News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The New Science of Mind by pekk on Sunday September 08, 2013 @12:30PM (#6349222)
Everything is mediated by biological processes, we are organisms.

What illness has nothing to do with "biology" - robot illnesses?

The idea that there is exactly one cause for any event is ridiculous, this isn't specific to illnesses.

Re:The New Science of Mind by thelettere on Sunday September 08, 2013 @01:01PM (#6349325)
For a long time it was thought that mind and brain were not synonymous.

I do not argue it either way though - my point was that Kandel's claim that mental illnesses are fundamentally biological, that people are not at all responsible and that our brains "control our actions" is not supported by his examples or the evidence.

Re:The New Science of Mind by eli_gottlieb on Sunday September 08, 2013 @01:31PM (#6349435)
As TelmoMenezes said above, explaining mental illness entirely through neurological glitching is like explaining a software bug by claiming a circuit board wasn't soldered correctly.

Yes, there can be "hardware" causes, and yes, the "software" does run on the "hardware" as substrate, but the hardware is not a useful model of the software. Neurology is not necessarily an entirely useful model of an individual mind.