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You don't want to do the study you would need to do to grasp the issue well enough to form a coherent judgement. Reading one paper won't even come close to cut
by LPTS 18y ago
You don't want to do the study you would need to do to grasp the issue well enough to form a coherent judgement. Reading one paper won't even come close to cutting it.
I can give you a list of books on neurology and autism to read. But I don't want to hunt papers on the web, decide on the best ones, read them all and find one to recommend to you, sorry. I'd hunt down VS Ramachandrans recent work if you wanted to find one, but he is more of a theorist then the researcher who proves the theory, so I'm not sure if that's quite what you want.
- xlnt 18y agoAlright I found this, which has various links to more. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran06/ramachandran06_index.html http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran06/ramachandran0... Could you give one reason to suppose that mirror neurons are a hardware feature -- a type of neuron -- not a software feature -- a particular strategy/mental-technique for using one's neurons?
- LPTS 18y agoBecause Ramachandran thinks so?
- xlnt 18y agoAn appeal to authority? That's not very persuasive.
- jacobolus 18y agoIt’s persuasive if you fill in the unstated extra bit, which goes something like “… and can explain why in great detail, if you take the trouble to read his writing about it. But such detail is excessive for this comment thread.”
- xlnt 18y agoWell I was just reading some of his writing, but so far I am not persuaded. Further, I have noticed some critical flaws in his writing caused by his lack of understanding of epistemology.
- LPTS 18y agoYeah, you noticed flaws in Ramachandran's thinking. That'd be like me going up to Buckminster Fuller and saying "I don't think those dome things will work because I played with legos as a kid and don't see building it out of legos." Or going up to Einstein and saying "I don't think your special relativity is good because I threw rocks at each other and then away from each other, and I didn't notice it happen." You're a bit out of your league here, is what I mean to say. The point of Ramachandran's writing is to persuade people who know neurology, not to teach it to laypeople who don't have the intellectual integrity to admit they are out of their league.
- xlnt 18y agoYou don't know what my league is, or what my areas of expertise are. I do know that your arguments from authority are invalid.
- LPTS 18y agoI know what Ramachandran's league is. What areas of expertise do you have to such a degree that your intuitions upon a cursory glance at one or two of his papers carry more weight then his decades of study and work at the cutting edge of this field? Appeals to legitimate authority are valid. (disclaimer: Ramachandran is one of my biggest intellectual heros)
- xlnt 18y agoFor example, I know a lot about epistemology, and I am already familiar with the common phenomenon where psychiatrists and neuroscientists accidentally stray into philosophical areas they know little about and make epistemic blunders. I emailed you two passages from Ramachandran's essay. Could you confirm that they are representative of his view, and not out of date?
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- Tichy 18y agoWell actually it seems to say in the paper "the same neurons fire when you poke someone with a needle as when you watch someone being poked". So how can they be "mirror neurons"? Seems to me they could hardly be both, "mirror" and "direct" neurons, or at least the term "mirror neuron" does not make much sense if the neuron also acts directly. Therefore the "software" theory seems much more plausible. Simply, the brain models it's environment. That is all there is to it. A flower is a flower is a flower.