Alzheimer's disease

[Helmholtz]

Bernardo,

I have been listen to a few hours of podcast where you explain your views and also listen to an audio version of your book: The Idea of the World..

I would be interested how you would I interpret from you metaphysical / ontological views the progressive and noticeable loss of mental capacity that you can see in Alzheimer's disease patients (e.g. my mother). Where is his conscience going, while his body stays here? Is his "alter" dissolving back into global mind. But in that case not of a sudden for you can see the progressive deterioration.

Congratulations for your recent work. It is very well written and inspiring.

Best

Carlos García Suárez

[Jim Cross]

There is no way this condition be romanticized as an alter dissolving into the mind at large. It seems like a tragic way to die that isn't even understood from medical standpoint. In the end, as we age, all of our organs begin to operate sub-optimally. For some people, the brain is the organ most affected and the result is loss of memory and function, a diminished consciousness not an enhanced one. I sympathize with your situation with your mother. Much the same happened with my mother when he reached her late eighties.

[Simon Adams]

Bernardo,

I have been listen to a few hours of podcast where you explain your views and also listen to an audio version of your book: The Idea of the World..

I would be interested how you would I interpret from you metaphysical / ontological views the progressive and noticeable loss of mental capacity that you can see in Alzheimer's disease patients (e.g. my mother). Where is his conscience going, while his body stays here? Is his "alter" dissolving back into global mind. But in that case not of a sudden for you can see the progressive deterioration.

Congratulations for your recent work. It is very well written and inspiring.

Best

Carlos García Suárez

Bernardo is unlikely to reply here, and I haven’t seen him specifically referring to Alzheimers. However I suspect he would say something similar to what he says about the effects if alcohol or a bash to the head. In effect when something happens to the body, it IS happening to the mind as well. We don’t really know what causes Alzheimer’s, or how the associated plaques in the brain fit in, but I doubt Bernardo would claim that the disruption should be seen any differently from his perspective.

From an analytic idealism perspective, there are different aspects of the alter (including meta consciousness), but at death these all dissolve away into a unity with ‘mind at large’. I don’t think Alzheimer’s would be seen as a re-association. Possibly meta-conscious could be seen as ‘locked in” to a limited functional awareness, whilst another aspect remains fully aware but not in meta conscious awareness (sleep itself is an example of something like that).

I think there is an individual aspect of us that transcends anything like this (and mind at large). Most of us live most our lives pretty much asleep, and then we can have an experience which is like waking up for the first time, and see things far more clearly. This is not some “new” you, more like opening a different type of eyes. In a similar way, these types of diseases seem to take us in the other direction, to be even less aware and clear sighted than normal.

For me there is a real self, and the reason buddhism etc often avoids any talk if this, is that the student will always create an illusion of this “real self” and not move beyond that. So for me, someone with Alzheimer’s will be no different to someone without it after they die. Catatonia is a very different disease, but people suffering for years with this can suddenly return to ‘their old selves’ when given anti Parkinson medicine. It’s short lived, but gives a hint that these diseases are a covering in some sense (which will of course sound like nonsense to a materialist).

Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease, when someone you’ve known all your life doesn’t recognise you. It can seem like they’re not ‘there’ anymore. You can call it wishful thinking, or blind faith, but I honestly believe it’s just a last and temporary phase of their lives here.