Visual Agnosia is a comprehensive and up-to-date review of disorders of higher vision that relates these disorders to current conceptions of higher vision from cognitive science, illuminating both the neuropsychological disorders and the nature of normal visual object recognition.Brain damage can lead to selective problems with visual perception, including visual agnosia the inability to recognize objects even though elementary visual functions remain unimpaired. Such disorders are relatively rare, yet they provide a window onto how the normal brain might accomplish the (...) complex task of vision. Visual Agnosia reviews a century of case studies of higher-level visual deficits following brain damage, places them in the general context of current neuroscience, and draws relevant conclusions about the organization of normal visual processing. It is unique in drawing on research in cognitive psychology, computational vision, visual neurophysiology, and neuropsychology to interpret the agnosias and draw inferences from them about visual object recognition.Following a historical account of agnosia research, Visual Agnosia offers a taxonomy of a wide range of agnosia syndromes, describing and interpreting the syndromes in terms of the latest theoretical models of visual processing and ultimately bringing them to bear as evidence on a variety of questions in the study of higher vision.Martha J. Farah is Associate Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Visual Agnosia is included in the Issues in Biology of Language and Cognition series, edited by John Marshall. (shrink)

When cognitive neuropsychologists make inferences about the functional architecture of the normal mind from selective cognitive impairments they generally assume that the effects of brain damage are local, that is, that the nondamaged components of the architecture continue to function as they did before the damage. This assumption follows from the view that the components of the functional architecture are modular, in the sense of being informationally encapsulated. In this target article it is argued that this “locality” assumption is probably (...) not correct in general. Inferences about the functional architecture can nevertheless be made from neuropsychological data with an alternative set of assumptions, according to which human information processing is graded, distributed, and interactive. These claims are supported by three examples of neuropsychological dissociations and a comparison of the inferences obtained from these impairments with and without the locality assumption. The three dissociations are: selective impairments in knowledge of living things, disengagment of visual attention, and overt face recognition. In all three cases, the neuropsychological phenomena lead to more plausible inferences about the normal functional architecture when the locality assumption is abandoned. Also discussed are the relations between the locality assumption in neuropsychology and broader issues, including Fodor's modularity hypothesis and the choice between top-down and bottom-up research approaches. (shrink)

When cognitive neuropsychologists make inferences about the functional architecture of the normal mind from selective cognitive impairments they generally assume that the effects of brain damage are local, that is, that the nondamaged components of the architecture continue to function as they did before the damage. This assumption follows from the view that the components of the functional architecture are modular, in the sense of being informationally encapsulated. In this target article it is argued that this “locality” assumption is probably (...) not correct in general. Inferences about the functional architecture can nevertheless be made from neuropsychological data with an alternative set of assumptions, according to which human information processing is graded, distributed, and interactive. These claims are supported by three examples of neuropsychological dissociations and a comparison of the inferences obtained from these impairments with and without the locality assumption. The three dissociations are: selective impairments in knowledge of living things, disengagment of visual attention, and overt face recognition. In all three cases, the neuropsychological phenomena lead to more plausible inferences about the normal functional architecture when the locality assumption is abandoned. Also discussed are the relations between the locality assumption in neuropsychology and broader issues, including Fodor's modularity hypothesis and the choice between top-down and bottom-up research approaches. (shrink)

Personhood is a foundational concept in ethics, yet defining criteria have been elusive. In this article we summarize attempts to define personhood in psychological and neurological terms and conclude that none manage to be both specific and non-arbitrary. We propose that this is because the concept does not correspond to any real category of objects in the world. Rather, it is the product of an evolved brain system that develops innately and projects itself automatically and irrepressibly onto the world whenever (...) triggered by stimulus features such as a human-like face, body, or contingent patterns of behavior. We review the evidence for the existence of an autonomous person network in the brain and discuss its implications for the field of ethics and for the implicit morality of everyday behavior. (shrink)

The eye may be window to the soul, but neuroscientists aim to get inside and measure the interior directly. There's also talk about moving some walls.

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision begins by introducing the reader to the anatomy of the eye and visual cortex and then proceeds to discuss image and...

Since the mid‐1980s, psychologists and neuroscientists have used brain imaging to test hypotheses about human thought processes and their neural instantiation. In just three decades, functional neuroimaging has been transformed from a crude clinical tool to a widely used research method for understanding the human brain and mind. Such rapidly achieved success is bound to evoke skepticism. A degree of skepticism toward new methods and ideas is both inevitable and useful in any field. It is especially valuable in a science (...) as young as cognitive neuroscience and its even younger siblings, social and affective neuroscience. Healthy skepticism encourages us to check our assumptions, recognize the limitations of our methods, and proceed thoughtfully. Skepticism itself, however, also must be examined.In this article, I review the most commonly voiced criticisms of functional neuroimaging. In the spirit of healthy skepticism, I will critically examine these criticisms themselves. Each contains at least a kernel of truth, although I will argue that in some cases the kernel has been overextended in ways that are inaccurate or misleading. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to test a prediction of the Kosslyn & Shwartz computer simulation model of mental image processing. According to this model, more complex images require more time to form because parts are placed sequentially, and larger images require more time to form than smaller ones because more parts are placed. If these accounts are correct, then the advantage of forming a small image (i.e., one that seems to subtend a smaller visual angle) should be greater for more (...) complex objects because the difference in number of parts imaged at the two sizes will be greater than with simpler objects. This prediction was confirmed only when subjects were not motivated to form highly elaborated images at small sizes. When subject tried to include all details, it actually took longest to form images of complex objects at small sizes. Both of these results support the central assumption of the Kosslyn‐Shwartz model, namely the existence of a fixed resolution analog spatial medium. (shrink)

Personhood is a foundational concept in ethics, yet defining criteria have been elusive. In this article we summarize attempts to define personhood in psychological and neurological terms and conclude that none manage to be both specific and non-arbitrary. We propose that this is because the concept does not correspond to any real category of objects in the world. Rather, it is the product of an evolved brain system that develops innately and projects itself automatically and irrepressibly onto the world whenever (...) triggered by stimulus features such as a human-like face, body, or contingent patterns of behavior. We review the evidence for the existence of an autonomous person network in the brain and discuss its implications for the field of ethics and for the implicit morality of everyday behavior. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Touching TestAI and the Future of Human IntimacyMartha J. Reineke (bio)Each Friday, the New York Times publishes Love Letters, a compendium of articles on courtship. A recent story featured Melinda, a real estate agent, and Calvin, a human resources director.1 They had met at a market deli counter. On their first date, a lasagna dinner at Melinda's home, Calvin posed the question, "What are you looking for in (...) a man?" To his surprise, Melinda reached into her pocket and pulled out a two-page list, "Melinda's Husband Traits." Her 46-item list begins with "Christian, honor God, put Him first" and includes as entry number 37, "He likes to be touched and likes to touch me." Notwithstanding laudable features of Melinda's inventory, if David Levy, President of the International Computer Games Association and an expert on artificial intelligence (AI), is correct in his predictions, in the years ahead, women like Melinda who know exactly what they are looking for in a husband will desire something radically new: a robot. After all, artificial agents will soon possess or improve on every quality the romantically inclined previously have sought in a human partner. [End Page 123]Levi predicts robots will be preferred romantic partners by the middle of this century.2 Capable of providing erotic satisfaction and creating deep emotional bonds with human partners, these robots will be an achievable outcome of AI engineering that already has brought to market industrial and service robots, virtual pets, and caregiver robots for the elderly. Levi offers a research-based inventory of traits a robot will offer its human partner: kindness and understanding, a sense of humor, expressiveness, intelligence, and sociability.3 He pinpoints additional features that will facilitate romance: The ideal robot partner will elicit erotic attraction, give evidence of readiness for a serious relationship with its verbal assertions, and possess a capacity for mutual intimacy.4 Levi's argument is intentionally provocative, for he emphasizes the centrality of sex to future robot/human pairings, waxing rhapsodic about the performative superiority of robots to humans in the sexual act.5Elaborating on potential human love relationships with robots, Levi asserts that a robot will need to master imitation if a human is to want it as a romantic partner. Not only is imitation a central aspect of every human-to-human relationship, but also imitation has been identified by researchers as a crucial element in romantic desire.6 Levi states that human-to-human attraction is founded on similarities between prospective partners in appearance, personality, and social context. It is sustained only through what Levi calls "reciprocal liking."7 For romantic relationships between humans and robots to flourish, they too must engage in acts of reciprocal imitation.In highlighting the necessity of imitation in effective robot and human interactions, Levi draws close to René Girard's theory of "mimetic desire." According to Girard, imitation structures all "wanting,"8 delineating what we aspire to look like or hope to possess and determining what we value, take comfort in, or experience as a threat. Indeed, the individual is never the origin point of its desires. Each of us always desires mimetically—according to the desire of the other.9 As Scott Garrels confirms in Mimesis and Science, researchers studying imitation in developmental, comparative, and social psychology, as well as in neurophysiology and cognitive neuroscience, support Girard's claims: Imitation is fundamental in human life.10 Likewise, Girard concurs with Levi that romantic relationships are primary examples of imitative desire. As described by Girard in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, imitative behaviors form the romantic triangles that feature prominently in fiction: for example, Odette and the many men enchanted by her in Proust's In Search of Lost Time; Anselmo, Lotario, and Camilla in Don Quixote; and Velchaninov and Troussotzki, along with Troussotzki's deceased wife and prospective fiancée, in Dostoyevsky's The Eternal Husband.11 [End Page 124]Notwithstanding similarities in Levi and Girard's views of imitation, they differ in a crucial respect. Only Girard acknowledges just how extraordinarily fraught mimesis can become. When imitators compete (e.g., for things, status, and experiences), they will contest... (shrink)

The cognitive disorders that follow brain damage are an important source of insights into the neural bases of human thought. This work offers state-of-the-art reviews of the patient-based approach to central issues in cognitive neuroscience by leaders in the field.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The View from Pȏle NordSartre, Beauvoir, and Girard on Mimesis, Embodiment, and DesireMartha J. Reineke (bio)Simone Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay immerses readers in a 1930s Parisian social scene, thanks in part to the character Françoise. Eavesdropping with Françoise on a man and woman seated at a table in the Pȏle Nord café, readers of the novel hear the woman confide, "I've never been able to follow the (...) rules of flirting. I have a morbid horror of being touched."1 As Françoise invites us to turn our gaze toward another couple seated nearby, we observe a possible instance of the very discomfort to which the first woman has attested. A hapless female looks "uncertainly at a man's huge (grosse) hand that has just pounced on hers (s'abattre sur)."2 Of these two scenes from She Came to Stay, Jean-Paul Sartre memorializes only the second.3 As described by Sartre in Being and Nothingness, a man and a woman on their first date are seated at a table. The man "takes" (prend) the hand of a woman and holds it between "his warm hands" (les mains chaudes) while the woman makes her hand inert, even as she "permits herself to enjoy his desire."4 Thanks to the pervasive influence of Being and Nothingness on the philosophical canon, the disquieting scene Françoise describes in She Came to Stay largely has been forgotten. Sartre sets the [End Page 1] terms for the unfortunate woman's ongoing life: She is a paradigm of "bad faith." Two decades later, her immortality is secured by René Girard: The woman is a prime exemplar of coquetry, a "fundamental" concept in the development of Girard's theory of mimetic desire.5In the wake of today's #metoo headlines, we may find ourselves eager to weigh in anew on the scene at Pȏle Nord. Are we witnesses to flirtation? Seduction? Unwanted sexual attention? Debates about coercion and guile, predators and prey, are unlikely to be productive; after all, Girard has advised that participants in such debates flounder in a problematic victimology.6 Nevertheless, Sartre and Girard's fascination with the mise en scène at Pȏle Nord warrants reexamination on other grounds. Sartre's discussion of the young woman beset by bad faith in Being and Nothingness is one of several instances in which Sartre is shown exerting a significant influence on Girard. Focusing closely on these occurrences, we can identify features of Sartrian existentialism that contribute constructively to the development of Girard's thought. So also can we uncover a problematic view of the body in mimetic theory. Girard shares with Sartre a profound ambivalence toward embodiment. An alternative perspective visible in Beauvoir's writing could enhance the treatment of the body and eroticism in mimetic theory.Girard's early work attests to Sartre's influence. Writing in Evolution of Desire, Cynthia Haven introduces the topic of Sartre's impact on Girard by recounting Parisian intellectuals' responses to tensions between Camus and Sartre: "Everyone took one side or the other." Girard's friends reported that Girard "was on the Sartre side."7 In an interview with Rebecca Adams, Girard states that "I was influenced by Sartre and Camus, like other people of my generation, especially by Sartre."8 Girard acknowledges Sartre's influence in several other contexts. In a 2007 interview with Pierpaolo Antonello, Girard recalls his early philosophical interests: "… From Sartre I went to Merleau-Ponty and all the authors related to phenomenology, which fascinated me and for a while I wanted to write in the phenomenological style."9 Commenting in the 2008 preface to La Conversion de l'art, Girard states that he is struck by the Sartrian "tone" of his own writing.10 Scholarly explorations of the specifics of the influence of Sartre on Girard have cataloged the most important Sartrian concepts: a lack of being, the in-itself/for-itself (en-soi/pour-soi); the "projet"; patterns of desire (e.g., masochism and sadism), and bad faith.11 These themes are discussed in what follows, with special attention to Girard and Sartre's perspectives on human... (shrink)

In this essay I offer a criticism of David Tracy’s work, The Analogical Imagination, in Iight of my reading of Alice Walker’s fiction. I propose that Tracy’s analysis of the contemporary theological scene is flawed because his portrait of theology bypasses important aspects of liberation theology. In particular, I suggest that despite Tracy’s rccognition of liberation theology, his work is imperiled by a residue of privilege that clings to his hermeneutic model of theology. As a consequence, opportunities for substantive dialogue (...) with Iiberation theology are missed. The core of my criticism focuses on aspects of privilege that attend Tracy’s discussion of the religious classic. As I examine Alice Walker’s work. I suggest that Tracy would be disinclined to acccpt The Color Purple as a religious classic. His disinclination, I argue, may be attributed to three privileges: texts, time, and tradition. As I offer an alternative reading of the religious significance of The Color Purple, I suggest means by which explorations of a broader definition of “religious classic,” inclusive of works such as The Color Purple, might lead to productive dialogue between Tracy and liberation theologians. (shrink)

Miguel de Cervantes was taken captive in Algiers after the Battle of Lepanto and spent 5 years in prison.1 In his writings thereafter, recurring images and references to humans in captivity—cages, bondage, beatings—suggest that Cervantes remained haunted by his imprisonment. As Maria Antonia Garcés argues in Cervantes in Algiers: A Captive's Tale, Cervantes's writings allude to an "afterlife of trauma" that should be part of any analysis of his writings, including Don Quijote.2 Indeed, Garcés contends that, three centuries before Freud, (...) Don Quijote offers a profound reflection on the psychological legacy of trauma.3 Equally important, even as Cervantes navigates between sanity and madness, reality and... (shrink)

Like people, academic fields grow, acquire an identity, establish goals, and ultimately impact the world in various ways. Here we check in with our young friend Neuroethics—a field I want to see develop and thrive. This won't happen if it keeps returning to issues like cognitive enhancement or neural causation of behavior and responsibility, with minor adjustments of its analyses. Neuroethics is at its best when scanning the horizon for new scientific and technical developments that intersect in new ways with (...) ethics and law. Consider the development of open‐ and closed‐loop deep brain stimulation for behavioral disorders. Under what conditions are patients responsible for their behavior when it is influenced by an implanted system? Neuroethics has also increased understanding of people's beliefs and attitudes toward neuroscience and its applications because effective policy must take empirical facts into account. (shrink)

Although not the main point of his target article, Block defends the view that perception and awareness of perception could be functions of different brain systems. I will argue that the available data do not support this view, and that Block's defense of the view rests on problematic eonstruals of the “executive system” and of the components of information-processing models.

When cognitive neuropsychologists make inferences about the functional architecture of the normal mind from selective cognitive impairments they generally assume that the effects of brain damage are local, that is, that the nondamaged components of the architecture continue to function as they did before the damage. This assumption follows from the view that the components of the functional architecture are modular, in the sense of being informationally encapsulated. In this target article it is argued that this “locality” assumption is probably (...) not correct in general. Inferences about the functional architecture can nevertheless be made from neuropsychological data with an alternative set of assumptions, according to which human information processing is graded, distributed, and interactive. These claims are supported by three examples of neuropsychological dissociations and a comparison of the inferences obtained from these impairments with and without the locality assumption. The three dissociations are: selective impairments in knowledge of living things, disengagment of visual attention, and overt face recognition. In all three cases, the neuropsychological phenomena lead to more plausible inferences about the normal functional architecture when the locality assumption is abandoned. Also discussed are the relations between the locality assumption in neuropsychology and broader issues, including Fodor's modularity hypothesis and the choice between top-down and bottom-up research approaches. (shrink)

The central claim of my original target article was a modest one (that modularity does not always hold) but it was misinterpreted as a much stronger one (that modularity never holds). Further confusions arose from multiple valid usages of the term and the similarity of the terms and Despite the limited nature of the claim, I maintain that it poses a stubborn problem for neuropsychology, not to be dispelled by new empirical methods or a priori reasoning.

This book provides a state-of-the-art review of high-level vision and the brain.

Our ethical obligations to another being depend at least in part on that being’s capacity for a mental life. Our usual approach to inferring the mental state of another is to reason by analogy: If another being behaves as I do in a circumstance that engenders a certain mental state in me, I conclude that it has engendered the same mental state in him or her. Unfortunately, as philosophers have long noted, this analogy is fallible because behavior and mental states (...) are only contingently related. If the other person is acting, for example, we could draw the wrong conclusion about his or her mental state. In this article I consider another type of analogy that can be drawn between oneself and another to infer the mental state of the other, substituting brain activity for behavior. According to most current views of the mind–body problem, mental states and brain states are non-contingently related, and hence inferences drawn with the new analogy are not susceptible to the alternative interpretations that plague the behavioral analogy. The implications of this approach are explored in two cases for which behavior is particularly unhelpful as a guide to mental status: severely brain–damaged patients who are incapable of intentional communicative behavior, and nonhuman animals whose behavioral repertoires are different from ours and who lack language. (shrink)