Re: Religion center in the brain

Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
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Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
"Matt Menge" <mspmenge@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
<jalegris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
"Francis Burton" <fburton@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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In article <4llpltF2eggvU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Joachim Pimiskern <JoachimPimiskern@xxxxxx> wrote:
A newer article cast doubt on the discovery:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5296728.stm?lsf

Oh dear, just because more than one spot lights up there isn't
a "centre"?! Can someone name =any= brain function or activity
that is localized to a single spot? To my mind, it doesn't make
sense to talk about centres for this or that function until we
at least define what we mean by "centre" in this context.

You're right. All this talk about centers is a bunch of horsecrap.
It
fits
in nicely with animism, though, and mainstream psychology, and the
fields
it
has corrupted, is just a "modern" form of animism.



You're seeing the crap before the horse. Modern neurology got its
start
from the apparent connections between specific brain injuries and
associated behavioural changes. Some were borne out, others were
not.
So it goes, and now we sharpen the focus.

But in the final analysis, correlations between brain loci and
observed
deficits etc. don't explain how neurophysiology mediates behavioral
function. But it seems that it does to a number of people.
Neuroimaging
has,
for many, become a sort of endpoint. I suggest that this is because
their
conceptualization is now, and has always been, a thinly-disguised
animism.
They already talk as if indwelling entities - call them homunculi -
see
copies of the world, make decisions on that basis, and pull the levers
that
make behavior occur. And now they think they know where the little men
are
hiding in the brain.

Haven't we analyzed the process of visual perception to the point where
even different aspects of it have been localized to certain regions of
the brain, kind of run in a parallel processing fashion?

No. Neither "visual perception" nor any of its "aspects" are located in
the
brain. Look up "mereological fallacy."


Cordially,
Glen


Sure, seeing is something that whole organisms do, but so is eating. Is
it therefore part of a mereological fallacy to claim that the stomach
is a center of digestion?

No. It would be the mereological fallacy to say that the mouth eats, but
nobody is likely to make that mistake. Why, then, is it so likely that
someone will say that the brain thinks, or decides, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
etc. etc.?


But the mouth can eat, and everyone who uses colloquial speech
restricts the sense appropriately within context. A mouth that eats
simply takes in and chews food - there is no confusion about the actual
locus of digestion. Similarly, a brain that thinks is distinct from the
person doing the thinking. One context is physiology, the other is
behaviour. Of course, if one is completely unaware of brain physiology
then the two contexts are effectively one, but that's another issue.

It seems to me that this mereological problem begins with radical
behaviourism overstepping its legitimate domain. You say that EAB
doesn't need reduction to neuroscience to provide a complete account of
behaviour, but you also say that neurological events are themselves
behaviour. Therefore, (apparently) statements about the neurological
level are necessarily about the behavioural level as well, which is
automatically fallacious.

--
Joe Legris

.

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