FSHD 347 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Prosopagnosia, Hard Wired, Other Minds

• School: University of Arizona
• Department: Fam. Studies & Human Dev. Main
• Course: FSHD 347
• Professor: Alex Von Stein

Document Summary

In chapter 6. 2, the authors argue that the notion of personhood explored in chapter. 6. 1 and described in lecture 10 is, in fact, an illusion rooted in brain function. They argue that personhood is not a real category of object, but instead, is a projection of the human brain"s tendency to recognize faces and contingent patterns of action onto the world. According to their view, there are no persons in the world, only features that our brain projects onto the world. Studies of the brain show that we are in a sense hard wired to recognize faces. Some of the evidence for this is a rare disorder called prosopagnosia an impairment or complete inability to recognize faces. Patients with prosopagnosia show no de cits in recognizing other kinds of objects and patterns, but fail to recognize faces. This speci c de cit suggests the existence of a speci c brain function for recognizing faces.