Is it possible to completely know a human being?

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Do the Impossible: Know Thyself

by Theodore Dalrymple (March 2007)

I attended a fascinating conference on neuropsychiatry recently.

Neuroscience, it seems to me, is the current most hopeful candidate for the role of putative but delusory answer to all Mankind's deepest questions: what is Man's place in Nature, and how should he live. What is the good life, at least in the western world?

The fact that there is no definitive answer to these questions does not mean that we cease to ask them. Some philosophers have argued that a question that is in principle unanswerable is not really a question at all, but the philosophical equivalent of verbigeration, the symptom in which some lunatics make word-like sounds that do not actually correspond to any language. But this strikes me as evasive, a kind of high class magical thinking, in which a person believes that a state of affairs can be brought about merely by wishing it to be brought about.

An equal and opposite temptation is to believe that the questions have already been answered, at least in principle (that is to say, everything but the detail has been worked out). Freudians and Marxists, for example, once believed that they knew not only what had gone wrong with human existence, but how to put it right. They believed this because they thought they had a complete and sufficient explanation and description of Man. This, of course, put them at a great advantage, at least in their own estimation, to the great mass of Mankind that was neither Marxist nor Freudian. They had seen the light as clearly as any Evangelical; and there are few states of mind more delightful than an awareness of superior understanding to that of the great mass of one's fellows.

It will not have escaped the notice of the observant that Marxism and Freudianism have become a little frayed around the edges of late, and that their adherents are reduced to recalcitrant membership of increasingly beleaguered sects. But the attraction of all-embracing worldviews that explain not only who we are but prescribe how we ought to live remains as strong as ever. Some of the neuroscientists to whom I listened at the conference implied that we were on the verge of such a breakthrough in our self-understanding, thanks to neuroimaging, neurochemistry and neurogenetics and so forth, that Man, proud Man, will no longer be a mystery to himself. The heart of all our mysteries will be plucked out wholesale, as it were; and to understand all will then be not so much to forgive all as to control all, especially our bad habits.

Let me not be taken as denying that the neurosciences have advanced stupendously in the last few years. Progress, indeed, has been so rapid that leaders in various fields now talk of the late 1990s as if of an era prehistoric antiquity and ignorance, just as those in the late 1990s used to talk of the late 1980s.

During the conference, I heard one of the best lectures I have ever heard by a professor at the Salpetriere in Paris. (This hospital, of course, has one of the most distinguished histories in neurology of any hospital in the world.) Not only did the professor speak brilliantly, with wit, learning and charm, but he showed astonishing before and after videos of patients treated surgically for a variety of conditions, from Parkinson's disease to Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome. It was difficult then not to succumb to a sort of euphoria, that consisted of the belief that at last we really did understand, at least in principle, what it was to be a human being. This was further reinforced by neuroimaging studies showing the areas of the brain that were active when a man in love perceives his beloved: the neurological basis of romantic love, as it were. Somewhat disappointingly for romantics, the parts of the brain that are activated during the encounter are primitive from the evolutionary point of view, and present in the pigeon and the lizard.

In fact, the professor from the Salpetriere, being a cultivated man, was comparatively circumspect in his estimation of the wider significance of his work. The operations he described were performed on people with gross and relatively discrete pathology, who were abnormal in a very obvious way. In fact, for all the wizardry of the means used, the extension of our knowledge upon the basis of which the operations were performed was not of an order of magnitude greater than previous advances, nor was that knowledge different in kind from that which we had already long possessed.
Nevertheless, several speakers strongly implied that with the exponential growth of neuroscientific research, we were about to understand ourselves to a degree unmatched by any previously living humans. I confess that, whenever I heard this, I thought of the old proverb about Brazil: that it is, and always will be, the country of the future.

More: http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=5863&sec_id=5863

When I had focal dystonia diagnosed, my neurologist suggested I participate in a functional MRI (FMRI) study. I thought it fascinating but couldn't spend the time to go to New York for a week.

What does this say of our current paradigm? That we're all reducible to neurons firing? The thought in the 70's at the dawn of the computer era was that the human brain was analagous to a computer chip, and that eventually, a computer would be able to mimic the human brain with such accuracy that a human would never be able to tell the difference. The Turing challenge was formed, where each year, hundreds of hopeful geeks would try to fool a human. Using the assumption that the brain was just a vast reservoir of knowledge, various projects such as Doug Lenat's LISP project and the Japanese fifth generation project (of which I was involved in a small manner) sought to unlock the secrets of the brain via the use of logic software. The failure of these projects and the work of John Searle, who came up with the ingenious and powerful Chinese room argument turned the tide. People actually stopped thinking of the brain as hardware and started to view it as something special, even human!

Today we have neuroscience. The evidence seems convincing, but have we once again come full circle, only this time, with more detail?

__________________
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

The irony of Dalrymple's last paragraph extolling Hume's virtues, is that Hume, after coming to his conclusions about the inscrutability of humanity, recommended a trip to the pub, thereby answering Dalrymple'e earlier question about why people drink.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Let's use a specific example. Newburg is studying Buddhist enlightenment. He has discovered that meditating monks at one with the universe have surpressed the activity of the part of the brain that draws the distinction between inside/outside and enhanced the activity of the more primitive part of the brain which does not make a distinction between self/other.
I think this is an advance in human self understanding. We know more about what is happening. However, it isn't a substitute for enlightenment. No monk will be satisfied by simply looking at the MRI instead of meditating.
It may help us if we want to design an enlightened computer.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

"The best a man can hope for is to be able to do." -GI Gurdjieff

__________________
-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html

But would a drug or a 'button' that suppresses the same brain part activity, be as satisfying? Can an anamatronic man be a real man?

__________________
-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html

Is it possible to completely know a human being?

No!

Everyone is in a constant state of change due to input of knowledge and experiences.

Believe it or not you are not the same person that you were yesterday, a week ago, a year ago, tomorrow, a week from today or a year from now. We are in a constant state of flux.

If you're not the same person then how are we responsible for what we did yesterday?

__________________
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

circumstancial evidence?

__________________
-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html

By making minor (life) course changes today and tomorrow. Kind of like driving on a curvy road. Lots of people don't make these minor changes in direction and crash their lives.

[QUOTE=German Stare;1444736]you are not the same person that you were yesterday, a week ago, a year ago, tomorrow, a week from today or a year from now. QUOTE]

What is this 'You' that is not???

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

[quote=kerry edwards;1444792]"You" are always you. Who else could you be?

[QUOTE=German Stare;1444799]How can I be always me but not always the same me?

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

The question asked by Mary Shelly.

Frahnkensteen.

Physically different, too. We are constantly shedding cells as they die. Over our lifetimes we have completelt changed our cells several times. Maybe we're an interefernce pattern or standing wave within a bag of salty meat soup.