On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, "L.A. Loren" <lloren at mitre.org> wrote:
>While the study of phantom limbs and unilateral neglect are interesting,
>they do not directly support the conclusion that we use an explicit
>bodily representation. There are a growing number of researchers who
>believe that we do not, in fact, make use of such internal
>representations. Merleau-Ponty, in the "Structure of Behavior" and "The
>Phenomenology of Perception" argues that we do not use such
>representation and is based on several case studies. There was an
>article in Science some years back (97 or 98?) by Rizolatti (sp?) et. al
>in which it was argued that we store spatial information in a
>body-centric visual/spatial (a combination of both) terms and not as a
>kind of explicit 3D Cartesian coordinate system. There are also a number
>of researchers that study unilateral neglect who argue that we do not
>have an explicit internal representation of the body (I do not have the
>references handy, but can dig them up if you'd like).
IAN: If you could, that would be great! Thanks for the
pointers! If I feel the grass touching my feet after the
signals from that contact reach my brain, and I see my
feet after photons reflecting off them have reached and
been processed by my brain, how can I see my feet that
are outside my brain? I can only see the end product
of information from my feet reaching my eyes and brain.
How can I perceive an external thing before signals and
data from it have reached and been processed my brain?
How can I directly perceive anything outside my brain?
It seems to me that an alternative model to the internal
perceptual model cannot even be hypothesized in a way
that is compatible with known physical limitations.
Physical reality dictates that the location in space
and time of an external event is different than the
space-time location of the perception of that event,
so the perceived event is the same as the actual event.
>Once again, phantom limbs, unilateral neglect, and other pathological
>cases are all interesting, but they do not directly support the claim
>that we make use of an explicit internal representation of the body
>during the course of our day to day activities (i.e. when we are "living
>through" our bodies rather than thinking about them). While this has
>been the most common view, it is still contested.
>>Cheers,
>Lew
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