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From: mark@verdix.com (Mark Lundquist)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence (long)
Message-ID: <245@verdix.verdix.com>
Date: 14 Jan 89 01:26:02 GMT
References: <558@soleil.UUCP> <686@cogsci.ucsd.EDU>
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In article <686@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> meadors@cogsci.UUCP (Tony Meadors) writes:
>  "deep stuff" concerning minds and brains, the meta-psychology,
>  is largely fluff. Move up the scientific foodchain a bit. You know
>  the old saying, fact is stranger than fiction. Its never been more true 
>  than in psychology. Get down to real data and yet 
>  keep these larger questions in mind. Read about the bizzare
>  dissociations brain damaged patients exhibit, study up on perceptual
>  illusions, investigate the cases of extraordinary memories (people can 
>  literally tell you what shirt they wore or the change they made on
>  a given day in 1966, and its not a trick or learned ability). Well,
>  you get the picture...these sorts of phenomenon baffle
>  and challenge, and if there are secrets to be found and profound changes
>  to take place in how we understand the mind it will likely be fueled
>  by these inexplicable sorts of data. 

Try any of the books written by Oliver Sacks ("A Leg To Stand On",
"The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat", etc).  These books are accounts
of some really strange disorders experienced by patients who had had trauma
to the right hemisphere of the brain.  These disorders profoundly change
the patients' whole experience of being a human being.  Their symptoms
are not easily measured or quantified, and the disorders (according to Sacks)
do not lend themselves well traditional case studies.  Sacks decided that the
appropriate form of 'case study' for these disorders is the story.  He tells
these stories with acumen, compassion, insight, and humor.
	He's also got another book (I can't remember the title) in which he
discusses the relationships between Parkinson's and Tourette's syndromes.