Isomorphism and the Mirror Neuron System (original) (raw)
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Isomorphism and Mirror Neuron System
Eagle & Wakefield contend that Köhler's and Koffka's scientific speculations anticipate recent empirical and theoretical accounts of the so-called mind-reading ability (those skills that make up the cognitive capacity of ascribing some mental states to others in such a way to understand the meaning of their behavior) having it to be seen as intentionally driven and goal directed. The authors maintain that the Gestaltist explanation of it might be taken as an early formulation of some crucial features of mind-reading accounts based on the mirror neurons discovery and the embodied simulation theory, that is, the stress on a sort of direct accessibility to other's intentions, motivations and emotions, and the claim that this phenomenology is likely to be grounded on a neural mechanism shared by the observer and the agent. This paper serves to give a constructive contribution to this contention by trying to specify the extent at which the Gestalt Psychology be consistent under certain respects with the mirror neurons system theory and the embodied simulation theory. Hence, I will split my arguments, dealing first with the mirror neurons discovery and then with the embodied simulation theory in order to spot those points that seem to leave still room for further discussion.
Gestalt Psychology, Mirror Neurons, and Body-Mind Problem
The body-mind problem is one of the oldest philosophical problems. Aristot-le claimed the unity of soul and body: " We should not ask whether the soul and body are one, any more than whether the wax and the impression are one " [Aristotle, De Anima ii, 412b6-7]. Plato held the opposite view. Gestalt psychology from the very beginning was concerned with this problem. One aspect of the body-mind problem was presented by Gestalt theory in the form of iso-morphism. Another line of investigation started with Gestalt therapy, which pays a lot of attention to body language, body processes, body awareness, and body memories. Neuropsychology continuously accumulated facts concerning relations between psychological functions and neuronal activity. At last, 20 years ago, the fundamental mirror neurons phenomenon was discovered: perception through imitating the movements (gestures) that created the stimulus. This discovery demonstrates that our body is an inseparable part of perception. With that knowledge in mind, this paper analyzes the history of Gestalt psychology, and shows that this idea was born in Gestalt psychology and persisted throughout its 100-year history. A mirror neuron (MN) is a neuron that fires both when an animal or human being acts and when the animal or human being observes the same action performed by another. So, when observing the actions of the other, the observer feels as though he is himself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primates , humans, and other species including birds. This discovery initiated a wave of research and discussion in psychology of perception and particularly in Gestalt psychology which is the most general theory of perception. The most popular theme became the perception of emotions (partly because that issue had attracted the attention of philosophers, biologists, and psychologists from antiquity on). Was this an unexpected discovery which meant a kind of revolution in neuropsy-chology? Or was it a logically legitimate step in the development of a psychology of perception? In this paper I will present arguments which support the latter position; during 100 years Gestalt psychology has proposed and developed the idea that the final and crucial part of perception is imitation of movements that created the stimuli (either dynamic or static).
Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind: a Reductive Interpretation of the “Mirror System”
First Part My talk is divided into three Parts. In the first Part I take into consideration the history of the mirror neurons discovery from the staff of neurologists led by the Parma team of Rizzolatti, L. Fadiga, L. Fogassi, V. Gallese and G. di Pellegrino in the 90s (the announcement of the discovery dates back to 1996 on the Annual Review of Neuroscience) and its fundamental interpretations, making use of the book of Giacomo Rizzolatti & Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions, 2008 -Oxford University Press, from the original one in Italian published by Raffaello Cortina Editor, Milan 2006. These fundamental interpretations are:
Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading
Trends in cognitive sciences, 1998
How do we understand other people's behavior? How can we assign goals, intentions, or beliefs to the inhabitants of our social world? A possible way to answer these challenging questions is to adopt an evolutionary frame of reference, both in phylogenetical and ontogenetical terms, envisaging these 'mind-reading' capacities as rooted in antecedent, more 'ancient' and simple mechanisms. This approach can capitalize on the results of different fields of investigation: neurophysiology can investigate the neural correlates of precursors of these mechanisms in lower species of social primates such as macaque monkeys. Developmental psychology can study how the capacity to attribute propositional attitudes to others develops.
My talk is divided into two parts. In the first part I take into consideration the history of the mirror neurons discovery from the staff of neurologists led by the Parma team of Rizzolatti, Jacoboni, Gallese, etc. in the 90s (the announcement of the discovery dates back to 1996) and its fundamental interpretations, making use of the book of Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions, 2008 – Oxford University Press. These fundamental interpretations are: 1) motor and cognitive processes are non separated but very tied because they are activated by some common groups of bimodal neurons which fire both when we act and observe an action (“neural embodied simulation”); 2) mirror neurons system would permit an immediate understanding of the intentions in the actions of other individuals (“affordance understanding”); 3) our imitative and communicative capacity through a gesture and verbal language would be the result of an evolutionary process in which mirror neurons system had and has a crucial role; 4) the immediate (non cognitive) understanding of the basic emotions of others (such as disgust, fear, happiness, etc.), already well observed by C. Darwin in animals, would arise from our mirror neurons system and would be the necessary prerequisite for that “empathic behaviour” which underlies much of our inter-relationships. In the second part I try to clarify the theoretical concordance that I find between this discovery and a reductive theory of mind, and particularly with the supervenience reductive theory of mind claimed by Jaegwon Kim (1993; 1998; 2005). Indeed, it seems to me that the way in which the so-called “mirror system” works is theoretically compatible with some crucial concepts and principles in the metaphysics of mind by Kim. Notably, they are: 1) the concept of reductive psychophysical supervenience, according to which a mental property is realized by a species-specific physical/neural property, making use of a functional model of reduction; 2) the pre-emption of a physical cause on a mental cause and the redundancy and unintelligibility of mental causation; 3) the principle of physical causal closure, according to which there are causes in a genuine sense only in the physical domain; 4) the multi-layered metaphysical model of the world, which distinguishes between ontological “levels” (micro/macro properties) and theoretical/conceptual “orders” (physical, mental, social, etc.).
Mirroring versus simulation: on the representational function of simulation. Synthese
2011
Mirror neurons and systems are often appealed to as mechanisms enabling mindreading, i.e., understanding other people’s mental states. Such neural mirroring processes are often treated as instances of mental simulation rather than folk psychological theorizing. I will call into question this assumed connection between mirroring and simulation, arguing that mirroring does not necessarily constitute mental simulation as specified by the simulation theory of mindreading. I begin by more precisely characterizing “mirroring ” (section 2) and “simulation ” (section 3). Mirroring results in a neural process in an observer that resembles a neural process of the same type in the observed agent. Although simulation is often characterized in terms of resemblance (Goldman, 2006), I argue that simulation requires more than mere interpersonal mental resemblance: A simulation must have the purpose or function of resembling its target (section 3.1). Given that mirroring processes are generated auto...
Gestalt psychology and the mirror neuron discovery
2007
It is sometimes the case that scientific speculations from an earlier era anticipate with surprising precision later discoveries that occur long after the original hypothesis and even the theory within which it was formulated have been abandoned or absorbed. In such cases, historical excavation can direct credit for prescience where it is due. It can also reveal the surprising predictive power of earlier theories, even suggesting that they be revisited for the insights they might still yield.