"Cognition to neuro-biological mechanisms: An approach through addiction."

The title of this blog is the title of a paper I wrote initially aimed at the philosophy of mind and later reconstructed and directed at the psychology of the brain.

My interests were brought up when I asked a professor of mine, "what develops the mind/brain, is it neurologically developing your ideas and conscious awareness or does it just store your memory and you exist independent of the brain accessing the information as you please?" His answer was basic in stating that the brain constructs your thoughts which in reciprocal constructs your mind.

If anyone is on the same page with me, that answer sucked. I admit that my question sucked as well, which lead me to writing a paper relying on empirical studies, including one we are doing in my lab now, and showing an incentive seeking process which takes place in a nucleus accumbens (Nac) pathway, for those interested in neuroscience, it is the Dopaminergic (DA) pathway from the ventral tegmental (VTA) area to the nucleus accumbens associated with incentive seeking in animals. I related this incentive seeking process to the psychological concept of conditioning but added that it was for the search of an incentive. There have been articles which actually document the conditioning principle, in general, but I skipped those and decided to write on incentive seeking when it comes to animals becoming addicted to a stimulus (e.g. cocaine).

Anyway, enough of talking about the pathways themselves. After writing the paper I came back to my original question and original title of my paper which was, "Problems in conducing cognition to biological mechanisms." It was too much to handle, which is a good thing because I pretty much constructed a paradox. Does the brain develop the mind or does the mind develop the brain? Furthermore, I began to think that the problem with this question was my idea of the mind/ body problem. If you're not familiar with the mind and body dichotomy, it is generally described with 1 of 2 principles:

Dualism or Monism

Dualism: is the view stating that your mind is independent of the body and that your mind exists separate from your body. In direct conflict with Monism, basically your ideas, your soul and your self cannot be described materialistically.

Monism: this is the more accepted view by neuroscience today. Basically, it states that everything is material and that the mind ( 'soul') can be be reduced to material constructs and explained without supernatural influences.

Descartes, a historical philosophical figure and dualist, came up with a beautiful statement/claim known as the Cogito: "I think, therefore I am." I'm not going to get into the Cogito very much, in principle, at the time when he discovers the Cogito in his Meditations, he is denying the existence of everything to start off fresh in this new philosophy in describing what exists. In doing so, he begins to think of things that necessarily exist and because he is a thinking thing that thinks, then he obviously exists.

Science today describes the brain empirically and materialistically. Fredrich Neitzche, another historical philosoper, explains the mind as such: " a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish; so that is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think." One thinks; but that is "one" is precisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an "immediate certainty."..."To think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently"...this would be our brain. Neitzsche, Beyond good and evil.

So why am I bringing these guys up? Because I was raised to think in Descartes views and have recently faced Nietzsche. Dead on. Throughout my paper I kept wanting to go back and change things to include the soul and the mind and my consciousness but I noticed that it didn't make sense. On another note, when stating empirical measures to explain cognition (even with simple conditioning) it seemed as if I was stating elementary principles making assumptions of how 'we' work. In other words, I felt as if I was getting nowhere, while getting somewhere at the same time. Where exactly? Either away from bull or toward a different preference of belief. Descartes, Meditations.

It is fun to think about ourselves and our ability think of who we are and then it is degrading to wonder if all our features can be described and this beautiful consciousness can be eliminated once your brain is. This is my implicit paradox, I feel as if i am standing in between false beliefs and naked beliefs. Everything around me seems to be a tool, no longer necessary to really grasp, just learned to manipulate and communicate my surroundings but what is it all really doing? Right now, it is making me realize that I am using tools to describe the world and nature of which I should already be. If I was constructed naturally, My brain developed naturally and my reasoning is natural, then why not realize what we are using are tools separate from our nature describing our nature. This way we can never fully grasp IT, nature or life itself. Shouldn't we already be it? I think so.


beto