POLL: Are you on board with mind/brain reductionism (to genetic expression)?
In 1998, Eric Kandel proposed a new intellectual framework for psychiatry in which brain function and dysfunction can ultimately be reduced to genetic expression but one in which environmental effects (including psychotherapy) play a role (by modulating genetic expression which changes neural circuits and neuron function).
@NicoleCRust
Speaking as someone working on manipulating gene expression on a daily basis (in #drosophila), the problem may be the definition of "gene expression" if this meant the level of gene expression, then this proposition isn't sufficient to even explain the cellular function. e.g. many gene products are enzymes, whose activities are manipulated by nongenic substrates and cofactors; removing these genes altogether may have phenotypic impact, but reducing their expression level may not.
@NicoleCRust
2) As others have mentioned above, even if you believe in full reductionism, gene activations seem to be the wrong thing to reduce to. There are also: Electrical activations, chemical reactions that don't go through gene activations, morphology changes, and probably many more that don't come to my mind because I am not a biologist. It seems exceedingly unlikely that they are all irrelevant.
@NicoleCRust
I am not on board with this for two reasons of different broadness:
I don't think reductionism of behaviour down all the way to individual neurons is the right way understand behaviour and/or the brain. To achieve understanding we will need higher level abstract descriptions that get rid of most of the details of the biological implementation. We will never know the neurons of a person precisely enough to simulate them or have the capacity to simulate them all down to molecules
With tremendous respect of the luminaries that turned brain research around in the latter half of the 20th century (sincerely), I'm coming around to the idea that the 21st century is ready for another shift. So my bets are on probably "no" (with definitive evidence still TBD).
I predict that the gaps between the brain and mind will be filled with complex systems that have emergent properties; this will redefine how we think about genes and molecules in ways that we will no longer try to "reduce" to them (but they will still play a crucial role).
@NicoleCRust I think this sort of gene expression reductionism is methodologically useful and should be pursued as a practical matter, but I'm not fully on board with it for (at least) two reasons.
First, even accepting a strictly reductionist approach to scientific explanation, I don't think gene expression patterns compose a complete description of nervous system in any meaningful sense. "Connectionists" also propose a fully reductive explanation of the nervous system on the basis of its wiring diagram, for example. I think neither of those contain enough information to recapitulate the other, and both are probably necessary for a full reductionist explanation of the nervous system. I like some of Eve Marder and colleagues' work in the crustacean pyloric rhythm to illustrate how both of these are necessary. I also think that there are other reductive variables necessary for a complete explanation, so those two together are still not sufficient for a reductionist program to succeed.
Second, I don't believe that a reductionist approach provides the best scientific explanations for many questions we have about the nervous system. I'm not in the camp that the mind is "irreducible," but as a matter of what constitutes a satisfying scientific explanation I don't think reductionism always does it. A table is "nothing more" than a bunch of wood in a particular arrangement, but a good explanation of tables may focus more on the structural stability of their shape rather than the mechanical properties of the wood, or on the cultural context of how they are used in dining rituals ("round table" vs "head of the table") etc. #Neuroscience#PhilosophyOfScience
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