Metaphors & Brain

Question 1

What does Nicholas Steno, Danish anatomist (1699) say about the brain?

Answer 1

“The brain, the masterpiece of creation, is almost unknown to us”

Question 2

What 4 questions does the philosophy of neuroscience ask?

Answer 2

1) What counts as EXPLANATION in neuroscience?
2) What sorts of EVIDENCE is possible in neuroscience?
3) What role do REPRESENTATIONS play in neural explanations?
4) How can CONSCIOUS phenomena be linked to the brain?

Question 3

What do scientists need to study the brain?

Answer 3

1) Experimental tools

2) Conceptual frameworks (ideas)

Question 4

How do neuroscientists develop conceptual frameworks?

Answer 4

By drawing on domains that they already know, including analogies and metaphor

Question 5

What are Hydraulic Metaphors grounded in? (2)

Answer 5

Water technology of the Greeks

e.g. the Greek water clock

Question 6

What 3 hydraulic metaphors have we learnt?

Answer 6

1) Hippocrates (humors & balance)
2) Galen (temperaments, fluid & tissue)
3) Freud (Steam & desires)

Question 7

How does Hippocrates use the hydraulic metaphor?

Answer 7

Links it to the 4 humors (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood)

Like Greek water clock, these must be kept in balance otherwise disease results

Question 8

How does Galen use the hydraulic metaphor?

Answer 8

Links the humors to temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic)

Believed nerves conveyed animal spirits (fine fluid) between tissues dominated by humours

Question 9

What are Hippocrates 4 humours?

Answer 9

1) black bile
2) yellow bile
3) phlegm
4) blood

Question 10

What are Galen’s 4 temperaments?

Answer 10

1) sanguine
2) choleric
3) melancholic
4) phlegmatic

Question 11

Explain Freud’s steam analogy (3)

Answer 11

1) Set out to develop neural account of mental function, but realised it failed to help him understand conditions of his psychiatric patients

2) Arrived at conclusion that the mind contains desires, some of which are unacceptable
- They may be repressed, but like STEAM PRESSURE can only be held down for so long
- Must be re-channelled into safe areas

Question 12

When were different clocks/early-modern mechanisms developed? (3)

Answer 12

1) Weight driven clocks - 13th century
2) Pendulum clocks - 17th century
3) Practical machines for lifting weights - 14th & 17th century

Question 13

What employments of clock/machine metaphors have we learnt? (3)

Answer 13

1) Descartes transportation of animal spirits
2) Jacques mechanical duck
3) La Mettrie applying mechanical metaphor to thought

Question 14

Explain Descartes clock metaphor (3)

Answer 14

• Descartes offers mechanical account of the physical universe and living organisms (excluding human minds as they are a different substance)
• The nervous system transports animal spirits to and from the brain
• Many phenomena we take to be mental (reception of light, taste, odours etc) were physical for Descartes and so could be transportes

Question 15

Descartes clock metaphor quote

Answer 15

We should consider these functions as “neither more nor less than the movements of a clock of other automaton”

Question 16

Who created the mechanical duck?

Answer 16

Jaques de Vaucanson

Question 17

Explain the mechanical duck (4)

Answer 17

• Jaques de Vaucanson created mechanical duck as entertainment piece
• The idea of organisms as machines captivated many biologists
• In the sense that we are made up of diverse parts, each performing its own operation
• Contemporary example is how cells are viewed as factories with organelles each performing diff parts

Question 18

What is La Mettrie’s book?

Answer 18

L’Homme machine

Question 19

La Mettrie quote

Answer 19

the human body is “a machine that winds its own springs - the living image of perpetual motion”