Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id KAA16611 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 14 Mar 2001 10:49:59 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745CD5@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Jerry Fodor Article Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 10:46:35 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Cheers Joe,
Very interesting.
Vincent
> ----------
> From: joedees@bellsouth.net
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 3:41 am
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Jerry Fodor Article
>
>
> Article from Jerry Fodor:
> >
> > "It appears that recent technological developments in 'neural imaging'
> > have made it possible to measure the amount of activity that's going
> > on in a given brain region while a subject is engaged in some
> > experimental task. And, though perhaps not mandatory, it's natural
> > enough to infer from a reliable correlation between a mental process
> > and a locus of neural activity that the latter is the site of the
> > former. If there's a place in the brain where you find a whole lot of
> > neurons going off when and only when whoever owns the brain is
> > thinking about teapots, it's at least plausible, all else being equal,
> > that you've found where in that brain its thinking about teapots
> > happens. Likewise, if certain neurons fire at certain frequencies just
> > when a guy is conscious, one might infer that that's where his
> > consciousness hangs out. All the more so if the correlation holds
> > across subjects.
> >
> > To be sure, the data aren't generally quite as clean as you might
> > suppose from made-up examples, and the inferences they are said to
> > suggest are by no means apodictic. But I won't dispute any of that. I
> > admit, for the sake of the argument, that consciousness is correlated
> > with certain neurons firing at 40 Hz cycles; and that some bits of the
> > brain light up when we hear nouns but not when we hear verbs; and that
> > there are (different) bits that light up when we see a thing, or form
> > its mental image, but not when we hear a thing or describe it to
> > ourselves. It appears there's even a place in the brain that turns on
> > just when we hear a word that stands for a vegetable; 'lettuce'
> > excites it but 'roast beef' doesn't. So be it.
> >
> > I want, to begin with, to distinguish between the question whether
> > mental functions are neurally localised in the brain, and the question
> > where they are neurally localised in the brain. Though I find it hard
> > to care about the second, the first clearly connects with deep issues
> > about how the mind works; ones that even us philosophers have heard
> > of.
> >
> > For example: there has been, for centuries, a debate going on between
> > people who think that each of the various kinds of mental process is
> > more or less sui generis, and people who think that they are much of a
> > likeness, all consisting of the same elements although differently
> > arranged. With occasional anomalies, the argument between homogeneous
> > minds and heterogeneous minds aligns with the argument between
> > empiricists and rationalists; and, far from being settled, it keeps
> > popping up in unexpected places. Do you think that a classical
> > education disciplines the mind for whatever pursuits it later
> > undertakes? If so, you should think that learning Latin gives rise to
> > intellectual capacities that are more or less equally in play in
> > devising a foreign policy, or designing a bridge, or making money on
> > the market. Similarly, if you think there's such a thing as 'general'
> > intelligence - what IQ tests are supposed to measure - then you should
> > also think that designing bridges and designing foreign policies
> > manifest much the same kind of cleverness, albeit applied to different
> > tasks. People who are good at the one should then be, potentially,
> > equally good at the other. So Veblen held, maybe naively, that society
> > ought to be run by engineers; and Plato held, maybe even more naively,
> > that it ought to be run by philosophers.
> >
> > Whereas, if you're on the rationalist side of this debate, you won't
> > be surprised to find every sort of intellectual sophistication
> > cohabiting with every sort of naivety, and will be disinclined to
> > trust the obiter dicta of experts.
> >
> > I don't know who's right about all that, but it's easy to see that
> > whether mental functions are neurally localised is likely to be
> > relevant. If the brain does different tasks at different places, that
> > rather suggests that it may do them in different ways. Whereas, if
> > anything that the brain can do it can do just about anywhere, that
> > rather suggests that different kinds of thinking may recruit quite
> > similar neural mechanisms. So empiricists, since they typically hold
> > that all mental processes reduce to patterns of associations, would
> > like the brain to be 'equipotential', whereas rationalists, since they
> > think that there might be as many different kinds of thinking as there
> > are different kinds of thing to think about, generally would prefer
> > the brain to be organised on geographical principles. Unsurprisingly,
> > rationalists thought there might be something to phrenology, but
> > empiricists made fun of it. (The empiricists won that battle, of
> > course; but my guess is they will lose the war.)
> >
> > In any case, I quite see why anyone who cares how the mind works might
> > reasonably care about the argument between empiricism and rationalism;
> > and why anyone who cares about the argument between empiricism and
> > rationalism might reasonably care whether different areas of the brain
> > differ in the mental functions they perform. Likewise for anyone who
> > cares about how much of the mind's structure is innate (whatever,
> > exactly, that means). If you think a lot of it is, you presumably
> > expect a lot of localisation of function, not just in the adult's
> > brain but also in the infant's. Whereas, if you think a lot of mental
> > structure comes from experience (whatever, exactly, that means), you
> > probably expect the infant's brain to be mostly equipotential even if
> > the adult's brain turns out not to be. Rationalists are generally
> > nativists and preformationists; empiricists generally aren't either
> > one or the other.
> >
> > But given that it matters to both sides whether, by and large, mental
> > functions have characteristic places in the brain, why should it
> > matter to either side where the places are? It's deeply interesting
> > that there apparently are proprietary bits of the brain in charge of
> > one or other aspect of one's linguistic capacities. And, no doubt, if
> > you're a surgeon you may well wish to know which ones they are, since
> > you will wish to avoid cutting them out. But whereas, historically,
> > studies of the localisation of brain functions have often been
> > clinically motivated, I take it to be currently the consensus that
> > they have significant scientific import over and above their
> > implications for medical practice. Very well, then: just what is the
> > question about the mind-brain relation in general, or about language
> > in particular, that turns on where the brain's linguistic capacities
> > are? And if, as I suspect, none does, why are we spending so much time
> > and money trying to find them?
> >
> > It isn't, after all, seriously in doubt that talking (or riding a
> > bicycle, or building a bridge) depends on things that go on in the
> > brain somewhere or other. If the mind happens in space at all, it
> > happens somewhere north of the neck. What exactly turns on knowing how
> > far north? It belongs to understanding how the engine in your auto
> > works that the functioning of its carburettor is to aerate the petrol;
> > that's part of the story about how the engine's parts contribute to
> > its running right. But why (unless you're thinking of having it taken
> > out) does it matter where in the engine the carburettor is? What part
> > of how your engine works have you failed to understand if you don't
> > know that?
> >
> > There's a funny didactic fable of Bernard Shaw's called, I think, The
> > Little Black Girl in Search of God, in which the eponymous heroine
> > wanders around what was then the intellectual landscape, looking for
> > such wisdom as may be on offer. She runs into Pavlov, who explains to
> > her why he is, rather horribly, drilling holes in the mouths of dogs:
> > it's to show that expecting food makes them salivate. 'But we already
> > knew that,' she says, in some perplexity. 'Now we know it
> > scientifically,' Pavlov replies*. It may be that some such thought
> > also motivates the current interest in brain localisation. Granted
> > that we always sort of knew that there's a difference between nouns
> > and verbs, or between thinking about teapots and taking a nap, we
> > didn't really know it till somebody found them at different places in
> > the brain. Now that somebody has, we know it scientifically.
> >
> > To put the same point the other way around: what if, as it turns out,
> > nobody ever does find a brain region that's specific to thinking about
> > teapots or to taking a nap? Would that seriously be a reason to doubt
> > that there are such mental states? Or that they are mental states of
> > different kinds? Or that the brain must be somehow essentially
> > involved in both? As far as I can see, it's reasonable to hold that
> > brain studies are methodologically privileged with respect to other
> > ways of finding out about the mind only if you are likewise prepared
> > to hold that facts about the brain are metaphysically privileged with
> > respect to facts about the mind; and you can hold that only if you
> > think the brain and the mind are essentially different kinds of thing.
> > But I had supposed that dualistic metaphysics was now out of fashion,
> > in the brain science community most of all. Brain scientists are
> > supposed to be materialists, and materialists are supposed not to
> > doubt that distinct mental states have ipso facto got different neural
> > counterparts. That being so, why does it matter where in the brain
> > their different counterparts are?
> >
> > To be sure, serendipity is full of surprises and there's always the
> > chance that something might turn up. It might turn out, for example,
> > that the neural loci of similar kinds of mental process are pretty
> > reliably spatially propinquitous (as, indeed, the phrenologists
> > generally supposed). If that were so, then good brain maps might
> > usefully constrain our hypotheses about psychological taxonomy: if
> > thinking of teapots happened to be side by side in the brain with
> > taking naps, maybe we would then revise our intuition that the two
> > really haven't much in common. But the issue is academic in the
> > invidious sense since in fact there's no good reason to think that
> > similarity of psychological functions generally predicts similarity of
> > brain locations or vice versa. And serendipity is a frail reed; if the
> > best you can say for your research strategy is 'you can never tell, it
> > might pan out,' you probably ought to have your research strategy
> > looked at.
> >
> > I once gave a (perfectly awful) cognitive science lecture at a major
> > centre for brain imaging research. The main project there, as best I
> > could tell, was to provide subjects with some or other experimental
> > tasks to do and take pictures of their brains while they did them. The
> > lecture was followed by the usual mildly boozy dinner, over which
> > professional inhibitions relaxed a bit. I kept asking, as politely as
> > I could manage, how the neuroscientists decided which experimental
> > tasks it would be interesting to make brain maps for. I kept getting
> > the impression that they didn't much care. Their idea was apparently
> > that experimental data are, ipso facto, a good thing; and that
> > experimental data about when and where the brain lights up are, ipso
> > facto, a better thing than most. I guess I must have been unsubtle in
> > pressing my question because, at a pause in the conversation, one of
> > my hosts rounded on me. 'You think we're wasting our time, don't you?'
> > he asked. I admit, I didn't know quite what to say. I've been
> > wondering about it ever since. "
> >
> > * Not unlike this gem from Chomsky "In fact, it is now known that if
> > you prevent visual evidence from reaching the visual system at an
> > early period of life this system actually degenerates." Well, gosh.
> > Who'd have thought it?
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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