Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-qdpjg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-15T08:56:41.505Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Neurobiology of Observation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Daniel Gilman
Daniel Gilman*
Affiliation:
College of Medicine The Pennsylvania State University
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, The Penn State University, College of Medicine, Department of Humanities, The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, P.O. Box 850, Hershey, PA 17033.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Paul Churchland has recently argued that empirical evidence strongly suggests that perception is penetrable to the beliefs or theories held by individual perceivers (1988). While there has been much discussion of the sorts of psychological cases he presents, little has been said about his arguments from neurology. I offer a critical examination of his claim that certain efferents in the brain are evidence against perceptual encapsulation. I argue that his neurological evidence is inadequate to his philosophical goals, both by itself and taken in concert with his psychological evidence.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 496 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Special thanks are due to Ron McClamrock and William Wimsatt for their comments on, and criticism of, an early version of this discussion.

References

Churchland, P. M. (1988), “Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality: A Reply to Jerry Fodor”, Philosophy of Science 55: 167–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churchland, P. S. (1987), “Epistemology in the Age of Neuroscience”, The Journal of Philosophy 84: 544–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eccles, J. C. and Sherrington, C. S. (1930), “Numbers and Contraction-Values of Individual Motor-Units Examined in Some Muscles of the Limb”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 106: 326–357.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. (1984), “Observation Reconsidered”, Philosophy of Science 51: 23–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. (1988), “A Reply to Churchland's ‘Percpetual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality‘”, Philosophy of Science 55: 188–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilman, D. (1988), “Lines of Sight: An Essay on Mind, Vision and Pictorial Representation”. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Gregory, R. (1970), The Intelligent Eye. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Hubel, D. H. (1982), “Exploration of the Primary Visual Cortex, 1955–78”, Nature 299: 515–524.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhn, T. (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2d ed., enlarged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Masland, R. (1986), “The Functional Architecture of the Retina”, Scientific American 255: 102–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oatley, K. (1978), Perceptions and Representations: The Theoretical Bases of Brain Research and Psychology. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Petersen, S. E.; Fox, P. T.; Posner, M. I.; Mintun, M.; and Raichle, M. E. (1988), “Positron Emission Tomographic Studies of the Cortical Anatomy of Single-Word Processing”, Nature 331: 585–589.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rubin, E. ([1915] 1958), “Figure and Ground”, in D. Beardslee and M. Wertheimer (eds.), Readings in Perception. (Originally published as Synsoplevede Figurer. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske.) Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, pp. 194–203.Google Scholar
Sacks, J. and Lindenberg, R. (1969), “Efferent Nerve Fibers in the Anterior Visual Pathways in Bilateral Congenital Cystic Eyeballs”, American Journal of Opthalmology 68: 691–695.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wiesel, T. N. (12 May 1989), “Neural Mechanisms in Vision”, The Thirty-Fourth George H. Bishop Lecture in Experimental Neurology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO.Google Scholar
Wolter, J. (1965), “The Centrifugal Nerves in Human Optic Tract, Chiasm, Optic Nerve, and Retina”, Transactions of the American Opthalmological Society 63: 678–707.Google Scholar
Wolter, J. and Lund, O. (1968), “Reaction of Centrifugal Nerves in the Human Retina”, American Journal of Opthalmology 66: 221–232.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed