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Concluding observations, with steps toward neuroscience

Nelson Cowan

in Attention and Memory: An Integrated Framework

The chapter emphasizes a level of analysis at which subdivisions are avoided until shown to be fundamental. It helps especially in investigations of short-term memory, selective attention, and the ... More

The chapter emphasizes a level of analysis at which subdivisions are avoided until shown to be fundamental. It helps especially in investigations of short-term memory, selective attention, and the relationship between them. Fundamental, seemingly obvious concepts actually have been questioned in the literature and so are revisited. The chapter summarizes ways in which memory and attention appear to be closely interrelated. This is important because it includes observations that could be drawn only by aggregating across previous chapters. Directions for evolution of the theoretical framework are considered. The cognitive concepts are mapped onto brain structures. Moreover, both behavioral and brain research methods are challenged to make the best use of multiple levels of analysis. In this regard, even positing a homunculus, a portion of the mind that somehow carries out volition, is useful to divide human information processing into subcategories, allowing some of them to be better understood.Less

Mind, Brain, and the Unconscious

Michael Moore

in Placing Blame: A Theory of the Criminal Law

The chapter explores the general nature of mental states such as belief, desire, and intentions, and their relation to brain states It does this through an extended analysis of the Freudian theory of ... More

The chapter explores the general nature of mental states such as belief, desire, and intentions, and their relation to brain states It does this through an extended analysis of the Freudian theory of the unconscious. Rightly conceived, the Freudian unconscious is seen as functionally characterized, sub-personal states of the brain that underlie the mental states of whole persons. The folk psychology on which the criminal law’s culpability discriminations are built, is thus seen to be secure against the insights of a progressive, scientific psychology, be it Freudian, behaviourist, cognitive, neuroscientific, or other.Less

The Director: Self as The Unifyingcontext of Consciousness

Bernard J. Baars

in In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind

This chapter argues that the “self” of everyday life can be seen as a context that maintains long-term stability in our experiences and actions. Over many different situations we still manage to ... More

This chapter argues that the “self” of everyday life can be seen as a context that maintains long-term stability in our experiences and actions. Over many different situations we still manage to maintain a sense of predictability about who and what we are. A review of “disorders of self” such as multiple personality disorder shows that any fundamental changes in one's expectations and intentions are experienced as self-alien.Less

Prelude the Hanging Man

Simon Palfrey

in Poor Tom: Living "King Lear"

This section introduces the elusive being of King Lear’s Poor Tom through a hidden figure in an El Greco picture. El Greco painted this falling man, but in such a way that it is barely-visible to the ... More

This section introduces the elusive being of King Lear’s Poor Tom through a hidden figure in an El Greco picture. El Greco painted this falling man, but in such a way that it is barely-visible to the eye. The figure is an almost-naked man, perhaps the crucified or deposed Christ, perhaps not, dropping or suspended in space. Does the homonculus exist? Is it dead, or undead, past or possible, punished or waiting? Or is it just a smear of paint, or an artist’s joke? These basic questions of ontology and existence can be asked of Shakespeare’s Poor Tom.Less

The Case for Zombies

Robert Kirk

in Zombies and Consciousness

The definition of zombies is clarified, and the main arguments for the alleged possibility of zombies are examined. The ‘conceivability argument’ is influential: zombies are conceivable; whatever is ... More

The definition of zombies is clarified, and the main arguments for the alleged possibility of zombies are examined. The ‘conceivability argument’ is influential: zombies are conceivable; whatever is conceivable is possible; therefore zombies are possible. Chalmers’s arguments for conceivability are given special attention, notably his use of Block’s homunculus-head; the apparent gap between physical information and facts about experiences; Jackson’s ‘knowledge argument’; and the argument from the ‘absence of analysis’. It is argued that none of the arguments is conclusive.Less

The Catastrophe of the Eye

J. Kevin O’Regan

in Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the feel of consciousness

This chapter discusses some apparent design flaws of the eye, which raise the specter of what philosophers call a homunculus—a little man in the brain, looking at the internal screen where the ... More

This chapter discusses some apparent design flaws of the eye, which raise the specter of what philosophers call a homunculus—a little man in the brain, looking at the internal screen where the outside world is projected. These flaws include blind spots, optical defects, nonuniform sampling, bad peripheral color vision, geometric distortions, and shifts in retinal image.Less

In the Operating Room: Wilder Penfield’s Stimulation Reports and the Discovery of “Mind”

Katja Guenther

in Localization and Its Discontents: A Genealogy of Psychoanalysis and the Neuro Disciplines

This chapter charts the transformation of Foerster's practice in the work of Wilder Penfield. Penfield came to study with Foerster in Breslau in 1928 and brought Foerster's epilepsy operation back to ... More

This chapter charts the transformation of Foerster's practice in the work of Wilder Penfield. Penfield came to study with Foerster in Breslau in 1928 and brought Foerster's epilepsy operation back to North America. There it formed the basis of Penfield's clinical work. In contrast to Foerster, Penfield re-tasked his operation technique in order to map the brain. I argue that the reemergence of the localization project after a thirty-year hiatus can be explained by Penfield's de-composition of the reflex. Like Schilder, Penfield tested both sides of the reflex arc separately, studying in turn sensory and motor responses. As such Penfield could sideline the systemic aspects of the reflex that had structured earlier investigations and made localization so unconvincing. And like Schilder, this encouraged Penfield to posit a self-transparent patient who could provide insight into sensory states. As this chapter shows, the self-transparency of Penfield's introspective patient increasingly became the focus of his research, as in the 1950s he concentrated his efforts on tracking down an ever-elusive “mind.” 168Less

Joshua Reynolds’s “Nice Chymistry” in the 1770s

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

This chapter explores Joshua Reynolds’s experiments with unstable chemical materials both in his painting practice and in his theory of art. It places the painter in his native environs of Plymouth ... More

This chapter explores Joshua Reynolds’s experiments with unstable chemical materials both in his painting practice and in his theory of art. It places the painter in his native environs of Plymouth where Reynolds maintained strong connections to makers of watches and precision time-keeping instruments (including members of the Mudge and the Northcote families), along with artists known for their chemical experimentation. The chapter then tracks Reynolds’s involvement with chemical experiment at the early Society of Arts in London and in his own studio. Considered against the practices of seemingly more experimental contemporaries such as Joseph Wright of Derby, the chapter closely examines the preparation, delivery and aftermath of Reynolds's controversial sixth discourse to the Royal Academy in 1774, which would align academic art with what the painter called “nice chymistry.” Read against contemporaneous debates about the representation of time in history painting, the chapter argues that Reynolds’s strange “infant portraits” of the early 1770s constitute the most telling manifestation of his chemical work. The chapter concludes by placing these unstable paintings between ideas of the chemical homunculus and the time proper to the fine arts themselves.Less

Who Is the Controller of Controlled Processes?

Daniel M. Wegner

in The New Unconscious

Controlled processes are viewed as conscious, effortful, and intentional, and as drawing on more sources of information than automatic processes. With this power of conscious will, controlled ... More

Controlled processes are viewed as conscious, effortful, and intentional, and as drawing on more sources of information than automatic processes. With this power of conscious will, controlled processes seem to bring the civilized quality back to psychological explanation that automatic processes leave out. Yet by reintroducing this touch of humanity, the notion of a controlled process also brings us within glimpsing range of a fatal theoretical error—the idea that there is a controller. This chapter begins by examining why the notion of a controller is a problem. It shows that theories of controlled processes often imply that the person (or some other inner agent such as “consciousness” or “the will” or “the self”) is a legitimate possible cause of the person's observed thought or behavior. This supposition undermines the possibility of a scientific theory of psychology by creating an explanatory entity that cannot itself be explained. This chapter also discusses the homunculus problem, apparent mental causation, real mental causation, and virtual agency.Less

Understanding Yourself: All About Self-Concept

Jack Martin and Ann-Marie McLellan

in The Education of Selves: How Psychology Transformed Students

This chapter presents a historical and critical examination of self-concept in psychological and educational inquiry and practice. Self-concept researchers (e.g. Pajares, Schunk, Shavelson) have ... More

This chapter presents a historical and critical examination of self-concept in psychological and educational inquiry and practice. Self-concept researchers (e.g. Pajares, Schunk, Shavelson) have recognized definitional and conceptual difficulties related to self-concept inquiry and several leading researchers have proposed more advanced statistical procedures and measures of self-concept. A critical historical examination suggests deeper problems concerning the ontological status of the self-concept. In particular, the view that the self-concept is a set of cognitive schemata, systems, and subsystems assumes an untenable interior homunculus. This chapter concludes with a critique of the self as an interior psychological entity. A more viable alternative is proposed that highlights the understanding and evaluation of oneself as these abilities emerge through interpersonal interactions within sociocultural practices.Less

Halal and the Moral Construction of Quality: How Religious Norms Turn a Mass Product into a Singularity

Frans van Waarden and Robin van Dalen

in Constructing Quality: The Classification of Goods in Markets

The value of goods is not only based on utility, aesthetics, or social status, but may also involve moral values. Such is the case with religious food standards, which are intended to guard the ... More

The value of goods is not only based on utility, aesthetics, or social status, but may also involve moral values. Such is the case with religious food standards, which are intended to guard the safety of the soul rather than the body. This chapter focuses on the market for halal food, or food that is safe for Muslims. Like other markets, this one suffers from risks and uncertainties, caused here by two sources: an absence of agreement among Muslims on a clear norm for halal “quality,” and problems for final consumers in determining whether these—mostly process—standards have been observed in the often long value chains of food production and distribution. Hence prospective buyers need not only an “imagination of the future” (Beckert 2011), but one of the past as well: what might have been the history of a specific product? This uncertainty turns a mass product such as meat into an individual quality product or “singularity” (Karpik 2010). It has also produced a derived market for “judgment devices” (Karpik 2010), such as certificates, which claim to guarantee the moral value of food. Yet this derived market experiences similar problems of credibility to the original halal market, thus producing what could be called a homunculus problem.Less

Comments

Walter A. Rosenblith

in Sensory Communication

The commentary suggests a psychoneural system in which the homunculus has more nearly the character of a complex organism-within-an-organism and is still neither ghostly nor regressive. It argues ... More

The commentary suggests a psychoneural system in which the homunculus has more nearly the character of a complex organism-within-an-organism and is still neither ghostly nor regressive. It argues that perceptual phenomena are typically discussed in terms that seem to imply, or to take for granted, the existence of a perceiver—a homunculus who has some awareness of the outside world as a result of sensory data received and directs the activities of the organism accordingly. It proposes two major bases for this notion. The first is a morbid fear of ghosts, or a fear of admitting into one’s thinking anything that might possibly be suspected of immateriality. The second has to do with the supposedly regressive nature of the concept; if all the responsibility for perception and action is attributed to a homunculus, explaining his behavior poses exactly the same problem as explaining that of the whole organism, leading nowhere.Less

Artificial Life and the Homunculus

in Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature

This chapter discusses artificial life and the homunculus. The vast literature focusing on alchemy in the debate on art and nature often draws on the spontaneous generation of animals for examples ... More

This chapter discusses artificial life and the homunculus. The vast literature focusing on alchemy in the debate on art and nature often draws on the spontaneous generation of animals for examples that are relevant to alchemical transmutation. Late antique and medieval theories of artificial life can be broken into two main categories: those predicated on the theory of spontaneous generation, primarily as outlined in the biological works of Aristotle; and those based on the cosmogonyc myths of a creator God, like the golem of medieval Judaism. One of the great pillars in the edifice of artificial life was Aristotle's theory of sexual, as opposed to spontaneous, generation. The concept of the marvelous power of male sperm, like the ability of specific types of matter to generate life spontaneously, opened up a vast field of speculation about the possibilities of artificial life.Less

The Homunculus and the Mandrake: Art Aiding Nature versus Art Faking Nature

William R. Newman

in Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life

This chapter explores a tradition of chemical rather than mechanical attempts to create life artificially. It determines a more general objection on the part of alchemists to the procedures of visual ... More

This chapter explores a tradition of chemical rather than mechanical attempts to create life artificially. It determines a more general objection on the part of alchemists to the procedures of visual artists, which, the alchemists claimed, imposed merely external, accidental changes on matter rather than shaping it from within. The chapter argues that the aspersions that alchemists cast on the visual arts in comparing their genuine but artificial gold with the superficial changes wrought by painting and sculpture play out in different form when alchemical writers come to discuss the homunculus, or artificial test-tube baby. Paracelsus von Hohenheim argues that the mandrake incorrectly described by necromancers and philosophers is really a homunculus, which they have misidentified. The Paracelsian alchemist can produce a genuine mandrake or Alraun in the form of the homunculus, by sealing up human semen for a proper period of time with the requisite application of heat.Less

Homunculus and Robot

Laurence A. Rickels

in I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick

This chapter explores the distinction between homunculus and robot by reading science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s first android novel We Can Build You. The creation of the homunculus inside a ... More

This chapter explores the distinction between homunculus and robot by reading science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s first android novel We Can Build You. The creation of the homunculus inside a retort or test tube abbreviates the history of the world and mankind by withdrawing time and space from the whole process. The homunculus is a utopian idea or fictional figure because it proves impossible to recapitulate on fast-forward the history of the world all the while leaving out the essential part. By contrast, the mechanical brain rests on principles set against those of the metaphysical schema in which the idea of the homunculus is cooked up. In We Can Build You, the demonstration simulacrum, though machinic, is also a sort of golem.Less

Artificial Slaves in the Renaissance and the Dangers of Independent Innovation

Kevin Lagrandeur

in AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines

This chapter discusses how Renaissance stories of the golem of Prague, of Paracelsus’s homunculus, and of a talking brass head built by a natural philosopher in Robert Greene’s play Friar Bacon and ... More

This chapter discusses how Renaissance stories of the golem of Prague, of Paracelsus’s homunculus, and of a talking brass head built by a natural philosopher in Robert Greene’s play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay show the fears and hopes embedded in that culture’s reactions to human invention—as well as an ambivalence to the idea of slavery, for intelligent objects are almost uniformly proxies for indentured servants. Moreover, the tales examined in this chapter about artificial servants foreshadow our modern ambivalence about our innate technological abilities. The power of their technological promise is countervailed by fears that these products of our own ingenuity will overwhelm us.Less

Brain Basics from a Computational Perspective

Martin V. Butz and Esther F. Kutter

in How the Mind Comes into Being: Introducing Cognitive Science from a Functional and Computational Perspective

This chapter provides a crude overview of current knowledge in neuroscience about the human nervous system and its functionality. The distinction between the peripheral and central nervous systems is ... More

This chapter provides a crude overview of current knowledge in neuroscience about the human nervous system and its functionality. The distinction between the peripheral and central nervous systems is introduced. Next, brain anatomy is introduced, as well as nerve cells and the information processing principles that unfold in biological neural networks. Moreover, brain modules are covered, including their interconnected communication. With modularizations and wiring systematicities in mind, functional and structural systematicities are surveyed, including neural homunculi, cortical columnar structures, and the six-layered structure of the cerebral cortex. Finally, different available brain imaging techniques are contrasted. In conclusion, evidence is surveyed that suggests that the brain can be viewed as a highly modularized predictive processing system, which maintains internal activity and produces internal structures for the purpose of maintaining bodily needs in approximate homeostasis.Less

Technical Issues in Naive Sense-Datum Theory

John M. Nicholas

in Phenomenal Qualities: Sense, Perception, and Consciousness

This chapter discusses the way in which the familiar arguments against Sense-Datum Theory (SDT) are indeed wrong-headed. What kinds of real difficulties and new questions do we face if we adopt SDT, ... More

This chapter discusses the way in which the familiar arguments against Sense-Datum Theory (SDT) are indeed wrong-headed. What kinds of real difficulties and new questions do we face if we adopt SDT, for example, in looking for a locus in the brain at which colours, and other phenomenal qualities, are assembled in a Phenomenal Array? If we initially formulate SDT in a relatively simple-minded—Naive—way, what kinds of issues do we encounter? The chapter offers some illustrations of issues likely to be encountered and also examine in a beginning way how SDT might have to be less Naive.Less

The Soul’s Order

Mattia Riccardi

in Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology

This chapter is concerned with Nietzsche’s conception of the soul (human psychology) as constituted by the hierarchical order or structure among drives and affects. After a demonstration that that ... More

This chapter is concerned with Nietzsche’s conception of the soul (human psychology) as constituted by the hierarchical order or structure among drives and affects. After a demonstration that that conception raises the spectre of the homunculus fallacy, it is argued that the two major interpretations of the Nietzschean soul’s order—the vitalistic one proposed by P. Wotling and the normative one proposed by M. Clark and D. Dudrick—should be rejected because they commit Nietzsche to that fallacy. The author’s own dispositional reading frees Nietzsche’s psychology of drives from any charge of fallacious homuncularism. In the light of this reading, the chapter investigates how the interaction between drives and affects should be understood.Less