P. M. S. Hacker - Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience

12 12The relation between the concept of a person and the concept of a human being will be examined in the Preliminaries to Part II below.

13 13L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1953), §281 (see also §§282–4, 357–61). The thought fundamental to this remark was developed by A. J. P. Kenny, ‘The homunculus fallacy’ (1971), repr. in his The Legacy of Wittgenstein (Blackwell, Oxford, 1984), pp. 125–36. For the detailed interpretation of Wittgenstein’ s observation, see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, Volume 3 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, 2nd, extensively revised, edn (Wiley Blackwell, Oxford, 2019), Exegesis §§281–4, 357–61, and the essay entitled ‘Men, minds and machines’, which explores some of the ramifications of Wittgenstein’s insight. As is evident from chapter 1, he was anticipated in this by Aristotle (DA 408b 2–15, quoted on p. 24 above). He was also anticipated by George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) in his book The Physical Basis of Mind (Trübner & Co., London, 1877): ‘It is the man, and not the brain that thinks; it is the organism as a whole, and not one organ, that feels and acts’ (p. 441).

14 14Of course, outside neuroscientific and psychological theorizing and philosophical reasoning it is harmless to say ‘My brain isn’ t working today’ or ‘My brain told me that something was fishy’. They just mean ‘I can’ t think clearly today’ and ‘I thought that something was suspicious’.

15 15Kenny (‘Homunculus fallacy’, p. 125) uses the term ‘homunculus fallacy’ to signify the conceptual mistake in question. Though picturesque, it may, as he admits, be misleading, since the mistake is not simply that of ascribing psychological predicates to an imaginary homunculus in the head. In our view, the term ‘mereological fallacy’ is more apt for our purposes. It should be noted, however, that the error in question is not merely the fallacy of ascribing to a part predicates that apply only to a whole, but is a special neuroscientific instance of this more general confusion. Furthermore, as Kenny points out, the misapplication of a predicate is, strictly speaking, not a fallacy, since it is not a form of invalid reasoning, but it leads to fallacies (ibid., pp. 135f.). To be sure, this mereological confusion is common among psychologists as well as neuroscientists.

16 16Comparable mereological principles apply to inanimate objects and some of their properties. From the fact that a car is fast, it does not follow that its carburettor is fast, and from the fact that an antique clock keeps time accurately, it does not follow that its great wheel keeps time accurately.

17 17But note that when my hand hurts, I am in pain, not my hand. And when you hurt my hand, you hurt me. Verbs of sensation (unlike verbs of perception) apply to parts of the body; i.e. our body is sensitive, and its parts may hurt, itch, throb, etc. But the corresponding verb phrases incorporating nominals, e.g. ‘have a pain (an itch, a throbbing sensation)’ are predicable only of human beings, not of their parts (in which the sensation is located).

18 18For more detailed discussion, see H. Smit and P. M. S. Hacker, ‘Seven misconceptions about the mereological fallacy: a compilation for the perplexed’, Erkenntnis, 79 (2014), pp. 1077–97. See also Appendix 3 below.

19 19See S. Ullman, ‘Tacit assumptions in the computational study of vision’, in A. Gorea (ed.), Representations of Vision, Trends and Tacit Assumptions in Vision Research (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991), pp. 314f., for this move. He limits his discussion to the use (or, in our view, misuse) of such terms as ‘representation’ and ‘symbolic representation’.

20 20The phrase is Richard Gregory’ s; see ‘The confounded eye’, p. 51.

21 21See C. Blakemore, ‘Understanding images in the brain’, in H. Barlow, C. Blakemore and M. Weston-Smith (eds), Images and Understanding (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990), pp. 257–83.

22 22J. Searle, ‘Putting consciousness back in the brain: reply to Bennett and Hacker’, in M. Bennett, D. Dennett, P. Hacker and J. Searle (eds), Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language (Columbia University Press, New York, 2007), p. 107.

23 23D. Dennett, ‘Philosophy as naïve anthropology’, in Bennett, Dennett, Hacker and Searle, Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language, pp. 78–9.

24 24S. Zeki, ‘Abstraction and idealism’, Nature, 404 (April 2000), p. 547.

25 25Young, Programs of the Brain, p. 192.

26 26B. Milner, L. R. Squire and E. R. Kandel, ‘Cognitive neuroscience and the study of memory’, Neuron, 20 (1998), p. 450.

27 27Ullman, ‘Tacit assumptions’, pp. 314f.

28 28Marr, Vision, p. 20.

29 29Ibid., p. 21.

30 30Ibid.

31 31For further criticisms of Marr’s computational account of vision, see §4.2.4 below.

32 32Frisby, Seeing, p. 8.

33 33R. Sperry, ‘Lateral specialization in the surgically separated hemispheres’, in F. O. Schmitt and F. G. Worden (eds), The Neurosciences Third Study Programme (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1974), p. 11 (italics added). For detailed examination of these forms of description, see §17.3 below.

34 34Blakemore, ‘Understanding images in the brain’, p. 265. It should be noted that what is needed in order to recognize the order in the brain is not a set of rules, but merely a set of regular correlations. A rule, unlike a mere regularity, is a standard of conduct, a norm of correctness against which behaviour can be judged to be right or wrong, correct or incorrect.

35 35Young, Programs of the Brain, p. 52.

36 36Blakemore, ‘Understanding images in the brain’, pp. 265–7.

37 37Young, Programs of the Brain, p. 11.

38 38Just how confusing the failure to distinguish a rule from a regularity, and the normative from the causal, is evident in Blakemore’s comments on the Penfield and Rasmussen diagram of the motor ‘homunculus’. Blakemore remarks on ‘the way in which the jaws and hands are vastly over-represented’ (‘Understanding images in the brain’, p. 266, in the long explanatory note to Fig. 17.6); but that would make sense only if we were talking of a map with a misleading method of projection (in this sense we speak of the relative distortions of the Mercator (cylindrical) projection). But since all the cartoon drawing represents is the relative number of cells causally responsible for certain functions, nothing is, or could be, ‘over-represented’. For, to be sure, Blakemore does not mean that there are more cells in the brain causally correlated with the jaws and the hands than there ought to be!

39 39There are other methodological objections that have been elaborated by Quinean philosophers of science. They carry weightier philosophical baggage, and will be considered separately, in §17.1. Readers who would like to examine our further arguments may wish to jump forward.

40 40For detailed exploration of the conceptual ramifications of this conceptual nexus, see P. M. S. Hacker, Human Nature: the Categorial Framework (Blackwell, Oxford, 2007), ch. 9.

41 41Dennett, ‘Philosophy as naïve anthropology’, p. 78.

42 42D. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1993), p. 433.

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