Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on January 21, 2011 at 11:47am

Haven't read these, just passing them along.

Attachments:

• Social Cognition and the Human Brain.pdf, 520 KB
• The Return of Phineas Gage.pdf, 20 KB

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on February 2, 2011 at 4:44pm

Introspection illusion

The introspection illusion is a cognitive illusion in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable. In certain situations, this illusion leads people to make confident but false explanations of their own behavior or predictions about their future mental states.

The illusion has been examined in psychological experiments, and suggested as a basis for biases in how people compare themselves to others. These experiments have been interpreted as suggesting that, rather than offering direct access to the processes underlying mental states, introspection is a process of construction and inference, much as people indirectly infer others' mental states from their behavior.

When people mistake unreliable introspection for genuine self-knowledge, the result can be an illusion of superiority over other people. For example each person thinks they are less biased and less conformist than the rest of the group. Even when experimental subjects are provided with reports of other subjects' introspections, in as detailed a form as possible, they still rate those other introspections as unreliable while treating their own as reliable. Although the hypothesis of an introspection illusion informs some psychological research, the existing evidence is arguably inadequate to decide how reliable introspection is in normal circumstances.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on March 12, 2011 at 6:08pm

The Role of Emotion in Decision Making

Attachments:

• The Role of Emotion in Decision Making.pdf, 155 KB

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on March 28, 2011 at 2:33pm

The Homunculus Fallacy

The homunculus argument is a fallacy arising most commonly in the theory of vision. One may explain (human) vision by noting that light from the outside world forms an image on the retinas in the eyes and something (or someone) in the brain looks at these images as if they are images on a movie screen (this theory of vision is sometimes termed the theory of the Cartesian Theater: it is most associated, nowadays, with the psychologist David Marr). The question arises as to the nature of this internal viewer. The assumption here is that there is a 'little man' or 'homunculus' inside the brain 'looking at' the movie.

The reason why this is a fallacy may be understood by asking how the homunculus 'sees' the internal movie. The obvious answer is that there is another homunculus inside the first homunculus's 'head' or 'brain' looking at this 'movie'. But how does this homunculus see the 'outside world'? In order to answer this, we are forced to posit another homunculus inside this other homunculus's head and so forth. In other words, we are in a situation of infinite regress. The problem with the homunculus argument is that it tries to account for a phenomenon in terms of the very phenomenon that it is supposed to explain.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on April 9, 2011 at 8:18pm

Haven't read, just passing along.

 

Anterior cingulate cortex: The evolution of an interface between emotion and cognition

Attachments:

• The Anterior Cingulate Cortex.pdf, 4.3 MB