ashnistrike (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ashnistrike) wrote2006-03-22 01:04 pm
ashnistrike) wrote2006-03-22 01:04 pm
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Do we really need to talk about the brain?
Two things showed up on my friends page today that made me think of this. The first is a brief rant from Tom at Mind Hacks on the subject of "neuroessentialism" (or "neuromysticism"), which he defines as the tendency to invoke neurological terms to support psychological claims, even when they don't actually add anything. He gives an example from Lakoff's Don't Think of An Elephant:
"One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors - conceptual structures like those we have been describing. The frames are in the synapses of our brains, physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored." (When Lakoff says "frames," he means the things that I call "schemata." These are your generalized and often stereotyped representations of how the world works.)
And then Tom says:
"Indeed, for many psychological claims neuroscience can add little or nothing to our assessment of their truth. Taking for example this claim that frame-incompatible facts get rejected, knowing that frames are embedded in brain tells us nothing, but even knowing how frames are embedded in the brain may not be as useful as it first appears. Whatever neuroscientific facts we discovered about frames, the final judgement of the truth of this claim would rely on answers to questions such as is it true that frame-incompatible facts tend to get rejected? In what range of circumstances is this true and how can it be affected? The last word would be behavioural evidence, regardless of what information was provided by neuroscience."
My first reaction is wild cheering, since I'm pretty tired of hearing pronouncements that behavioral psychology is on its way to extinction, soon to be replaced by the ever-so-much-more-scientific methodology of neuroscience. But then I have to stop and consider: is this true? No question, in this case you can't ignore the need for behavioral research (which, incidentally, exists and supports at least a weak version of Lakoff's claim). No extinction for me, huzzah! But what could we add, if we knew something about the neuropsychology of the situation?
Well, the particular location in the brain of those synapses would be useful to know. Are frames--oh, smeg, let me just call them schemata--associated with sensory and attention areas, suggesting that you never even process the conflicting information in the first place? Are they encoded in your hippocampus, meaning that you can probably process the conflicting information short-term, but it will never make it into your long-term memory? Are they in your long-term storage areas, changing your memories over time to become more like your expectations? The behavioral evidence actually supports all of these claims to some degree; neuropsychological evidence might help tease out more exact processes. My suspicion is that schemata are so basic to cognitive processing that there are dozens of different ways they get represented. This would make Lakoff's description utterly useless--but it would be possible to make non-neuromystical claims, using neurological language, that would be both useful and testable.
The other thing was the latest Alzheimer's research. It seems they may finally be homing in on the proteins that actually cause the memory loss. Behavioral evidence can help us diagnose Alzheimer's (it's possible that the earliest indications may come from changes in writing style). Behavioral evidence can help us prevent Alzheimer's (the richer you keep your mental environment throughout your life, the more protection you gain--though nothing absolute). But the cure, when it comes, will be neurological.
"One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors - conceptual structures like those we have been describing. The frames are in the synapses of our brains, physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored." (When Lakoff says "frames," he means the things that I call "schemata." These are your generalized and often stereotyped representations of how the world works.)
And then Tom says:
"Indeed, for many psychological claims neuroscience can add little or nothing to our assessment of their truth. Taking for example this claim that frame-incompatible facts get rejected, knowing that frames are embedded in brain tells us nothing, but even knowing how frames are embedded in the brain may not be as useful as it first appears. Whatever neuroscientific facts we discovered about frames, the final judgement of the truth of this claim would rely on answers to questions such as is it true that frame-incompatible facts tend to get rejected? In what range of circumstances is this true and how can it be affected? The last word would be behavioural evidence, regardless of what information was provided by neuroscience."
My first reaction is wild cheering, since I'm pretty tired of hearing pronouncements that behavioral psychology is on its way to extinction, soon to be replaced by the ever-so-much-more-scientific methodology of neuroscience. But then I have to stop and consider: is this true? No question, in this case you can't ignore the need for behavioral research (which, incidentally, exists and supports at least a weak version of Lakoff's claim). No extinction for me, huzzah! But what could we add, if we knew something about the neuropsychology of the situation?
Well, the particular location in the brain of those synapses would be useful to know. Are frames--oh, smeg, let me just call them schemata--associated with sensory and attention areas, suggesting that you never even process the conflicting information in the first place? Are they encoded in your hippocampus, meaning that you can probably process the conflicting information short-term, but it will never make it into your long-term memory? Are they in your long-term storage areas, changing your memories over time to become more like your expectations? The behavioral evidence actually supports all of these claims to some degree; neuropsychological evidence might help tease out more exact processes. My suspicion is that schemata are so basic to cognitive processing that there are dozens of different ways they get represented. This would make Lakoff's description utterly useless--but it would be possible to make non-neuromystical claims, using neurological language, that would be both useful and testable.
The other thing was the latest Alzheimer's research. It seems they may finally be homing in on the proteins that actually cause the memory loss. Behavioral evidence can help us diagnose Alzheimer's (it's possible that the earliest indications may come from changes in writing style). Behavioral evidence can help us prevent Alzheimer's (the richer you keep your mental environment throughout your life, the more protection you gain--though nothing absolute). But the cure, when it comes, will be neurological.