Sunday, September 12, 2004

I'm getting sleepy, sleeeepy, very sleeeeepy...

I never undertsand why stories like this ("Hypnosis really changes your mind", New Scientist, 13:28 10 September 04, by Anna Gosline) amaze people. Well, let me restate myself. I understand why people love such findings. There is a dull and widespread opinion these days that since the brain always changes with the psyche, and that the mind can be altered via the brain, that the mind *is* the brain. We live in an age of presumed reductionism and it's just as numbly assumed neurology presents deep problems for classical (and Christian) anthropology.

But was it ever a surprise, really, that the brain changes in conjunction with the mind? Did we ever doubt that "feeling in love" literally warped your brain? When was it such a revelation that guzzling booze wrecked your brain and, in turn, wrecked your mind? God made the human mind a brainish thing. He did not, however, make every brain a minded thing.

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