Pragmatic Naturalist - 03 May 2008 11:33 AM

mckenzievmd - 03 May 2008 08:57 AM

I know I’ve raised this before, but I still see the ghost of a homonculus in your distinction between a “recognition area” in the brain and the brain versus the “whole person” “recognizing” something.

You have fundamentally mischaracterized my view here.  The point of my saying that there is a “recognition area” of the brain was precisely to refuse to allow us to say that the brain by itself literally recognizes or performs any actions whatsoever—so that a “whole person” is then required to come along and “see” what the brain is doing and report on it.  My view is much further away from homunculism than yours.  I happily admit that a vast many complex processes are continuously occurring in our brains, and that these processes underlie our activities, like recognizing faces, remembering, walking, talking, etc.  But they are not those activities.

I have to agree that your concept of a “whole person” sounds like a homonculus. The only difference I see is that your homonculus sounds bigger that the brain, instead of the more classic, smaller than the brain, more specialized homonculus.

The main difference I see between your homonculus and the classic is that the classic homonculus inadvertently passes the responsibility of explaining down the line, while it seems you intention to purposefully do so to support a anti-reductionism view.

mckenzievmd - 03 May 2008 08:57 AM

When the neuroscientist talks about an area for recognizing faces, that’s exactly what the area does.

If you want to say that the brain literally remembers or recognizes, then why not say that it walks and talks too—since there are regions of the brain that light up when we’re walking and when we’re talking?  All I am saying is that the brain plays a role in our abilities as organisms to recognize faces, walk, talk, etc., but that these activities are sensibly attributable to the whole organism only, not to parts of it.  It may be scientifically useful to isolate certain parts of the brain to study the mechanisms that underlie our ability to recognize faces, walk, talk, etc., but to say that these isolated regions literally do these things for us is misleading (and more like a homunculus view than anything I’ve ever said).

Saying “the brain does the recognition” does not mean we are ignoring the fact that, when it is our mother we recognize, there is an increase in galvanic skin response. The brain sends signals to other organs. The brain coordinates advanced motor functions too. Our language was not developed in a neuroscience lab. It was developed over tens of thousands of generations that did not understand the functions of individual inner organs. Even when we do understand these things, we don’t like to talk that way. We like metaphor because it is easier to understand.

Does the brain move the body across the street? Of course, a brain on the sidewalk will go nowhere, nor will a foot without a brain. This shouldn’t be necessary to mention. The truth is the organism walks, as you say, if the observer is another person and the context is the physical world. If the brain itself is the observer, it is a different story.

There are people who have had damage to the right hemisphere due to strokes and who experience neglect syndrome, and end up denying that their left arm is paralyzed. When told to touch something with their left arm, they will claim that they are doing it, despite their arm laying lifeless by their side. The brain didn’t even need the body to experience moving a part of the body! It was able to experience doing so on its own. Admittedly, the person can be induced to temporarily understand the truth or the paralysis and deny their past denial by irrigating the right ear, but the example still illustrates my point.

I would not recognize you if I saw you.  Will a neuroscientist who’s never met me be able to look into my brain—just the physical stuff—and say that I can recognize my mom but not you?  Why not?  It’s all there, right?

Do they get to calibrate their equipment? If so, then yes, they would be able to tell, based on brain images and signals sent from the brain to other organs. If you won’t let them calibrate, then it would be like plugging a 110 TV into a 220 outlet and saying electrician can’t understand electronics. That wouldn’t make much sense.

Question: Why are these two statements not equivalent?

“I’m losing my mind.”

“I’m losing my brain.”

They are different because the brain is the organ, and the mind is what the organ does. Losing an organ is different than losing its function or ablility.

You don’t say “I am losing my eyes” if you are losing your vision. For most people, if you said “I’m losing my eyes” instead of “I’m losing my sight” due to cataracts, it sounds poetic and profound, because people understand that the eye will still be there, but it will no longer function as it normally does.

Apart from this, “I’m losing my ____” is already metaphoric use of the verb “to lose”, so I would be wary of drawing any conclusions based on the usage.

I still feel like we are talking apples and oranges. You are talking about what is going on in the world (walking, etc) and some of us are talking about how the brain perceives. The main point of contention is your point about the “whole person” that works his way into discussions of how perception occurs. I still don’t see how you assertion about the “whole person” follows from your arguments. Perhaps I missed something, but it feels like either you are just declaring it to be that way, or we are just having an argument about semantics and word meanings.

Saying that the heart pumps blood doesn’t deny that fact of the nervous system controlling the heart or the veins and arteries supplying and receiving the blood. Saying “I kicked Fred” doesn’t eliminate the fact that we know the role of the organs involved, and the “I” is used by others to refer to the sense of self containing skin sack that included the foot that kicked and the brain that creates the mind that made the decision to do so.

This is why I entered this thread with such an anti-philosophy air. I feel like philosophy has the ability to make the simple complicated while simultaneously ignoring the details of how things work. Don’t get me wrong—I have great respect for many modern day philosophers and they are often experts in how things work and exploring the implications. But, historically, there have been many arguments that weren’t much more than word games. This is, I imagine, to be expected when we lack understanding of the inner workings of the things we are discussing.

dmoreau - 03 May 2008 11:38 AM

It looks to me like we’ve reached the point where the brain in the vat can’t tell it is in a vat, and is passing through the same states as if it were in a body, living an equivalent life from its perspective, but we don’t want to call it experience. That is fine with me. Unfortunately, this definition is contradicting your allowing dreams and hallucinations to also be considered experience.

You are correct—and very astute—to notice that this appears to be a contradiction.  For I do not think that I mentioned—at least not in this particular exchange—that I am defining experience as “doing and undergoing”; that is, experience is the union of active and passive elements.  I am opposing any view of experience which defines it as merely passive undergoing, which is why stimulation of the brain in a vat does not count as “experience” whereas ordinary dreams and hallucinations do count as “experience”.  We can do stuff, whereas a brain in a vat cannot—it can merely undergo changes, it cannot effect them.

I am not pulling this definition of experience out of the blue; I have taken this conception of experience from John Dewey.  He is the original “Pragmatic Naturalist.” I’ll include here a representative passage from Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy.  The whole pdf is available at Google books if you’re interested.

[quote author="John Dewey"]
Experience becomes an affair primarily of doing. The organism does not stand about, Micawber-like, waiting for something to turn up.  It does not wait passive and inert for something to impress itself upon it from without. The organism acts in accordance with its own structure, simple or complex, upon its surroundings.  As a consequence the changes produced in the environment react upon the organism and its activities.  The living creature undergoes, suffers, the consequences of its own behavior. This close connection between doing and suffering or undergoing forms what we call experience. Disconnected doing and disconnected suffering are neither of them experiences. Suppose fire encroaches upon a man when he is asleep. Part of his body is burned away. The burn does not perceptibly result from what he has done. There is nothing which in any instructive way can be named experience. Or again there is a series of mere activities, like twitching of muscles in a spasm. The movements amount to nothing; they have no consequences for life. Or, if they have, these consequences are not connected with prior doing. There is no experience, no learning, no cumulative process.  But suppose a busy infant puts his finger in the fire; the doing is random, aimless, without intention or reflection. But something happens in consequence. The child undergoes heat, he suffers pain. The doing and undergoing, the reaching and the burn, are connected.  One comes to suggest and mean the other.  Then there is experience in a vital and significant sense.  (Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, pp. 86-7)

Pragmatic Naturalist - 03 May 2008 12:49 PM

dmoreau - 03 May 2008 11:38 AM

It looks to me like we’ve reached the point where the brain in the vat can’t tell it is in a vat, and is passing through the same states as if it were in a body, living an equivalent life from its perspective, but we don’t want to call it experience. That is fine with me. Unfortunately, this definition is contradicting your allowing dreams and hallucinations to also be considered experience.

You are correct—and very astute—to notice that this appears to be a contradiction.  For I do not think that I mentioned—at least not in this particular exchange—that I am defining experience as “doing and undergoing”; that is, experience is the union of active and passive elements.  I am opposing any view of experience which defines it as merely passive undergoing, which is why stimulation of the brain in a vat does not count as “experience” whereas ordinary dreams and hallucinations do count as “experience”.  We can do stuff, whereas a brain in a vat cannot—it can merely undergo changes, it cannot effect them.

I am not pulling this definition of experience out of the blue; I have taken this conception of experience from John Dewey.  He is the original “Pragmatic Naturalist.” I’ll include here a representative passage from Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy.  The whole pdf is available at Google books if you’re interested.

[quote author="John Dewey"]
Experience becomes an affair primarily of doing. The organism does not stand about, Micawber-like, waiting for something to turn up.  It does not wait passive and inert for something to impress itself upon it from without. The organism acts in accordance with its own structure, simple or complex, upon its surroundings.  As a consequence the changes produced in the environment react upon the organism and its activities.  The living creature undergoes, suffers, the consequences of its own behavior. This close connection between doing and suffering or undergoing forms what we call experience. Disconnected doing and disconnected suffering are neither of them experiences. Suppose fire encroaches upon a man when he is asleep. Part of his body is burned away. The burn does not perceptibly result from what he has done. There is nothing which in any instructive way can be named experience. Or again there is a series of mere activities, like twitching of muscles in a spasm. The movements amount to nothing; they have no consequences for life. Or, if they have, these consequences are not connected with prior doing. There is no experience, no learning, no cumulative process.  But suppose a busy infant puts his finger in the fire; the doing is random, aimless, without intention or reflection. But something happens in consequence. The child undergoes heat, he suffers pain. The doing and undergoing, the reaching and the burn, are connected.  One comes to suggest and mean the other.  Then there is experience in a vital and significant sense.  (Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, pp. 86-7)

Revised scenario: The child’s brain in a vat sends signals that a computer understands and the computer stimulates the brain to feel pain. New connections are created. Undergoing can be virtual for the brain in the vat, so long as we know what in th brain needs to be stimulated and what signals the brain can send.

Whether this effects the outside world is irrelevant to how the brain works.

dmoreau - 03 May 2008 01:02 PM

Revised scenario: The child’s brain in a vat sends signals that a computer understands and the computer stimulates the brain to feel pain. New connections are created. Undergoing can be virtual for the brain in the vat, so long as we know what in th brain needs to be stimulated and what signals the brain can send.

Whether this effects the outside world is irrelevant to how the brain works.

Hmm?  Is something experienced here other than a “signal”?  If so, then there would be an “environment” of sorts.  it would be a virtual environment, like having images pass before it on a screen that seem to be responsive to what the brain does.  In such a case there would be consequences that redound to the brain in response to its activity.  There’d be the connection between doing and undergoing that I say is required for experience, and that seems okay to me.  I wouldn’t say that there’d be no “effects on the outside world” however, the “outside world” in this case would just be the virtual reality that is presented to it--it’d be like playing a video game.  If not, then I don’t see how the brain is experiencing anything at all--its structure is being changed, perhaps, but not as a result of anything that it is doing.  Things are being done to it, but none of those changes are a result of anything that it did--and that wouldn’t count as experience for me and Dewey.  And I don’t think that this is just a semantic difference: experience must involve such interaction.

dmoreau - 03 May 2008 12:45 PM

I would not recognize you if I saw you.  Will a neuroscientist who’s never met me be able to look into my brain—just the physical stuff—and say that I can recognize my mom but not you?  Why not?  It’s all there, right?

Do they get to calibrate their equipment? If so, then yes, they would be able to tell, based on brain images and signals sent from the brain to other organs. If you won’t let them calibrate, then it would be like plugging a 110 TV into a 220 outlet and saying electrician can’t understand electronics. That wouldn’t make much sense.

When you say “calibrate” do you mean comparing brain images of me looking at someone I recognize and me looking at someone I don’t recognize?  If so, then they are not just appealing to the physical stuff in the brain, and that would make my point: an environment is necessary too.  Thus the brain is an interactive organ rather than a representational one.  If it was representational, then presumably the neuroscientist ought to be able to find the representation of my mom in there and not you in there without having to make reference to the world outside of my brain.

Pragmatic Naturalist - 03 May 2008 01:38 PM

dmoreau - 03 May 2008 01:02 PM

Revised scenario: The child’s brain in a vat sends signals that a computer understands and the computer stimulates the brain to feel pain. New connections are created. Undergoing can be virtual for the brain in the vat, so long as we know what in th brain needs to be stimulated and what signals the brain can send.

Whether this effects the outside world is irrelevant to how the brain works.

Hmm?  Is something experienced here other than a “signal”?  If so, then there would be an “environment” of sorts.  it would be a virtual environment, like having images pass before it on a screen that seem to be responsive to what the brain does.  In such a case there would be consequences that redound to the brain in response to its activity.  There’d be the connection between doing and undergoing that I say is required for experience, and that seems okay to me.  I wouldn’t say that there’d be no “effects on the outside world” however, the “outside world” in this case would just be the virtual reality that is presented to it--it’d be like playing a video game.  If not, then I don’t see how the brain is experiencing anything at all--its structure is being changed, perhaps, but not as a result of anything that it is doing.  Things are being done to it, but none of those changes are a result of anything that it did--and that wouldn’t count as experience for me and Dewey.  And I don’t think that this is just a semantic difference: experience must involve such interaction.

No, it would not be like passing image on a screen. It is directly stimulating the brain to imitate what happens when sensory information comes in. I think this is all getting silly.

This has reached my “so what” point. An isolated brain in a vat might be fun to talk about, but it seems irrelevant to the discussion of how the mind works and the extent of the brain’s role, and it does not address anything that I see as controversial. No one is claiming anything about brains in jars, and positing one does not produce any paradoxes. Even the word “experience” is not important to me. How the brain processes data is how the brain processes data, and how it generates our mind software is how it generates our mind software.

Pragmatic Naturalist - 03 May 2008 01:52 PM

dmoreau - 03 May 2008 12:45 PM

I would not recognize you if I saw you.  Will a neuroscientist who’s never met me be able to look into my brain—just the physical stuff—and say that I can recognize my mom but not you?  Why not?  It’s all there, right?

Do they get to calibrate their equipment? If so, then yes, they would be able to tell, based on brain images and signals sent from the brain to other organs. If you won’t let them calibrate, then it would be like plugging a 110 TV into a 220 outlet and saying electrician can’t understand electronics. That wouldn’t make much sense.

When you say “calibrate” do you mean comparing brain images of me looking at someone I recognize and me looking at someone I don’t recognize?  If so, then they are not just appealing to the physical stuff in the brain, and that would make my point: an environment is necessary too.  Thus the brain is an interactive organ rather than a representational one.  If it was representational, then presumably the neuroscientist ought to be able to find the representation of my mom in there and not you in there without having to make reference to the world outside of my brain.

No it would not make your point. Do you expect them to look at the brain with their eyes, perhaps sniff it and touch it to figure out if there is recognition? Or perhaps the neuroscientist should just know the state of every molecule in the brain? A polygraph is calibrated first, because we are all individuals. If you want to know the value of 12345, you need to know first if it is base 10, octal, or hexidecimal. You need to know the scale.

Even more significantly, the brain’s functioning is not dependent on there being an observer! It works how it works. If we want to find out about an individual brain, the only means we have of collecting data about it is using imaging and other technologies that, yes, exist in the world external to our minds. I have no idea how this is evidence that the mind isn’t representational! The way it stores information is not dependent on our current technology for measuring it!

The most important question is what experiments confirm your claim that “Thus the brain is an interactive organ rather than a representational one”? Perhaps if I read them I would understand what you are getting at.

dmoreau - 03 May 2008 02:25 PM

The most important question is what experiments confirm your claim that “Thus the brain is an interactive organ rather than a representational one”? Perhaps if I read them I would understand what you are getting at.

My “experiments” are the same as yours.  Ramachandran is a good source.

Such a statement perhaps leads to your exasperation, which I share.  So, I’ll cut to the chase as sharply as I can:

I guess that the bottom line is that you think one could have full blown life experiences if one were just a brain-in-a-vat and I don’t. 

Accordingly, I think that it is crucially important for us to get straight about exactly what we are referring to when we are attempting to study the mental experiences that structure our lives.  You’re willing to say “whatever” because a computational representationalism is already the paradigm.  I don’t deny the deck is stacked against me. 

My point is that scientists cannot successfully study the brain and its relation to the world if they are under the assumption that it represents a world to itself. 

In my opinion I think that philosophers and scientists are largely taken in by certain metaphors, thinking that the mind is a literal region of space—reifying it.  Reification is probably the first mistake.  And, if one is smart, and therefore a materialists of a naturalistic stripe, then one is inclined to think that the mind = the brain. 

That is mistake number two.

I tried to demonstrate this problematic covertly, with the question: why are these two sentences not equivalent?:

“I’m losing my mind.”

“I’m losing my brain.”

The correct answer is that the two are not equivalent because what we mean by “mind” is not a region (naturalistically located inside the skull) like the physical “brain”.  Instead the “mind” is what we refer to as a set of activities or properties or capacities of living human organisms.  It is the intelligent direction of our action.  It is not a something but not a nothing either.  It is a locus of interaction, rather than a location for consciousness or awareness. 

And, acknowleding the interactive nature of the brain is how we will best be able to study it.  It is not fruitfully thought of as a akin to a representational computer. 

Everyone here is dead-set on thinking of the mind as a purely physical thing and reducing all talk to physical particles in motion.  And they are so quick to try to pin the label supernaturalist on anyone who refuses to buy the line that naturalism and atheism = scientistic physicalism.

Pragmatic Naturalist - 04 May 2008 12:16 AM

And, acknowleding the interactive nature of the brain is how we will best be able to study it.  It is not fruitfully thought of as a akin to a representational computer. 

Why is it not fruitful? Why would your paradigm be a better way to study the brain?

Everyone here is dead-set on thinking of the mind as a purely physical thing and reducing all talk to physical particles in motion.  And they are so quick to try to pin the label supernaturalist on anyone who refuses to buy the line that naturalism and atheism = scientistic physicalism.

If you want to change a paradigm, the burden of proof is on you. I expect you know the real reason why some feel your view reminds them of supernaturalism. It isn’t because they are dogmatic. It is because you seem to be describing a “whole person” that cannot be measured or disproved. How would that be a better way to study the brain? I have no idea how you can justify the idea that talking about the “whole person” is a more productive way to study the brain when such terminology seems to have no interest in understanding how things work.

It also sounds a little new-agey.

I can’t even guess what the person is that you are talking about—is it the entire body and all its processes? If so, aren’t we going in an infinite loop? To undestand how a person recognizes, we study the role of each organ involved. Then the “whole person” recognizes the image. How does the “whole person” recognize? Repeat sequence above. Unless you are talking about some emergent spirit, phantom, or homonculus that can be neither measured nor divided into parts that can be analyzed.

You mention a brain in a vat scenario that offers no paradoxes or problems to the paradigm that you are contesting.

The current paradigm is a result of studying the brain. Perhaps there are fundamental flaws, but its change would be motivated by experimental findings. If you know of a finding that you find to be strong evidence, please share it, inasmuch as some of us have shared specific findings in this thread. Not having any to share does not invalidate a position, but it does validate not giving much time to a position until such evidence is produced.