately feels most 'good' is not always most 'true,' when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration. If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience. But its revelations, however acutely satisfying at the moment, are inserted into an environment which refuses to bear them out for any length of time. The consequence of this discrepancy of the two criteria is the uncertainty which still prevails over so many of our spiritual judgments. There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience- we shall hereafter hear much of them- that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to every one; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end. -

It is, however, a discordancy that can never be resolved by any merely medical test. A good example of the impossibility of holding strictly to the medical tests is seen in the theory of the pathological causation of genius promulgated by recent authors. "Genius," said Dr. Moreau, "is but one of the many branches of the neuropathic tree." "Genius," says Dr. Lombroso, "is a symptom of hereditary degeneration of the epileptoid variety, and is allied to moral insanity." "Whenever a man's life," writes Mr. Nisbet, "is at once sufficiently illustrious and recorded with sufficient fullness to be a subject of profitable study, he inevitably falls into the morbid category... And it is worthy of remark that, as a rule, the greater the genius, the greater the unsoundness." * -

* J.F. NISBET: The Insanity of Genius, 3d. ed., London, 1893, pp. xvi, xxiv. -

Now do these authors, after having succeeded in establishing to their own satisfaction that the works of genius are fruits of disease, consistently proceed thereupon to impugn the value of the fruits? Do they deduce a new spiritual judgment from their new doctrine of existential conditions? Do they frankly forbid us to admire the productions of genius from now onwards? and say outright that no neuropath can ever be a revealer of new truth?

No! their immediate spiritual instincts are too strong for them here, and hold their own against inferences which, in mere love of logical consistency, medical materialism ought to be only too glad to draw. One disciple of the school, indeed, has striven to impugn the value of works of genius in a wholesale way (such works of contemporary art, namely, as he himself is unable to enjoy, and they are many) by using medical arguments. * But for the most part the masterpieces are left unchallenged; and the medical line of attack either confines itself to such secular productions as every one admits to be intrinsically eccentric, or else addresses itself exclusively to religious manifestations. And then it is because the religious manifestations have been already condemned because the critic dislikes them on internal or spiritual grounds. -

* MAX NORDAU, in his bulky book entitled Degeneration. -

In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to anyone to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions. Their value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true.

Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria. Saint Teresa might have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and it would not now save her theology, if the trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. And conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make no difference how hysterical or nervously off her balance Saint Teresa may have been when she was with us here below."
 
  • #3
Any chance of a summary?
 
  • #4
Beautiful post... a good subject as well.

So basically it comes down to (if I have this right, I will read it again at a later date and think about it more before I reply properly) what the connection between mind state and brain state is, and what one can tell us about the other?

If you have a belief or a thought about something, I do believe it is from a certain biological state or neurological tendency. The thought can show us what problems there are within the neurobiological state. (For instance if we have epilepsy or a lesion in some area etc) Does this take away from the importance of the mind state though?

It is from our mind states that we create who we are as beings. So, even if a certain attribute is changes within our physical system, the corresponding change in the mind state will be attributed to other environmental features. Once the neuro biological state is fixed, then we may still have reminisce of the old mindset as we have then in memory as a way we once behaved.

For instance, a heart attack patient that attributes his depression to the fact that he nearly dies, when in fact the drug they gave him in recovery is really to blame. Even once the chemical balance is fixed, so that on a neurological level he is all well again, the memory of the surgery will still be traumatic and make him depressed, as a wrong attribution of cause was made. So while the cause of our behaviour is entirely physiological, it does not mean that the mind aspect looses importance. It is a flawed system, but it forms who we are as people. We don’t attribute things to the brain, but if we did then it would take a lot of misunderstanding out of the world. It is hard for people to think that we are a result of neuron activity as it seems so obvious that there is something more, mainly because we don’t understand the brain that much in its consciousness producing stance. But if we could learn to attribute more to the brain, and help people on both levels: fixing neuro chemical balances as well as dealing with the mind discharge from the situation, then we could live in a more logical and healthy society: all the things that are claimed to be unexplainable due to emotional. Spiritual blocks would be gone, and science may be able to do what it does: examine the world as we see it, and try and make a few accurate predictive claims about this place we live.

That may be a pointless rant that has little to do with the above. I will think about it for a while, and read it again.
 

1. What is medical materialism?

Medical materialism is a philosophical belief that all aspects of the human mind and consciousness can be explained by physical and chemical processes in the brain and body. It suggests that there is no immaterial or spiritual aspect to human consciousness, and that all subjective experiences can be reduced to objective physical processes.

2. What is the value of subjective experience?

The value of subjective experience lies in its ability to provide a unique and personal understanding of the world. While medical materialism may argue that all experiences can be reduced to physical processes, subjective experience offers a more holistic and individual perspective on the human experience. It allows for the exploration of emotions, creativity, and personal growth that cannot be fully explained by materialistic perspectives.

3. How does medical materialism impact the field of medicine?

Medical materialism has greatly influenced the field of medicine, as it has led to a focus on diagnosing and treating physical symptoms rather than considering the whole person. This reductionist approach has been criticized for neglecting the importance of psychological and social factors in health and well-being. Additionally, medical materialism has also led to a reliance on pharmaceuticals and other medical interventions rather than incorporating more holistic approaches to healing.

4. Does medical materialism disregard the existence of the mind?

While medical materialism argues that the mind and consciousness can be explained by physical processes, it does not necessarily deny the existence of the mind. Instead, it suggests that the mind is a product of the physical brain and its processes. However, this perspective is debated and has been challenged by other philosophical and scientific theories.

5. Are there any criticisms of medical materialism?

Yes, there are several criticisms of medical materialism. Some argue that it oversimplifies the complexities of the human mind and consciousness and ignores the importance of subjective experiences. Others argue that it neglects the role of culture, environment, and social factors in shaping one's experiences. Additionally, some criticize medical materialism for reducing human experiences to mere physical processes, ignoring the potential for spiritual or metaphysical aspects of consciousness.

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