[danielmarkbruce]

Saying we have a good idea of how the brain works massively overstates the case...

We know how neurons fire. We do not know how a brain turns that into thought, meaning, intention, experience and on and on. That is not "pretty well understanding the brain", it's understanding some components and hand waving the thing we actually care about.

[runarberg]

What I actually care about is how neural activity translates to behavior. And we have a good enough idea of that that we can design SSRI medicine to treat depression, or neurological tests to detect Alzheimer. As for experience we do know something and we are learning more with cognitive psychology, in e.g. priming experiments etc.

I feel like the search for consciousness is to psychology what the search for the Aether was for physics and chemistry. I think it is a worthwhile search, and maybe we will discover something important during that search, but we should also be prepared to find out that the thing might not exist, or it’s presumed properties are better explained with a different model.

[danielmarkbruce]

SSRIs are not evidence that we understand how neural activity becomes behavior. They are evidence that you can perturb a system usefully without understanding it very well. That is exactly my point.

Respectfully, you are miles out of your depth here.

[runarberg]

I don‘t see why you felt the need to insult me here. We are having a very common disagreement here, one which philosophers of science have been actively debating for several decades.

My point with the SSRI is that we know that serotonin is a chemical which incites certain neurons, and we know that a lack of activity of neurons in that general area in the brain is correlated with depression, so scientists were able to accurately predict that keeping the serotonin in that brain area for longer would increase brain activity there and decrease the level of depression.

This counts as pretty good understanding in my books at least. It teaches us very little about consciousness but my point is that it doesn’t have to. Just like Newton’s theory of gravity did not have to teach us about some deeper cosmological truth.

[danielmarkbruce]

It's not an insult to suggest one is out of the depth on a topic, especially when it isn't one's field of expertise. You are giving the pop science explanation of various things.

[fragmede]

Why did you feel the need to add it though?

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[danielmarkbruce]

Nobody called anyone any name.

If you are going to quote rules, be bothered to read what was actually written. Your behavior ruins things, it doesn't make it better.

[cortesoft]

> Just like Newton’s theory of gravity did not have to teach us about some deeper cosmological truth.

I would also argue that Newton's theory of gravity was not a pretty good understanding of gravity.

[runarberg]

It was still a good theory, and importantly the fact that it failed explain the nature of Aether had no effect on the quality of the theory.

[xnfcxnr]

i know the sun shows up every day and i know if i go inside my basement i dont get a tan. do i understand the sun?

[runarberg]

Some schools of the philosophy of science would argue that you do. However you are describing is a very different acquisition of knowledge then what scientists did when developing SSRI medicine. We had to:

1. take pictures of brain activity under different conditions to see which regions were active during different moods,

2. sacrifice a bunch of mice to see which neuro-chemical activated which neurons,

3. predict that inhibiting the re-uptake of a specific neuro-chemical would activate that region,

4. predict that activating that region would decrease the level of depression

In your solar example you would have discovered melanin and its relation to your skin tone, and you would have studied the effects ultra-violate radiation has on your melanin levels. Then you would have predicted that staying out of the sun will not give you a tan.

[noduerme]

Yes, but our friend's apt analogy shows the danger of absorbing Plato's cave as the one thing you learned in Uni. If everything is a shadow on the wall then, of course, every type of study you just mentioned is merely another set of shadows. Nothing can be proven, and the coin of the realm is not to disprove anything but merely to signal your disbelief. Arguing with data for the power of reason against such a philosophy is pointless, as sincere as your response was (and I did appreciate it).