PNB 3HP3 Lecture 4: 19th Century Science (1800s)

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1800s is the century of incredible amounts of basic knowledge being
discovered.
-
Anesthesia invented
Allowed surgery
-
Medicine began to be a real science, not an art that you learn from someone
else.
-
Neurophysiology
-
People are interested in figuring out how might philosophical ideas translate
into medicine/reality/science.
-
How does my body work?
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A lot of the medicine gets developed by German
Helmholtz
Vunt studied with Helmholtz & basically developed psychology.
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Dissection was cool & told them a lot about the nerves/body, but they
needed microscope.
Hook & Boyle - microscope
Began to discover that nerves are composed of small units - nerve
fibers, synapses, discrete cells, neuroanatomy (organization of stuff in
the body/brain).
-
Our modern view of cognition is actually very based in philosophy.
In that we have a bunch of shit in our heads that we've gathered
throughout our lives.
We make a model of the world in our heads.
Complicated set of knowledge + inputs -- drives behaviour.
-
Discover of electricity important
-
Study that the body reacts to/engages with electricity is important.
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E.g., making recently deceased parts of frogs jump around.
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Maybe nerves transmit things through electricity.
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Produced a mechanistic view of physiology/behaviour.
Signal comes in, turns a switch on/off, behaviour response to the
switch.
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Steers us in the direction of concluding things like simple default
behaviourism.
No complicated representations in our brain.
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It seems like transmission is instantaneous.
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Helmholtz carefully measures this - the speed of conduction.
Whatever the nerve fibers are conducting has speed.
Subtraction method
Needed to invent fancy tools.
-
When you discover that the conduction of nerve fibers takes time, should
that change the way we think about the way things happen in mind?
This was never obvious to us.
Mind seems to be this physically mechanistic thing.
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They knew that stimuli had different magnitudes.
However this was represented in the mind was not a subjective
experience of magnitude.
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You're subjective experience is not a good representation of the mind.
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Ideas of JND
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Used to be impossible to measure.
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Formula not for how our nerves work, but how sensitive our mind is to
external stimuli.
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The mind is directly influenced in some way by the world around us.
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It's not that nerves transmit the quality of the thing you're experiencing.
-
Stimulation of nerves (however you did it) would produce the same effect -
thought about the different qualities of different nerves.
It's really the areas that they plug into in the brain.
-
Mueller
Had a theory about how different type of nerves transmitted.
-
Helmholtz
Work on color, binocular vision.
Talks about this interpretation, remembering, putting together the
world is effortless.
Seems like it's done for us.
There's something in mind that's generating your experience, but it
doesn't require a lot of effort.
-
Stereoscope existed as a prototype, VR experience.
Idea is that your internal experience isn't seeing two different images,
it's seeing one 3D internal image.
-
Herbart
Worked under Kant, but thought that we actually could measure mind.
Thought about what might have been available to mind.
Comes up with the idea that there might be a bunch of ideas in our
head that have partial activation, that we aren't' aware of.
Mathematical look at unconscious thought -- first person to look at this.
There are probabilities of these partially activated things coming to
mind based on what you experience in the world.
There's an issue of compatibility too -- some ideas go together better
than others
One idea may enforce/inhibit others.
§
Serious implications that there's stuff going on that you're not aware of
that still has some > 0 representation in mind -- unconscious
Threshold of conscious
Apperception --deliberately paying attention.
-
Localization of function
Large debate - is the brain a huge unitary thing or do different areas
perform difference processes.
Idea that different bits of your brain do different things.
Obvious that there must be some kind of localization of function to us.
-
Florence?
Argued that there's no such thing as fine grade localization of function.
Incorrect theory, but good data.
§
Brain abrasions on live pigeons
Destroyed different parts of the pigeon's brain & looked at how
the pigeon behaved.
§
Discovered what cerebellum is for, other things.
Found gross localization, but the idea that there are different places
where some information is stored in one place & other info is stored in
another place was not supported by his research.
So his ultimate conclusion was that there was no real fine
localization of function.
§
Cerebrum was just a large thing storing information so it won't
really affect you much.
§
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Gall ?
Interested in localization of function.
Got this info from cases studies, injuries/brain damage.
Theory probably correct, but it has bad experimental data.
Looked at the brain & had ideas about where things like "justice,
reason, etc." were mapped on the brain.
Him & Spurzheim -- phrenology
-
Phrenology swept under the rug, but these specific ideas persisted.
Ie. Brocca's area vs Wernicke's area
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The kind of rules we seem to find in mental stuff - the mind isn't random.
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Rules of mind seem so fundamentally different from the rules that govern
physical things.
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Psychophysics
Things happen relative to your subjective perception.
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This is how your systematic view of the world varies as stimulus varies.
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Mechanistic view of the mind continues to persist.
Romantic Movement
Number of philosophical schools
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Criticism: if you reduce the study of mind to this mechanistic thing, are you
necessarily leaving out certain important human aspects that somehow
devalue that thing by virtue of thinking about it/studying it in that way.
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Fechner
Psychophysics
Concerned about how we can look a beauty, aesthetics.
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By quantifying mind, you necessarily leave out something. The stuff you leave
out seems the most socially & humanly important stuff.
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By trying to quantify these relationships, you are leaving out the
experience/feeling of love, beauty, etc.
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Argue that this is the essence of what we care about.
Thought everyone else was studying the wrong thing.
It's actively bad for people because you're teaching them to not look at
these fundamental things that make them human.
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But, modern science has to engage in some sort of reductionism.
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19th Century Science (1800s)
Monday, January 22, 2018
9:32 AM
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Document Summary

1800s is the century of incredible amounts of basic knowledge being discovered. Medicine began to be a real science, not an art that you learn from someone else. People are interested in figuring out how might philosophical ideas translate into medicine/reality/science. A lot of the medicine gets developed by german. Vunt studied with helmholtz & basically developed psychology. Dissection was cool & told them a lot about the nerves/body, but they needed microscope. Began to discover that nerves are composed of small units - nerve fibers, synapses, discrete cells, neuroanatomy (organization of stuff in the body/brain). Our modern view of cognition is actually very based in philosophy. In that we have a bunch of shit in our heads that we"ve gathered throughout our lives. We make a model of the world in our heads. Complicated set of knowledge + inputs -- drives behaviour. Study that the body reacts to/engages with electricity is important.

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