Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!amdahl!rtech!ingres!ingres.com!jpk From: jpk@ingres.com (Jon Krueger) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Shallice/Neuropsychology: BBS Multiple Book review Message-ID: <1990Sep20.040336.20431@ingres.Ingres.COM> Date: 20 Sep 90 04:03:36 GMT References: Lines: 45 From article , by harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad): > BBS Multiple Book Review of: > > FROM NEUROPSYCHOLOGY TO MENTAL STRUCTURE > > Tim Shallice > MRC Applied Psychology Unit > Cambridge, UK > > ABSTRACT: Studies of the effects of brain lesions on human behavior are > now cited more widely than ever Wrong. No one has studied the effect of brain lesions on human behavior, and no one is about to. Observations of the behavior of individuals with lesions are reported, sometimes reliably. Testing before and after the lesion is seldom done. Random assignment of subjects or lesions is never done. Ethical restrictions simply don't permit it. Therefore, you can't vary independent variables like location of lesion, hold other variables constant or randomize for them, and discover the effect on dependent variables like behavior. We have some guesses about what brain lesions do to human behavior, but we can't study it scientifically. Therefore it shouldn't surprise anyone that > there is no agreement on which > neuropsychological findings are relevant to our understanding of normal > function. Since there are some manipulations we can do ethically, we might expect to get some agreement by doing some science using them. You're also engaging in egregious sort-crossing. Brain events are not mixable with mental ones. Cutting remarks don't produce lesions. Injecting dye into brains doesn't produce colorful thoughts. Neurons don't have ideas. Holmes can't ask Doyle for more interesting cases. Holmes can't count the number of pages in the book. Similarly, brain and mentality are not the same sort of phenomena. Statements that mix terms from the two lexicons are unlikely to mean anything. -- Jon -- Jon Krueger, jpk@ingres.com