Does the mind control the body or does the body control the mind?

Last weekend I had a half-drunken discussion with my a good friend of mine who also happens to be a behavioural psychologist about the merits of neuromarketing. Not surprisingly for a seasoned behaviourist, the usefulness of understanding "the brain" is limited when isolating factors such as behaviour. An argument that left me thinking, though, was that behaviour and thoughts cannot be "separated". They are the same. It is therefore quite useless to look inside the brain (i.e. neuromarketing) without looking at corresponding behavior. Worth thinking about.

Comments

[Neuromarketing]

I wouldn't say that the benefits of explaining behavior by looking inside the brain are all that limited. It's true that in some cases we'll only observe the mechanism for what behaviorists already knew. In other cases, though, looking inside the "black box" may give us better understanding of why behaviors occur, and greater predictive ability for future behavior.

Roger