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1
Shimon Edelman’s Riddle of Representation
• two humans, a monkey, and a robotare looking at a piece of cheese;
• what is common to the representational processes in their visual systems?
mainstream (Gwen/CogPO) view
[methodological solipsism (the brain we study could equally well be a brain in a vat)]
forgets the cheese
When neuroscientists see an elephant they see only the calcium phosphate chemistry of the tusk
• “The mind is a black box”• “Mental processes cannot be observed
(except via advanced neuroimaging instruments)”
Where we agree
Knowledge of brain structure can and should inform our understanding of mental function
We should not waste time on the mind-body problem
Where we disagree
Gwen:for science: “every mental process has to be a brain process” Therefore the only way to study the mind is to study the brain
BS: we should ensure that we use all the data we can to do good science
7
Communicating about emotionsAffect, feeling, emotion, mood, passion, sentiment
Anger, astonishment, awe, bliss, despair, disgust, embarrassment, fear, happiness, hate, joy,
love, pride, regret, resentment, satisfaction, scorn, shame, sympathy, terror
Image credit: notarivs (flickr)
Gwen (CogPO) view
• cripples our empirical work on mental functioning • nearly all our data in social interaction, emotional
experience, mental health, … literature …, DSM, will be dismissed as unscientific
• enforcing reduction to mappings between sensory inputs and motor outputs would cripple science
Pro Gwen view
• ‘mental = neural’ gives a framework for comparative studies – animal models
• because animal brains are very like human brains
the mainstream view
• would also make cross-organism comparisons difficult, since the kinds of mappings from sensory inputs to external environments differ vastly between, say, spiders and humans