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Comment by danielmarkbruce

11 hours ago

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.

9 comments

danielmarkbruce

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runarberg  11 hours ago

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.

  • cortesoft  7 hours ago

    > 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  7 hours ago

      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.