of the world by the brain, just as the maps of an atlas do for the reader of them’ (our italics). In the first place, it is not clear what sense is to be given to the term ‘interpretation’ in this context. For it is by no means evident what could be meant by the claim that the topographical relations between groups of cells that are systematically related to features of the perceptual field play an essential role in the brain’ s interpreting something. To interpret, literally speaking, is to explain the meaning of something, or to take something that is ambiguous to have one meaning rather than another. But it makes no sense to suppose that the brain explains anything, or that it apprehends something as meaning one thing rather than another. If we look to J. Z. Young to find out what he had in mind, what we find is the claim that it is on the basis of such maps that the brain ‘constructs hypotheses and programs’ – and this only gets us deeper into the morass.
More importantly, whatever sense we can give to Blakemore’ s claim that ‘brain maps’ (which are not actually maps) play an essential part in the brain’ s ‘representation and interpretation of the world’, it cannot be ‘just as the maps of an atlas do for the reader of them’. For a map is a pictorial representation, made in accordance with conventions of mapping and rules of projection. Someone who can read an atlas must know and understand these conventions, and read off, from the maps, the features of what is represented. But the ‘maps’ in the brain are not maps, in this sense, at all. The brain is not akin to the reader of a map, since it cannot be said to know any conventions of representation or methods of projection or to read anything off the topographical arrangement of firing cells in accordance with a set of conventions. For the cells are not arranged in accordance with conventions at all, and the correlation between their firing and features of the perceptual field is not a conventional but a causal one.38
Blakemore’ s suggestion that neuroscientists use metaphorical and figurative language because of the poverty of the English language and lack of adequate concepts is a point which we shall examine later (§17.2).39
Reply to fourth objection (Searle)
Searle indeed drew our attention to an interesting conceptual complexity, which is worth disentangling if one is to avoid his confusions. It is a subtle matter, involving the important distinction between the body a human being is and the body a human being has. A human being is a sentient, living spatio-temporal substance (Homo sapiens) consisting of flesh and bones, with the power of self-movement as well as intellectual powers of reason and will. We also use the idiom of having a body (e.g. one may have a beautiful, lithe, athletic, powerful, aged, frail body), which idiom is used to speak of somatic characteristics of the human being we are.40 Everything true of the body we have is true of the body we are, but not vice versa. If my body is dirty, covered with scratches, and sunburnt, then I am dirty, covered with scratches and sunburnt. But if I am thinking of relativity theory, remembering last year’ s holiday, and wondering what to do, my body – the body I have – is neither thinking, remembering, nor wondering, since these are not somatic properties.
Searle suggested that if ascribing psychological attributes to the brain really were a mereological error, then it would vanish if one ascribed them ‘to the rest of the system’ to which the brain belongs. The ‘rest of the system’, he held, is the body that a human being has. He observed that we do not ascribe psychological attributes to our body. With the striking exception of verbs of sensation (e.g. ‘My body aches//itches//hurts//all over’, as well as ‘You have hurt my foot’) this is correct. We do not say ‘My body perceives, thinks and knows’, nor do we say ‘My body has a pain in its foot’, let alone ‘My body has a pain in my foot’ or ‘You have given my foot a pain’. But the ‘system’ to which the human brain can be said to belong is the human being. The human brain is part of a human being, just as the canine brain is part of a dog. My brain, the brain I have, is as much a part of me – of the living human being that I am – as my legs and arms are parts of me.
Human beings are (actually or potentially) persons, that is, they are intelligent, language-using animals that are self-conscious, possess knowledge of good and evil, are free and responsible for their deeds and have rights and duties. To be a person is, roughly speaking, to possess such abilities as qualify one for the status of a moral agent. It is striking that we would probably not say that the brain is part of the person, but rather that it is a part of the human being who is the person or that it is part of the person’ s body. To have a brain, one might say, is a somatic feature of a human being. Interestingly, we would not hesitate to say that Jack’ s brain is part of Jack, part of this human being, just as his arms and legs are parts of Jack. Why this hesitation or reluctance to aver that the brain is a part of a person? Perhaps because ‘person’ is, as Locke stressed, a ‘forensic term’, but not a substance-name like ‘cat’, ‘dog’ and ‘human being’. So, if we use the term ‘person’ in such contexts as this, we indicate thereby that we are concerned primarily with human beings qua possessors of those characteristics that render them persons, in relative disregard of corporeal characteristics. Perhaps this analogy will help: Paris is a part of France, France belongs to the European Union, but Paris does not. That does not prevent Paris from being a part of France. So too, Jack’ s being a person does not prevent his brain being a part of him.
Reply to fifth objection (Dennett) that there is no mereological fallacy, but rather a confusion between mechanical processes of the brain and non-mechanical mental processes
The mereological fallacy of illicitly attributing properties of wholes to their constituent parts has nothing to do with the distinction (or distinctions) between mechanical and non-mechanical processes. It is the bracket clock as a whole that keeps time, not its fusée, although the process of keeping time is wholly mechanical. It is the aeroplane as a whole (machine) that flies, not its engines, although the process of flying is wholly mechanical. It is a mereological mistake to contend that fusées keep time or that engines fly. Moreover, as we noted, verbs of sensation, such as ‘hurts’, ‘itches’, ‘tickles’ do apply to parts of an animal (e.g. ‘My throat felt sore’, ‘His leg hurt’, ‘Her head ached’), even though they are non-mechanical. So the applicability or inapplicability of psychological or mental predicates to parts of an animal has nothing to do with what is and what is not ‘mechanical’.
One might concede that it is mistaken to ascribe certain predicates of wholes to parts of the whole, but nevertheless insist that it is fruitful to extend the psychological vocabulary from human beings and other animals to (a) computers (that are ‘mechanical’) and (b) to parts of the brain (that are ‘sub-personal’).41 Note the difference between (a) and (b). Attributing psychological properties to machines (in the context of a discussion of whether machines can think) is mistaken, but does not involve a mereological fallacy of any kind. Attributing psychological properties to the brain or its parts is mistaken and does involve a mereological fallacy. Taking the brain to be a computer42 and ascribing psychological properties to it or its parts is therefore doubly mistaken.
It is true that we do, in casual parlance, say that computers remember, that they search their memory, that they calculate, and sometimes, when they take a long time, we jocularly say that they are thinking things over. But this is not a literal application of the terms ‘remember’, ‘calculate’ and ‘think’. Computers are devices designed to fulfil certain functions for us. We can store information on a computer, as we can in a filing cabinet. But filing cabinets cannot remember anything, and neither can computers. We use computers to produce the results of a calculation, just as we used to use slide-rules or cylindrical mechanical calculators. Those results are produced without anyone or anything literally calculating – as is evident in the cases of a slide-rule or mechanical calculator. In order literally to calculate, one must have a grasp of a wide range of concepts, follow a multitude of rules that one must know, and understand a variety of operations. One must view the results of one’s calculation as warranted by the premises. Computers do not and cannot.
