Re: Clarification about mirror neurons

On 5 Jan 2013, at 09:54, a b <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Alan Forrester
> <alanmichaelforrester-gM/[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 2 Jan 2013, at 21:17, David Deutsch david.deutsch-LR/[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>>> In animals, the neurons used to do imitation may not change much since
>>>> the knowledge in the animal's brain is coded for by genes and the animal
>>>> creates no new knowledge. So then looking for neurons that go off when an
>>>> animal does something and when it recognises another animal doing the same
>>>> thing, mirror neurons, may provide a way of testing ideas about mirror
>>>> algorithms. Having a term for that idea makes some sense and that seems to
>>>> be David's position in BoI.
>>> 
>>> One reason I think it's vital to take that position is that the
>>> commonsense theory of how animals, especially apes, can imitate complex
>>> actions is that they do it by understanding what the actions are for -- i.e.
>>> the same way that humans do it. Indeed, that misconception was one of the
>>> motivations for biologists to search for mirror neurons in the first place.
>>> 
>>> It is an attractive misconception because copying even a simple action
>>> does indeed require a large amount of knowledge to be present in the copying
>>> animal. So the traditional misconception that knowledge requires a knowing
>>> subject then leads directly to the conclusion that an ape must be a knowing
>>> subject.
>>> 
>>> To make the arguments in BoI about what humans are and how they evolved,
>>> one must therefore refute those misconceptions. One thing I referred to for
>>> that purpose was the excellent research of Richard Byrne, which showed that
>>> apes have no idea of the purpose of their complex meme-encoded actions,
>>> which are not directly copied but are composed of several copied actions put
>>> together in coordinated ways. And he showed how those composite actions are
>>> learned. But that learning process requires apes to be able to recognise and
>>> copy the individual actions, and Byrne's research does not tell us how they
>>> do that because it happens inside the ape's brain. So it is vital to explain
>>> how that is possible.
>>> 
>>> The answer, in short, is that the necessary knowledge is encoded in the
>>> ape's genes, and implemented in a special-purpose computational system in
>>> its brain, which translates from sensory to motor signals. But only a
>>> particular class of actions, fixed once and for all in the animal's genome,
>>> can be copied using that system.
>>> 
>>> Would it not have been perverse, given that it was essential to argue
>>> that such a system must exist in the brains of apes, for BoI not to mention
>>> that a plausible candidate for that system has recently been discovered? Or
>>> not to call that system by its conventional and perfectly reasonable name,
>>> namely mirror neurons?
>> 
>> Yes. It is important to explain how animals can imitate without doing
>> human level stuff and mirror neurons may help solve that problem.
>> 
>> Some people might be concerned that the mirror neuron idea might be used
>> as a scientistic excuse for coercive policies. A coercive person might say
>> that an autistic child has faulty mirror neurons and to fix that we have to
>> force him to take medication or follow a routine or whatever. However, this
>> problem only makes it more urgent the task of explaining mirror neurons
>> properly, rather than abandoning an idea with some good features to coercive
>> quacks.
>> 
>> Alan
> 
> What about if quacks say a specialized region for language is faulty?
> These are acknowledged in BoI

If a doctor discovers that in one of his patients a specialised region in the brain devoted to language has some problem, then there several relevant issues:

(1) If the patient can express preferences, then the doctor should ask him for consent for treatments. The idea that the patient's family or friends wanted the patient to be coerced does not legitimise coercion, nor does the idea that the doctor doesn't like the patient.

(2) Suppose the patient can't communicate any preferences as a result of this damage. If this is the case, then the doctor should treat the patient in such a way as to get him back to being healthy and able to express preferences.

(3) Suppose the patient uses physical force or fraud on the doctor or makes a credible threat to do so. The doctor should defend himself and seek prosecution if he thinks it is right to do so. It is possible that a patient could misinterpret something the doctor does as an attempt to use force or something like that and he might attack the doctor for this perceived violation. Such misunderstandings may be settled without legal action. It is important to be clear that while the doctor is defending himself, the patient and doctor have an adversarial relationship and the doctor is not acting to help the patient.

(4) If the patient has a fit and as a result of this fit the doctor is injured, then the doctor should not attack the patient. It would be reasonable to take steps to prevent himself and others from being further injured.

Alan