Psychotherapy under the auspices of invocated naturalization of mind

Abstract

The phrase of »mind-body interaction« is well established in colloquial speech. Bearing this in mind, one wonders how such a non-scientific every-day metaphor could slip – seemingly unnoticed – into medical and psychological terminology. Furthermore, one cannot help but deplore the highly variable meaning attached to such elementary terms as »nature«, »matter« and »mind«. It even remains a matter of taste whether one allocates »mind« into »nature« or in opposition to it.With the natural sciences – including biology (»life sciences«) materialistic physicalism is predominating. It does seemingly not matter that the phenomenology of life and of mind as well can not be accounted for thereby. Mind cannot act directly upon matter, i.e. not qua mind but only in an indirect manner. The causation is an indirect one (in the sense of Aristotelian Causa finalis), because every mental state (singular and unrepeatable by definition) goes along with a certain brain state. This provable fact is the essence of aspect-dualistic monism.Given this premise, the current programmatic demand from leading neuroscientists, to deciphering that mysterious code used by nature in transforming mind into matter (and vice versa), turns out to be nothing but a embarrassing epistemological fallacy. The present deadlock in neurosciences – of course unacknowledged or even emphatically disputed – represents the inevitable consequence of the doctrine of antimetaphysical empirisms, as it was already proclaimed 2500 years ago by ancient sophism, when man was regarded as measure of everything. A strong dedication to common sense thinking together with a reluctance against the primacy of theory in science seriously impedes any prosperous development. It is self-evident, that such a mental attitude cannot be compensated for by the marvellous technical research tools that have become available nowadays.