Zombie allusions: They just keep on coming-"people with the same neuro-behavioral properties but without subjective consciousness."

Front Psychol. 2013 Nov 20;4:832.

Commentary on Henrik Walter's "The third wave of biological psychiatry"

Pawelzik MR.

Source

EOS-Klinik für Psychotherapie Muenster, Germany.

"What about the mind? Mentally ill people suffer. They consciously experience the burden of their condition. Psychiatry always intended to deal with the “mindedness” of mentally disordered people. But can modern neurosciences—the foundational basis of biological psychiatry—explain the phenomenon of mental life? The issue is not that mindedness depends on brain activity; it does. The controversial subject is that our scientific approaches to the study of the mental realm are misguided. Let me hint at three exemplary ways of misguidance:

(i)  Due to the methodological restrictions of the behavioral sciences, biological psychiatry studies “zombies”—people with the same neuro-behavioral properties but without subjective consciousness. Zombie-psychology looks for strict correlations between operationalized behavioral paradigms and objectively measured neuronal activities; proceeding in this way excludes the mental realm by definition. As long as this is the case, all that biological psychiatry can ask for is the special status of an “applied clinical neuroscience” assisting general psychiatry."