getfiscal posted:

yesterday my therapist showed me a clip from MADtv.

Lessons posted:

Gibbonstrength posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

we have over a century of evidence that destruction of a specific area of a brain consistently produces the same results in behavior and cognition. including lobotomies this has probably replicated tens of thousands of times

If you're talking about double dissociation studies then no, those certainly don't prove that even remotely. They prove that the brain isn't a homogenous lump, they certainly don't show that specific areas perform specific "behaviour" or "cognition". I mean studies like that allow us to conclusively demonstrate that the brain is an Incredibly complex thing which, if disrupted in a specific geographic region will produce similar results between individuals. It demonstrates specific disruption of normal processing (whatever that even is) but not the sudden leap to "that part of the brain we burnt was the home of that function, it was where that ill defined function lived and was produced."

I'm not sure this is all that important of a distinction. Even if the primary visual cortex doesn't have sole responsibility for visual processing, that doesn't undermine the concept of localized brain functions let alone the whole computational model of the mind. You're probably right that cognitive neuroscience overreaches and people should be more skeptical about drawing conclusions from an fMRI but like your dept head said IDK what you expect people to do instead.

It's very important when the theoretical basis of psychology is that the brain can be fully explained via its reduction into smaller components. Making the assumption that more accurately localising specific theoretical constructs within a physical region of the brain will unlock the secrets of mental activity is unfounded and stunts psychological research. So it's a very important distinction - if we accept it then we reject further analysis of the brain beyond detecting localisation of functions, at least that's been the practical outcome within the field.

I think what people should do instead is question these assumptions in their research and break out of the empirical mould. Everyone in psych is obsessed with inventing new mental constructs, new brain "functions" or "capacities" which are defined differently between every published paper; and collecting empirical data to be correlated with behaviour. It's all purely descriptive, there is no explanation, no study of mechanisms. That's surely a problem and goes a long way to explaining the stagnation of psychology which is occurring.

Lessons posted:

Assuming localized computational processing doesn't necessarily foreclose on anything though? In any case the theoretical assumption you're challenging doesn't seem that unreasonable to me - we don't really know what's going on, so we should collect more empirical evidence so that we can have a valid basis for actually creating a model. This isn't to say that the current state of research is certain or even likely to produce the evidence we need, but that's a separate problem as far as I'm concerned. I'm also still not sure how you expect to leapfrog this problem by discharging the localized processing assumption, because as you admit that leaves even less space to do empirical work.

The issue with collecting empirical evidence is that we already produce masses and masses of it, very little of which has brought us any closer to understanding the brain, for several reasons that I'm currently EffortPosting about. You can observe all you want, it's not going to generate an explanation spontaneously. You need more substantial theory, which cognitivism lacks, being just a rebranded behaviourism.

If we feel reasonably certain that no sudden breakthrough where the hidden inner code of the brain is revealed is going to happen in the current paradigm, then we shouldn't feel too guilty about taking the emphasis off of the quantity of empirical data we are accumulating, or simply redirecting onto more substantial theories of mental activity that go beyond this game of correlating behaviour with neurological activity.

Edited by Gibbonstrength (Dec. 4, 2014 05:52:28)

Lessons posted:

Assuming localized computational processing doesn't necessarily foreclose on anything though? In any case the theoretical assumption you're challenging doesn't seem that unreasonable to me - we don't really know what's going on, so we should collect more empirical evidence so that we can have a valid basis for actually creating a model. This isn't to say that the current state of research is certain or even likely to produce the evidence we need, but that's a separate problem as far as I'm concerned. I'm also still not sure how you expect to leapfrog this problem by discharging the localized processing assumption, because as you admit that leaves even less space to do empirical work.

Do you understand what empiricism is? More empirical evidence is not the answer to fundamental problems inherent to empiricist epistemology. Just because philosophy is hard doesn't mean you get to pretend it doesn't exist or isn't important.

littlegreenpills posted:

my job isnt even that hard but i cant stop thinking about it i stayed late voluntarily today

*shakes you*

pull yourself together man!

Red_Canadian posted:

I've been reading Revolutionary Suicide lately, and Newton talks about how the grand jury system is designed for these types of situations. I'll type it up when I have the time.

i dont think you...trust......in.....my