The Tom Cruise effect

I just found this picture from one of my favourite blogs, the Canadian Cynic (originally at the Photoshopping site Freakingnews.com).
In the interest of cognitive science and skepticism, I just had to use it as a mini-primer on the Thatcher effect.
Look at it:


Well, that's creepy enough, isn't it? I mean, first of all, that's Tom Cruise, and as if that's not enough, he's upside-down but his face is not. Brrrrr. Something is definitely wrong with that picture, so wrong that I would have a very hard time locating it, even approximately, anywhere in the uncanny valley. Ok, but now look at what happens when that picture is further turned upside-down:


So, I ask you: which one is creepiest? Just look at them side by side, maybe this can help:

I would say the second one, on the right, looks even worse than the first one. If I had any readers on this blog, I would put on an online poll to settle the matter. But I'm all alone here, so I'll have to trust my own feelings.

Anyway, let's flesh out some background now. I think this is a rather extreme instance of the so-called Thatcher illusion ([1]; find the original, an hugely influential, paper by Peter Thompson here). This is very well known, but it's still an extremely efficient classroom demonstration of how the visual system deals with special objects like faces.


Look first at both pictures of Maggie in the lower row. The one on the left is normal, the one on the right is grotesquely deformes (eyes and mouth have been selectively inverted). In the upper-row, the images are simply inverted, and the striking discovery is that the "grotesque" Thatcher is much less grotesque in this orientation. The effect is generally interpreted as a demonstration of the fact that inverting a face disrupts configural processing, meaning that it's extremely hard to detect incongruencies in the location, size, distance, and overall relationships of isolated parts when the face is rotated 180°. There is actually some ongoing debate about the exact mecanisms involved in face processing and the real meaning of the Thatcher illusion, but I won't go into the details here.

Now, if you wonder what happens when the images slowly rotate or are rotated by 90°, you can test it yourself on Michael's Bach excellent website. If you want more theory of what's going on behind the Tatcher illusion, check this old post of the now-probably-defunct-but nevertheless-missed blog Mixing Memory.

Here's a variant of the Thatcher effect that I like very much, but which actual relevance to the effect discovered by Thompson can perhaps be questionned ([2]; it's a tribute to Thompson by Stuart Antis, which you can download here):

Again, see Mixing Memory for some explanation. But here's the caption by Anstis:

(a) Unretouched negative photograph of Tony Blair. This is analogous to an upside-down face. (b) Face is negative except for the eyes, teeth, and hair, which are positive. This is equivalent to an upside-down thatcherized face, but looks barely more grotesque than (a). (c) Reversing the contrast of (a) yields a normal photo. (d) Reversing the contrast of (b) yields a grotesque portrait, with the whole face positive except for the negative eyes, hair, and teeth. This is equivalent to an erect thatcherized face.

From the text, some sentences that deserve full re-transcription here:

I have done for negative faces what Thompson did for inverted faces. Figure 1a is a contrast-reversed portrait of Mrs Thatcher's latest successor, the much-loved Tony Blair, well-known for his gleaming eyes and teeth. Next to it is a modified negative (figure 1b), which looks similar to, or perhaps more lifelike than, 1a. In fact, the mouth, eyes, and hair in figure 1b were individually contrast-reversed before the whole picture was contrast-reversed, so these features are positive whilst the rest of the face is negative. This is analogous to thatcherizing the face in the contrast domain.
When these two pictures are viewed in positive, figure 1c is clearly normal, whereas the grotesqueness of figure 1d is vampirish enough to scare little Tory children.

And the glorious conclusion:

This would suggest that there are similarities between the Blair illusion and the Thatcher illusion (in much the same way as there are similarities between Blair and Thatcher).

So, how does all this relate to the Tom Cruise pictures? Well, I guess the Thatcher explanation will say that the head-inversion somehow disrupts the grotesque-ness of the face-inversion. As humans and their heads are overwhelmingly perceived in the upright orientation in daily life, and the visual system evolved to quickly make sense of facial identitites and expressions, then the manipulation in the second picture is even more obvious than the one in the first picture. Anyway, I can add another example so that you can make up your own mind, and then I'll leave it at that:













Which one is the creepiest?

[1] Thompson P, 1980, "Margaret Thatcher: a new illusion" Perception 9(4) 483 – 484
[2] Anstis, S.M. (2005). Homage to Pete Thompson: The Tony Blair illusion. Perception, 34, 1417

La voix des morts (White Noise)

Un peu de live blogging...
Voici un petit compte rendu d'un film que j'ai regardé il y a quelques jours sur TF1. Je l'avais déjà repéré au vidéo club (oui je sais, "vidéo club" ça fait ringard), mais ça tombait plutôt bien de zapper dessus par hasard. "La voix des morts", ça s'appelle (White Noise en anglais).

Avertissement: ne lisez pas ce qui suit, ça n'en vaut pas le coup.

Ok, allons-y quand même, et tant pis pour vous si vous êtes encore là: ça commence par une citation de Thomas Edison, dont on connaît le projet saugrenu d'inventer une machine pour communiquer avec l'au-delà (rappelez-moi d'écrire un truc là-dessus un des ces jours, l'histoire en vaut le coups). Ensuite, il y a une définition de la TCI (transcommunication instrumentale), avec quelques lignes qui nous assurent que cette pratique est apparue en 1939, et fait depuis "l'objet de recherches scientifiques pour prouver la survie après la mort", ou quelque chose comme ça, je cite de mémoire.
C'est un film avec Julien Lepers. Quelqu'un a-t-il déjà vu Julien Lepers et Michael Keaton ensemble dans la même pièce? Non, tout porte donc à croire qu'il s'agit d'une seule et même personne. Ou du moins c'est le genre de raisonnement qui devrait vous permettre de bien entrer dans le caractère prodigieusement irrationnel et stupide de ce film.
Bon, autant le dire tout de suite, j'aime bien les mystères, le fantastique et la science-fiction. J'aime beaucoup les nanards aussi. Mais les mauvais films, c'est-à-dire seulement mauvais et même pas drôles, ça je peux pas. Je ne suis pas le seul à le penser, ce machin a péniblement gagné 8% de suffrages sur Rotten Tomatoes. C'est moins que l'Exorciste II: l'hérétique (14%), largement considéré comme un des pires films de toute l'histoire de l'humanité (essayez seulement de le voir en entier, ça relève de l'exploit).

Bon, au début du film tout le monde est heureux. Julien Lepers et sa femme vont avoir un bébé. Il se rend au boulot. Il rentre et sa femme n'est pas à la maison. Elle a laissé un message sur le répondeur, message qui est mystérieusement interrompu. Elle ne rentre pas de la nuit. Lepers s'inquiète un peu. Le temps passe, c'est-à-dire qu'on voit des horloges passer, superposées à l'image, pour qu'on comprenne bien que le temps passe. C'est du bon cinéma. A 2.30 du matin, la radio s'allume toute seule, il y a comme un bruit indistinct. Et bon, au petit matin, on apprend que sa femme a disparu inexplicablement, et sa bagnole retrouvée au bord d'une rivière, vide. Comme c'est une écrivain connue, la femme à Lepers, l'affaire est dans toutes les nouvelles. Les jours suivants, le pétillant animateur constate qu'une grosse voiture le suit partout, avec un gros monsieur dedans. Le type s'appelle Raymond Price, il explique qu'il a capté des messages de sa femme de "l'autre côté". Il a des preuves qu'elle est morte et qu'elle essaie de "communiquer". Raymond a des contacts depuis longtemps avec son propre fils mort, il sait donc de quoi il parle. Keaton est sceptique, bien sûr. C'est une réaction typique des croyants et des charlatans, au début ils sont toujours sceptiques, et c'est seulement après qu'ils se laissent convaincre par un examen soigneux des preuves. Alors ils deviennent des vrais charlatans, et ne sont plus sceptiques du tout. (voir cette jolie tentative par Peter Lamont d'examiner ce sujet).

Je continue. Un soir la police se pointe, manifestement ils vont annoncer à Keaton que sa femme est morte. Voila, il est triste, il pleure. Plus tard, il se retrouve coincé (mystérieusement) dans un ascenseur, et reçoit un appel sur son portable. Le nom d'Anna - sa femme! -, s'inscrit sur son cadran! Il rentre précipitamment chez lui, et reçoit à nouveau l'appel du portable fantôme. Mais personne ne parle quand il essaie de répondre. Brrrrr, que de mystères mystérieux. Le lendemain matin, c'est un appel sur son répondeur qui l'attend. "Vous avez un message" ça dit, qui date du moment où sa femme est apparemment morte: il entend furtivement ce qui ressemble à la voix de sa femme défunte dire son nom "Julien Lepers", puis le message s'auto-efface. Julien ne comprend plus rien, il chuchote "Oh mon Dieu". Mystère.

Il décide alors d'aller voir le gros monsieur Raymond Price, qui aide les gens à communiquer avec des gens morts. C'est quelque chose qui fait beaucoup de bien à tout le monde, on pleure à chaudes larmes et on boit du thé. Le mec est bourré de matos hyper-sophistiqué. Il explique ce qu'est la TCI: "beaucoup de gens nous prennent pour des dingues". Meuh non voyons. Attention, il n'est pas médium, ne mélangeons pas tout, il capte juste des messages de l'au-delà sur un magnéto ou une télé pourrie, et il enregistre le tout. Lepers-Keaton ne semble pas convaincu, il fait une grimace genre "qu'est ce que c'est que ce dingue?". Mais Raymond dispose d'un enregistrement de sa femme morte: il lui fait écouter. Parmi les enregistrement on entend distinctement des chuchotements dire des trucs. Keaton-Lepers semble immédiatement convaincu, il pleure à chaudes larmes, juste au moment où on lui apporte du thé. "C'est une expérience bouleversante", "c'est indescriptible", le dialogue prend des hauteurs quasi-métaphysiques. Vite une bonne gorgée de thé bien chaud.

Bon, on s'emmerde un peu quand même. Keaton rentre chez lui pour jouer à Questions pour un Champion, euh non, il met juste une cassette dans une radio et demande à sa femme de lui parler. A part des grésillements, pas de grand succès. Le film date de 2005, on trouvait encore des "cassettes" à ce moment là? Il semble que oui. A partir de ce moment, il va enregistrer en permanence et se passer les bandes pendant la journée. Gare, ne surtout pas faire ça dans sa voiture, on peut avoir un accident (évité de justesse, voila qui apporte beaucoup à l'intrigue déjà trépidante du film). Lepers retourne chez Raymond le gros, qui continue à enregistrer avec son matos super technologique. Il transfère ses enregistrements sur son "disque-dur". Raymond a un ordinateur! Pendant qu'il tripote les sons, Lepers commence a voir des fantômes et a entendre des cris de méchants. C'est qu'il y a des gens pas très gentils de l'autre côté, lui dit Raymond, qui n'aiment pas que les vivants écoutent leurs conversations. C'est une grande leçon de morale, à retenir. L'au-delà et plein de méchants morts qui n'aiment pas les gentils vivants.

Bon, ça continue avec les grésillements. Toujours pas de véritable message très convaincant. On peut s'attendre à voir la femme-morte apparaître sur un écran plasma vers la fin du film, ou une connerie comme ça. Changement de décors, Lepers-Keaton retourne au milieu de la nuit chez Raymond, et constate que le gros est mort, enseveli sous son matos super-technologique. Un coup dur, mais que de mystères qui s'épaississent.

Le malheureux veuf passe désormais tout son temps devant des écrans de TV, à mater de la neige. On se demande bien ce qu'il enregistre exactement, il faut bien choisir une chaîne, ou un canal, non? Bon, toujours rien, après des jours et des jours; Keaton se décourage. Il va alors voir une médium, mais on voit tout de suite que c'est une incapable, elle fait plein d'erreurs. Mais ce n'est pas une escroc, elle voit qu'il y a quelque chose qui ne tourne pas rond. Elle dit que la TCI c'est pas bien. S'ensuit un dialogue extraordinaire, j'ignorais qu'il y avait un conflit entre médiums et TCI. C'est qu'il ne faut pas faire n'importe quoi avec le monde des morts, il y a des dangers. Mais on retiendra néanmoins que les médiums et la TCI, c'est tout pour de vrai.

C'est un film vraiment nul, je vous avais prévenu. Poursuivons néanmoins. A force de regarder ses écrans de TV, Lepers finit pas voir quelque chose. Mais c'est assez indistinct, des visages, des chuchotements, de voix, trois silhouettes noires... Les morts, de toute évidence, passent leur temps à faire coucou à des caméras fantômes. Avec tous ces messages qu'il parvient à capter, Julien-"Pour le Plaisir"-Lepers peut faire le bien autour de lui et réconforter les gens. C'est un message absolument merveilleux: ce serait en effet bien triste que la mort ce soit purement et simplement la fin. Non, même une fois mort on peut continuer à se taper des navets en compagnie d'idiots.

Ok, à la surprise générale, un jour Keapers-Leton finit par voir sa femme morte. Dans la télé de l'au-delà de la mort. C'est très émouvant, heureusement que Keaton est un acteur prodigieux, sans quoi la scène serait un peu embarrassante. Mais que de mystères tout de même.

Par la suite une intrigue des plus poussives se met en place, et je dois avouer que je commence un peu à fatiguer. Aller, un petit effort. Il faut comprendre que les gens qui ont consulté Raymond Price laissent des messages à Keaton-Leonard, puis ils meurent, sauf que sa femme-morte-de-l'au-delà lui indique qu'ils vont mourir peu avant, de sorte à lui laisser le temps de les sauver, ou quelque chose dans ce genre. Enfin bon, il faut bien essayer de faire un film hein.
Le machin traîne en longueur, il y a des apparitions, des scènes cheaps et inutiles. Un soir, notre héros retourne chez lui, et tout est mis sans dessus-dessous. Un nouveau message a été laissé sur son ordinateur. On comprend qu'on se dirige vers la scène finale, qui promet d'être dantesque. Cela se passe, bien entendu, sur un lieu désaffecté. Toujours bon ça, le lieu désaffecté. Là dedans, il découvre une sorte de salle qui contient le même genre de matériel vidéo et informatique qu'il utilisait lui-même pour capter des messages. Tiens donc, est-ce qu'on aurait là une idée intéressante? Probablement pas. Mais c'est quand même diablement mystérieux. Il voit alors le fantôme de sa femme qui lui suggère de partir là, maintenant, tout de suite. Tout cela est vraiment très mystérieux. Encore une autre salle, cette fois-ci avec plein d'instruments chirurgicaux, ou alors de torture. Oui, c'est ça, probablement de torture. C'est lent et mou pour une scène finale dantesque sur un lieu désaffecté. Mais bon, voila qu'il découvre enfin le pot-aux-roses, après moults pérégrinations sur le lieu désaffecté. Enfin, c'est-à-dire qu'on est censé comprendre qu'il s'agit du pot-aux-roses, bien que la scène en question soit prodigieusement confuse et stupide. Mais bon, tout est bien qui communique bien à la fin, et les morts retrouvent les morts pour continuer à s'emmerder dans l'au-delà. J'espère juste qu'ils ont des meilleurs films là-bas. Voila, c'est la fin (non sérieux, ça finit comme ça).

Ah non, pardon, comme si le film n'était pas suffisamment ridicule comme ça, il se termine vraiment avec le message suivant sur l'écran:

"Sur les milliers de message de TCI, environ 1 sur 12 a un caractère menaçant."

Oui, je n'invente rien. Environ 1 sur 12. C'est-à-dire environ 8.33% si on veut vraiment avoir l'air scientifique. C'est que la TCI, ce n'est pas du pipeau. Il y a même un journal scientifique de très haut niveau entièrement dévolu à la question. Je recommande le numéro 32, Avril 2008, entièrement dévolu à la TCI avec les animaux. Du très haut vol. Pour en savoir plus sur ce phénomène étrange et fascinant, et entièrement grotesque, je vous recommande de visiter n'importe quel site sur le sujet à partir d'une recherche de quelques secondes sur Google, ça vous donnera d'emblée une idée assez bonne du niveau général de la "recherche" dans ce domaine. Tenez, commencez ici, il y a même des images.

PS: j'apprends avec consternation qu'il existe une suite à ce film; ça s'appelle White Noise 2: the light... Mais on m'assure tout de même que celui-ci est nettement meilleur que le premier. Peut-être, mais dans la mesure où j'ai été déjà bien dégoûté, je ne crois pas que je vais me donner la peine de subir encore des grésillements et des apparitions, en tout cas pas pour un bon moment.

Friday noise: I don't think I can play the GODPLAYER!!

Band: Brutal Truth
Album: Need to control
Year: 1994
Song: Godplayer
Comment: new album out now "Evolution through Revolution"
Comment 2: Hell yeah

Creating phantom fingers

The Phi phenomenon (or Phi effect, or Phi movement, of Phi illusion, or apparent motion...) is a classic demonstration of how the brain just makes up stuff in your mind that are actually not out there. Typically, you see one dot flashing on your left, and when it turns off, another dot appears on the right. Given the right circumstances, and these are pretty accomodating anyway (i.e. it works under a lot of conditions), what you see are not two stationary flickering dots, but a single dot moving back and forth. It is indeed quite hard not to perceive the nonexistent intermediary dots in between the flickering ones: they are, as it were, phantom dots.

The effect was discovered by Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, and first published as: Experimentelle Studien über das Sehen von Bewegung. Zeitschrift für Psychologie 1912, 61, 161-265, 1912. (see a list of Wertheimer's publications, and much more, in this excellent website).

Now, this simple effect as been hugely influential and useful for theories of movement perception, and vision and cognition in general. There are hundreds of variations that you can think of (and that have been most probably already studied, make no mistake), as well as thousands of papers on the phenomenon. It has become quite hard to do anything original in this field, at least since Shiffrar and Freyd's excellent study on "apparent motion of the human body" [1], which I plan to discuss someday in the context of phantom limbs. One of the questions raised by the Phi phenomenon is of course its mechanisms: is it primarily a bottom-up thing, based on mindless "motion detectors", or is it modulated by top-down factors, like beliefs, knowledge, expectancies, etc.?

Well, I now see that the journal Perception has a short and intriguing piece [2] that might bring something new to the topic. Whereas Shiffrar and Freyd focused on the perception of apparent motion for other person's body parts, Ekroll and Scherzer, the authors of this new paper, propose a demonstration of the Phi illusion for one's own body. Here's their abstract:

We describe how illusory apparent motion of one’s own fingers and other body parts can easily be experienced in spite of grossly conflicting proprioceptive signals. This simple illusion may be used to shed light on the crossmodal integration of visual and proprioceptive signals. Our preliminary observations suggest that the visual and proprioceptive signals do not merge into a common crossmodal percept. Instead, mutually inconsistent visual and bodily sensations are experienced simultaneously.

So, how do you induce apparent motion using your own body? Here's what the authors say:

To experience the phenomenon, hold one of your hands with the fingers pointing
away from you (...). Only the index finger should be stretched out and visible from your point of view. Then lower the index finger and lift the middle one instead. Keep the hand steady while alternating swiftly and cyclically between these two finger positions, ie move the two fingers up and down in counterphase. When this is done swiftly enough, you will have the visual impression of a single finger tip moving horizontally instead of two fingers moving up and down. (...) One may initially find it difficult to move the fingers swiftly enough while preserving the appropriate coordination of the two fingers. (...) The effect seems to be more easily experienced
when the fingers are viewed monocularly with a half-closed eye. (...) Furthermore, viewing the fingers in peripheral vision, say, by looking at the wrist instead of directly at the fingers, also seems to enhance the effect.

Taken from Perception's website, the figures below of a hairy hand illustrates the idea. From my experience, you have to do this rather fast, and it's not so easy to be consistent (it is very important that you always see the same "amount" of finger sequentially, otherwise it seems to me that any effect there might be is destroyed).































The animation can be seen here. It is really a matter of subjective opinion whether there is a strong feeling of apparent horizontal motion or not while looking at this (I mean, looking at the animation, i.e. not doing it yourself). The authors also recommend trying this with the feet, as in the follwing figures:


































The animation can be seen here. This works even less, I think, but try it anyway.

Ok, good. Neither these effects work so well for me, but I accept the general idea (and maybe I should practive a little bit more, while trying I did have brief glimpses of a quite effective phi, but this was very transient). Theoretically, when this works, it should induce the perception of intermediate phantom fingers in between the real fingers, just like phantom dots are created by the brain in between two flickering dots. I'll keep trying.

Well ok, this is all fun, and makes for a very cool classroom demonstration. But one might ask, from a theoretical point of view, what's the point? Well, the authors valiantly present three theoretical perspectives arising from this funny experience:

1) "proprioceptive signals from the hand could have dominated over visual motion signals, making the subject perceive the veridical vertical finger motion, although a second passive observer perceives illusory horizontal motion"

Well that's a good idea. The problem is that it will be hard to gather good data from this illusion, as subjects have to do it themselves, and therefore it can hardly be controlled, plus the feeling is by definition subjective, and so forth. What is more, if you want a "second passive observer", then this guy would have to see the fingers from someone else's point of view, hardly a practical experimental setting. Another approach to test hypothesis 1) would be to induce in the fingers some kind of proprioceptive disturbance, to see if this enhances the perception of phi. But I have no idea how to do this without disturbing motor processes. It seems we reached an experimental dead-end. But proprioception is not the only thing getting in the way of vision here. As I said, it is very difficult to produce consistent, identical and repetitive finger movements while looking at them from a specific angle, so the visual information itself is quite unstable, which might be enough to reduce any phi effect.

2) vision may dominate over proprioception, and the active subject may have the
bodily sensation of a horizontally moving finger.

Sure. I mean, this is sort of trivial, for if the illusion that is described works at all, then it implies that vision does indeed, somehow, dominate over proprioception.

3) "proprioceptive and visual information may fail to merge into a coherent crossmodal percept. In our experience, the latter seems to be the case."

I'm not sure what this last hypothesis means. In the author's words: "one experiences a visual illusion of horizontal motion although the fingers are felt to move vertically". What would it feel like if a "coherent crossmodal percept" between proprioception and vision was achieved? How is hypothesis 3) different from hypothesis 2)? If vision dominates over proprioception, well then they have not "merged" appropriately, right? On the other hand, it might be a sort of figure-ground phenomena, akin to what happens during binocular rivalry or the Necker cube: there are times, when doing this illusion, where you perceive either proprioception, or vision, but not both at the same time (and when vision is in the foreground, then phi is experienced). But again, it's close to impossible to actually test this thorougly. It gets also quite confused in the conclusion, where the authors write:

"the proprioceptive and visual signals, which in many other cases of proprioceptive/visual conflict merge into a common percept, fail to do so in the present case. A possible explanation for this would be that the horizontal apparent motion is so discrepant from the vertical motion that would be expected on the basis of the efferent motor commands that the visual percept is more plausibly attributed to an object not belonging to the observer's own body."

This they link to the literature on experimental disturbances of agency (of the Jeannerod type). But obviously this goes a step too far. I'm of course speaking on my own experience (or lack thereof) of this illusion, but it certainly does not feel like the moving fingers, whether they seem to move vertically or horizontally, are someone else's! I don't think there's any disturbance of agency or ownership in this illusion, as far as I'm concerned I think this is the wrong approach.

But then I don't really have anything better to propose, and I think overall that the publication is very cool and intriguing.

[1] Shiffrar M & Freyd JJ (1990). Apparent motion of the human body. Psychological Science, 1 (4): 257-264.
[2] Ekroll V, Scherzer T R, 2009, "Apparent visual motion of the observer’s own limbs" Perception 38(5) 778 – 780

Worthless Amazon alerts

I get a lot of bizarre suggestions from Amazon in my email. I figured I'll start posting some of these things here before I delete them, in order to keep some track record and maybe some day flesh out the peculiar logic behind their system of alerts.

Master Your Own Destiny: The tools and techniques to create your fantastic future

by Sheila Steptoe

Product Description
In a world which is changing so rapidly, it's easy to lose confidence. Sure-fire personal security seems to be increasingly rare, relationships come and go. Many people are now searching for answers. How do you decide where to anchor yourself? What if you could make your vision happen? Sheila suggests that being happy and content, feeling serenity deep inside, are not rewards to be reserved for other people. We are all entitled to them! An average story tells. A good story guides. Sheila's book illustrates, demonstrates and gradually inspires you to wake up to who you truly are, so you can achieve greater success and happiness. Her personal tale is packed with honest stories, insights and straightforward advice, an invigorating breath of fresh air in a tough and complex world. She offers insight and the gentlest of spiritual guidance for those on the brink of curiosity and with a desire to learn more. Without promoting any single answer, Sheila introduces theories and ideas that you can think about, in bite-sized morsels you can digest with ease. She invites you to let go of your past, become fully engaged with the here-and-now, and open your mind to a more inspiring future. Fifteen years ago Sheila Steptoe was a happy, average housewife. Then suddenly the rug was pulled out from under her. As she slowly healed, she transformed her life ... and if Sheila can do this, maybe so can you. Let this book be your first step to freedom - no-one else can do it for you! "This book is amongst my top 5 favourite self-help books Margaret Fleming "A thought provoking and stimulating book." Caroline Golding "Sheila reminds each of us that true happiness is a choice, not an accident." Max Eames

Borje Cronholm: a pioneer in the modern study of phantom limbs

Phantom limbs are endlessly fascinating. I will post regularly about this phenomenon in this blog, for there is so much more to learn about phantoms than is generally realized. Phantom limbs certainly are the first building blocks for a serious phantomology - a science of human bodily consciousness - to emerge. Not only there is much much more to learn, but most of what we do know was actually discovered long ago.

You might have heard of so-called referred sensations in amputees. This refers to the peculiar experience some amuptees have to feel their non-existent limb when certain parts of their bodies are touched. The excellent VS Ramachandran is usually credited with this beautiful observation, which he showed to behave in a strikingly ordered somatotopic fashion (see the now classic review here). It turns out you can literally draw a hand on the ipsilateral cheek an upper limb amputee, delineating as it where the receptive fields that have been rearranged in the somatosensory cortex. Well, that was a brillant rediscovery and extention of an old observation.

I don't know for sure who wrote first about referred sensations in amputees, but the best treatment to have been given to the topic has certainly been published in 1951.

Cronholm B. Phantom limbs in amputees: a study of changes in the integration of centripetal impulses with special reference to referred sensations. Acta Psychiatr Neurol Scand Suppl 1951; 72: 1–310

(A review of this remarkable monography can be found here (The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 1953; 35-B (2): 332))

Some information about the author of this work, Börje Cronholm, can be found on the swedish Wikipedia [1]. He was born on 1913 August 28 in Lund and died in Stockholm in 1983, October 11, from a brain tumour. Cronholm spent much of his professional career as a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at the Karolinska Institute. He did his PhD on phantom experiences in amputees, which I guess is the work contained in the superb monograph I'm about to present. Cronholm had 3 children, one of which (Tomas) became also became a professor at Karolinska. One of his grand-daughter is apparently a famous artist in Sweden (Ellén Cronholm). Apart from his work on phantom limbs, Cronholm was very interested in the links between art and medicine. He wrote on the artistic expressions of schizophrenic patients (among them one Ester Hennings, whom he met during a temprary position he held at Beckomberga, the mental Institute in Stockholm. Cronholm contributed to the saving of Henning's works, which are now kept and visible at the National Museum). In his later years, Cronholm focused on "psychological measuring methods", meaning he devised clinical tests for assessing memory disorders, the effects of brain damage and aging, as well as depression (I don't know any of these works). He was of course member of numerous boards and associations (which is something I'm afraid I'll never be able to brag about). Intriguingly, it seems that Cronholm was appointed to hold the speech for the Nobel Prize acceptance of Konrad Lorenz. I might investigate a little bit on this, I don't see the connection between these two guys. Well, that's pretty much it for his biography. Let's look now at what I take to be his magnum opus, of which I proudly own one copy. See the cover below, and I ask you to take a good look at the dedication in the upper right corner (see the magnification right below):

I guess to most people this doesn't mean much, but it turns out that the copy I own belonged to JM Nielsen, a neurologist in Los Angeles that produced quite a few inspiring and important papers on disorders of the body schema, back in the 1930's. For example this one, from 1937 in the obscure Bulletin of the los Angeles Neurological Society (and long before people started using the horrible and misleading word "asomatognosia"):







It seems to me that Nielsen deserves to be rediscovered (see some publications here). He wrote numerous papers on a wide range of subjects, and also the influential textbook: Nielsen, JM, Agnosia, Apraxia, Aphasia. 2nd Ed. New York: Hoeber, 1946; as well as A Textbook of Clinical Neurology. New York: Hoeber, 1941. Here's what Joe Bogen, the famous surgeon of the split-brains, had to say about Nielsen:

I remember one of his brain cuttings relevant to this paper: After someone had read the history, he said, "Let's look at the anterior commissure." He held the brain with one hand and that big knife in the other (as you know, the anterior commissure is shaped like a handlebar mustache) and he made one curving sweep through the brain; then he lifted off the top half, and there was the full extent of the commissure.

Not impressed? Bah, you've never been to a brain cutting demonstration. Anyway, enough of memorabilia, and let's examine some of the book's content. First, as the title indicate, the book is really focused on the phenomenon of referred sensations. It is quite extraordinary that Cronholm devoted such a meticulous work to a phenomenon that, when you think about it, does not immediately strike you as even remotely interesting. Amputees must have noticed for centuries that when certain parts of their body are touched, they "feel" another touch in the location of the phantom limb. Ramachandran ended up with the sexy "remapping" explanation, in the light of the mid-eighties mounting evidence for massive cortical plasticity in the monkey's somatosensory cortex (Kaas, Pons, Merzenich [2]), but before that it took Cronholm to investigate systematically, and I mean really systematically, how these sensations work. He painstakingly interviewed 122 amputees and did all sorts of tests, mostly on tactile perception, with them. The monograph is replete with fantastic illustrations and numerous tables. The table of contents itself tells a whole story (chapter 13: Voluntary movements in a Ph[antom]; chap. 28: changes in the length of a Ph[antom] on stimulation of the stump; chap. 34: Referred sensations assigned to a Ph[antom] or the stump percept when the bladder is expanded, on miction or defecation; chap. 39: The experience of leg amputees when walking with a prothese; etc.)

So below is an illustration of referred sensations in one patient, clearly showing that face-to-phantom referrals where abundantly described before Ramachandran. This is patient n°13, a male born1906, amputated from the right upper limb in 1944 and first examined in 1945. I'm telling you, this is a meticulous study. In 1944, n°13 got "his right arm caught in a conveyor belt and torn off just below the shoulder. The nerves were torn off at the plexus". Shit happens. "Ever since amputation the patient had experienced the entire lost limb percept from within, the Ph-hand most clearly, the the Ph-elbow. The Ph-arm was of normal length and volume. it usually hung down his right side with the elbow slightly flexed and the fingers flexed. He demonstrated this posture with his left arm in exactly the same way at examinations in 1945 and 1949." Note how Cronholm is a smart little guy. One of the only ways to test for the "reality" of phantom limbs is indeed to check its consistency across trials. He continues: "The Ph-arm was experienced as "less real" than the left arm percept - "no life in it" - but just as solid. The patient could not make any voluntary movements in the Ph. Attempts to move the Ph-fingers merely led to increased "tingling" and sometimes to a mild feeling of cramp in the Ph-hand. The Ph-arm always felt numb, he had an "icy" feeling in it and a "tingling", "like when one hits one's funny bone, but not so strong". Well, it goes on and on like this. The level of detail is astonishing. (nowadays you can read papers describing fMRI studies of amputees, including having received a human limb graft, with no mention whatsoever of the mere presence or not of a phantom).
Let's look at the figure for patient n°13.

Black dots in (A) indicate the location where the experimenter touches the patient. Each trial is numbered, and the resulting tactile feeling in the phantom arm is shown in (B). Note how touches on the chest elicit feelings in the phantom forearm (with quite large receptive fields), and touches on the stump elicit feelings in the fingers, or rather across several fingers. Note also that here Cronholm didn't check for the face, this will come in the next figure. Cronholm had almost all the cards in his hands to make a point about the somatotopy of these referred sensations and how they could relate to the somatosensory homunculus. The only problem, of course, is that Penfield's homunculus wasn't fully described at the time, or at any rate Cronholm didn't have the required mental framework to draw the connection with the information on somatotopy available in his time (Penfield published with Rasmussen The Cerebral Cortex of Man in 1950, while Cronholm was busy pin-pricking his patients during the 1940's). In any case, it boggles the mind to see that it took 40 more years for Ramachandran to come up with the simple and elegant explanation of cortical maps invading the brain areas left deprived by the peripheral amputation. Well, that's a nice story, as always with Ramachandran, but it turns out that reality is often less spectacular than the textbooks. Cronholm followed-up on patient n°13, and here's in (C) what he obtains 3 years later:

Numbers refer to the same loci of stimulation than 3 years earlier, from the previous figure (Cronholm was a well organized man). Referred sensations from the cheek ipsilateral to amputation elicited wide areas of sensations in the forearm and the wrist. This is rather unlike the classic "hand on the face" of Ramachandran. See also that touches on the chest, this time do elicit sensations in the fingers, whereas touches in the stump produce feelings in the forearm! What the hell? This is the exact reverse pattern from 3 years ago! How does one account for that in terms of cortical remapping? You see, phantom limbs are much more complicated and fascinating than many people acknowledge, including people well versed into neurology and bodily consciousness.

And there are even more bizarre things. Look at the following figure, which shows the phantom forearm of patient n°6, amputated at the elbow in the right arm (this male patient was amputated when he was 7 years old and examined at 17). In (A), Cronholm stimulated the ventral side of the stump, in 13 locations drawing a straight line from the inside of the elbow to the apex of the stump. Doing this, the patient indicated on his healthy arm where the feeling was felt in the phantom, and it turns out that the somatotopy is very reliable: all the phantom sensations were isolated tactile sensation drawing a straight line on the ventral side of the phantom forearm. Now, look at (B). Stimulating the dorsal side of the stump elicited feelings in the dorsal side of the phantom. Right away, this seems to indicate that the phantom has some kind of a volume, or spatial existence. But this is not the most interesting with this figure. You have to read the fine print to see what is really intriguing here. Stimulation n°13 in the apex of the stump, in (A), is not represented on the phantom chart. Why? Well, that because, as Cronholm indicates, "when point 13 was stimulated the patient felt a sensation "in space" distal to the Ph-fingertips"). That's right, exosomesthesia! This patient, quite clearly, makes a difference between a phantom limb and empty space. Think about what this means, I just love this observation.

There is much more to say about Cronholm, so stay around for future posts on this classic, but poorly known, research on phantom limbs. What I can say right away, however, is that where Cronholm is excellent in observation, he's rather weak on theory. But reading this painstakingly documented monograph, one gets the impression that he wanted to give the best possible picture, with any single detail that might turn out later to be relevant or not, for others to study.


[1] Thanks to Pär Halje for express translation (with ever so honey-coated voice)
[2] Animal activists out there behold: these guys simply chopped off monkeys fingers and limbs to see what would happen in their brains. Well, they usually made up some story about the animal "losing" "spontaneously" its body parts in some fight, but it's clear that this sort of neuroscience is by now over (or at least I hope so).

Il est vivant!

Couverture et titre absolument délicieux pour le dernier numéro de Il est vivant! Je ne connaissais pas ce magazine, mais franchement ça donne envie... Au cas où on n'aurait pas compris de qui il s'agit (oui, c'est qui "il"? Je connais tout un tas de gens qui sont "vivants"), il y a un sous-titre: le mensuel de la nouvelle évangélisation.
Evidemment, les pitreries des culs-bénits n'ont pas grande importance pour moi, mais ça me fait toujours un peu frétiller quand il y a prétention évidente à engager un... dialogue entre la science et la religion! Ben oui, il faut pas que chacun reste dans son coin. C'est absolument nécessaire d'échanger les points de vues et de s'ouvrir à des perspectives différentes. La vérité, comme chacun sait, se trouve souvent exactement au centre des opinions divergentes. Oui, enfin, c'est en tout cas une approche qui favorise celui du dialogue qui a de toute évidence tort, qui dit n'importe quoi, qui ment, qui vit sur le dos de la crédulité des autres, qui survit en manipulant les esprits des plus jeunes génération après génération, etc. Mais laissons une chance à nos amis de Il est vivant!, même si d'un point de vue psychiatrique je trouve que l'utilisation frénétique du point d'exclamation, surtout dans un titre, n'engage pas vraiment à l'examen raisonné. Voyons donc ce que répond le curé de service quand on lui demand si, par hasard, la question des origines de l'homme ne poserait pas comme qui dirait un léger conflit entre les disciplines parfaitement équivalentes et aussi honorables l'une que l'autre que sont la science et la religion:

Denis Biju-Duval : "Comme le rappelait le concile Vatican II, chaque savoir a ses sources et ses méthodes propres qui doivent être respectées dans leur consistance. Un théologien ne saurait se mêler de dicter au chercheur scientifique ce qu’il “devrait” trouver, pas plus qu’un scientifique ne peut juger scientifiquement la validité d’un dogme de foi. Les sciences procèdent des observations expérimentales aux hypothèses explicatives, qu’elles valident ou qu’elles invalident en retournant sans cesse aux observations. Elles ont donc un caractère non dogmatique, progressif, à mesure que s’affinent les capacités d’observation et la puissance explicative des théories. Aussi, j’éviterais de dire que leur méthodologie est matérialiste, car dans la tradition philosophique, le “matérialisme” renvoie à une idéologie qui nie l’existence de la dimension spirituelle, ou qui la réduit à un phénomène matériel. Or une science ne dit rien de tel. Ce qui est non observable expérimentalement n’est pas objet de science : Dieu, en particulier, ou l’âme spirituelle de l’homme, ou le Christ présent dans l’eucharistie, ne peuvent être objets de science. Si un scientifique prétend en dire quelque chose, il ne le fait pas au nom de sa compétence scientifique, mais de ses options philosophiques ou religieuses personnelles. Nier l’existence de Dieu au nom de “la science”, ce n’est pas scientifique, c’est de l’idéologie. D’autant plus que plutôt que de “la science” il faut parler des sciences, chacune ayant son propre champ de recherche et ses méthodes de travail. Inversement nier la théorie de l’évolution au nom de la Bible, ce n’est pas de la religion, mais encore de l’idéologie ! Dieu n’a jamais eu pour but de nous révéler des théories astrophysiques ou biologiques : il a voulu nous dire qui Il est et qui nous sommes pour lui. Le fait qu’il nous ait créés capables d’expérimenter et de réfléchir signifie en quelque sorte qu’il a laissé les sciences de l’observable entre nos mains.

C'est du lourd, je m'en tiendrai donc simplement aux parties que j'ai mises en évidence. Dieu, l'âme spirituelle et le Christ ne sont pas observables, ils ne peuvent donc pas être objets de science. Chapeau l'artiste, parfaitement d'accord. Il faut juste ajouter les licornes, le marsupilami, les tigres violets invisibles et inodores, et le pouvoir de lévitation, toutes choses qui n'appartiennent pas non plus au magistère de la science, mais à celui de l'imaginaire. Deuxième point, le vénérable homme de Dieu nous explique que son ami imaginaire est inobservable et relève purement de la "foi", mais par contre il sait exactement ce qu'il a "voulu nous dire" et "qui nous sommes pour lui". Comment il le sait? Bah, je viens de le dire: c'est un homme de Dieu. Il sait ce genre de choses, c'est son job. Pour s'en convaincre, on prendra note du fait que ce monsieur extralucide est l'auteur d'un livre qui s'appelle Croire n’est pas si compliqué, aux Éditions de l’Emmanuel, 2003. Effectivement, ça ne semble pas trop compliqué.

Indigeste Isabelle Stengers

Siné Hebdo a cru bon cette semaine de consacrer deux pages entières à une interview de la philosophe Isabelle Stengers. Si vous n'avez jamais entendu parler de cette personne, c'est normal. On ne lui doit aucune théorie, aucune découverte, aucun classique, et on ne lui connait aucune proposition intelligible, ni même une quelconque posture philosophique qui soit vaguement identifiable. Tout au plus, on pourrait la qualifier de "postmoderne", mais le terme est évidemment un cruel révélateur de l'indigence de sa pensée. En fait, la seule et unique utilité de son œuvre, et c'est là son but explicitement avoué - je n'ai rien besoin d'inventer -, c'est d'exaspérer les gens comme moi. Visiblement, il y a un marché pour cela, et Stengers occupe farouchement cette niche depuis qu'elle a commis l'ennuyant La nouvelle alliance avec le malheureux Ilya Prigogine (toujours bien de se mettre un Nobel dans la poche quand on débute une carrière dont le seul objectif sera de vociférer des âneries).

Dans ses propres termes: "...je m'emploie à me rendre incomestible, c'est-à-dire à ne pas être appréciée par les gens dont je ne veux pas l'être".

Impressionnant, non? Voila qui est parfaitement adulte, raisonnable et pertinent pour quelqu'un qui prétend tenir une réflexion sur la pratique de la science, le discours de minorités et le pouvoir des experts. Les gens dont je n'aime pas la gueule? Ceux dont je sais d'avance qu'ils vont trouver des failles dans mes raisonnements? Je les emmerde, de sorte à être sûre de ne pas être appréciée par eux. Na. Du très haut niveau, surtout pour une philosophe. Mais de qui parle-t-elle, au fait? Qui sont ces horribles individus qui doivent être privés de bouffer du Stengers? Et bien comme d'habitude, on ne sait pas trop. Voyez-vous, chez Stengers, c'est très important de passer pour une rebelle sans toutefois dire les choses clairement. Mais elle laisse tout de même des pistes:

"Au cours de ma troisième année de chimie, en 1969, j'ai réalisé que j'avais appris la physique quantique comme un savoir constitué, sans en percevoir les problèmes. Lorsqu'ils se sont posés à moi, j'ai conclu que j'étais perdue pour la science. Depuis, j'ai compris que c'est une réaction typique grâce à laquelle l'ordre règne chez les scientifiques. Un vrai chercheur doit ignorer les "grandes questions" qui peuvent faire douter. Le doute y est à peu près aussi mal vu que chez les staliniens. Ceux qui vont en philosophie sont un peu des réfugiés politiques".

Traduction: j'ai raté mes finaux de chimie, alors j'ai décidé de faire philo. Mais c'est pas parce que j'ai rien compris aux cours, non, c'est parce que le savoir institué n'a rien compris à la vérité vraie que moi je détenais. Ah oui, et aussi les scientifiques sont des crétins, ils font tout pour ignorer les "grandes questions" et c'est que des fachos. J'ai préféré m'en éloigné, grâce à la physique quantique.

Pour ceux qui se posent la question, sachez que j'ai lu certains livres de Stengers, et j'avais alors ressenti une tristesse comparable à celle qui m'avait étreint lorsque j'avais tenté de lire Roudinesco. C'est qu'à partir d'un certain degré, la bêtise ne met plus en colère, elle file juste le cafard. Un exemple particulièrement déprimant, c'est Médecins et Sorciers, co-écrit avec Tobie Nathan. L'horreur absolue, si j'arrive à remettre la main dessus, j'en parlerai peut-être un de ces jours, histoire d'exorciser ce mauvais moment de lecture que j'ai cherché à refouler sans grand succès depuis. Bref, avec Stengers, c'est de la mélancolie en bloc qui vous arrive dans la figure, toujours avec cet arrière-goût d'à-quoi-bon apte à vous fiche en l'air tous vos projets pour le reste de la journée, parfois de la semaine.

Mais au moins, dans cette interview, on comprend mieux la blessure narcissique qui travaille la malheureuse depuis tant d'années. Une carrière entière basée sur l'échec. "Perdue pour la science", certes, mais aussi perdue pour la philosophie, pour la littérature, pour la pensée. Bienvenue en France, où le dernier des losers peut mener une carrière en étant constamment, et fièrement, et peut-être même consciemment, dans l'erreur, sans que personne ne s'en offusque jamais et sans se faire mettre à la porte. Voici comment tout à commencé, apparemment:

"...Prigogine était avant tout un physicien. C'était mon boulot que de penser les conséquences de ses travaux".

C'est un mythe qui est très important pour que de nombreuses personnes puissent conserver leur travail dans les universités: les scientifiques découvrent des trucs et établissent des faits, mais ils n'ont strictement aucune idée de leurs conséquences. Ce sont des autistes un peu rigolos, un peu patauds, qui font des équations compliquées que personne ne comprend, mais ils n'ont aucune idée de la manière dont ils travaillent, des forces politiques, historiques et sociales qui traversent leurs pratiques, des implications culturelles et éthiques de leurs travaux, et en plus de ça ils ne lisent pas de poésie, ne vont pas au musée et détestent l'humanité. Les malheureux, ils ont besoin de philosophes et de sociologues des sciences, voire même d'anthropologues, pour que leurs équations inhumaines soient remises en perspective pour le bien de l'humanité. Science sans conscience, hein, comme chacun sait. Et dans l'humanité, il y a aussi des minorités et des opprimés, choses dont les scientifiques se fichent complètement, mais que les génies de la réflexion humaniste sont heureusement prompts à sauver héroïquement de leurs mains nues. Mais allez leur expliquer, aux scientifiques, que la réalité n'est rien d'autre qu'un discours. Ces idiots n'ont même jamais entendu parler d'inter-textualité, c'est à se demander comment ils parviennent à faire leurs besoins proprement. Ainsi, pour ce qui concerne la thermodynamique, Isabelle Stengers a contribué à..., euh, enfin, réfléchir aux conséquences du truc et à, euh, sa place dans l'histoire des sciences, enfin tout ça quoi. Elle y a contribué un max, et si t'es pas content, et bien elle s'en fiche parce que de toute façon elle ne t'aime pas, du fait que tu poses trop de questions et que tu es l'ennemi. Incomestible, elle est. Faudra t'y faire.

Bon, le reste de l'interview est assez insipide, on apprend qu'Isabelle Stengers est anticapitaliste, et qu'elle est du côté de la veuve et de l'opprimé. C'est encore une de ces rebelles dont l'énergie est entièrement canalisée par le besoin permanent de se savoir dans le camp des gentils. Oui, isabelle, tu es dans le camp des gentils, ne t'inquiète pas. Les scientifiques, c'est des méchants pas drôles vendus au système; les sorcières, c'est des femmes courageuses et vaillantes qui ne craignent pas d'envisager un autre modèle de société; les drogués, c'est des révoltés qui disent merde au système; l'hypnose, c'est une écharde embarrassante sous le pied des savoirs officiels; etc. D'ailleurs, il y a des évidences que le paradigme capitaliste et scientiste dominant n'ose pas dire, comme par exemple:

"La barbarie, c'est lorsque ce qui était intolérable devient toléré puis normal".

Oui, comme par exemple l'homosexualité, l'avortement, les couples interraciaux, etc. C'est une citation très juste et très belle d'Isabelle Stengers, elle aurait vraiment eu tort de réfléchir avant de la dire.

L'interview est visible en vidéo sur le site de Siné Hebdo, mais je ne vous la recommande pas. Méfie-toi Siné, tu sais bien où la fréquentation de philosophes de deuxième zone a mené ton vieux pote Philippe Val. On est quelqu'uns à ne pas vouloir te voir suivre la même pente dans l'irrationnel...

Irreducible Mind fills a much needed gap

My review of Irreducible Mind is out with the latest issue of Skeptic.
I will post the review somewhere in due time, but for the moment I just want to make a few comments about this book, from a slightly different angle than what I say in the review. It's a negative review, of course, but there are good reasons to be even more scathing and angry at such a book (which is exactly what I plan to do here). This is all the more so that Irreducible Mind (henceforth IM), as far as I know, only had positive reviews until now, and only in pro-paranormal venues. (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). There is actually one review of this book I think would be worth reading, but I have no access to the journal in which it was published. This is the following:
Cardeña, E. (2007). The truly astonishing hypothesis. [Review of the book Irreducible Mind]. Edward F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 52 (No. 49), Article 5. Retrieved December 7, 2007, from the PsycCRITIQUES database.

Well, if anyone has access to PsycCRITIQUES, feel free to send me one copy. Otherwise I'll just ask Etzel Cardena myself one of these days.

So yeah, this book was increasingly being presented, in woo woo land, as a sort of upcoming revolution in the humdrum universe of sheepishly mainstream psychologists and neuroscientists (who are mainly materialists by default, obviously not realizing the inconsistencies of such an obsolete position, stupid as they are). You see, mainstream scientists (i.e. not crackpots) have failed to provide evidence that the brain is at all involved in the production of consciousness and mental states. What IM shows however, through more than 800 pages of marshalling irrefutable evidence, is that the brain merely transmits consciousness. Or filters it (whatever that means). So there is a conflict, you see, a controversy between the productive theory, and the transmissive theory of mind-brain relationships. Isn't that great? Every side of the debate has something to bring to the table, and boy, do scientists looove a cool controversy to resolve!

This is of course ridiculous, there is no debate at all. But the "transmissive" "theory" is actually taken absolutely seriously by a number of people nowadays. Mostly crackpots, which we'll meet again and again on this blog. Nonetheless, this idiotic "theory" is totally legitimate,we are told, because William James himself held such a view. William James! That's an impressive endorsement, of course, but it doesn't really tell us what the "transmissive" approach is actually supposed to be, does it? Surely the explanation is somewhere in the book. Well, unfortunately, it isn't, and it is clear that the authors don't care at all about what exactly this "transmissive" theory really entails. And this is the crucial thing to realize about IM and the agenda behind it. It's just like the Intelligent Design creationist movement feels no need to explain what "intelligent design" actually is and how it works: the authors behind IM don't need to explain what they think is being "transmitted" through the brain, how it is being "transmitted", and from where (note also the coincidental use of the word "irreducible" in the book's title, maybe that rings a bell). Well, theory and mechanisms are just not the point of Irreducible Mind anyway. The real point is to somehow acknowledge the discoveries and fabulous progress allowed by the neurosciences and related disciplines (only an idiot or a liar could do otherwise), while at the same time saying that this is "not the whole story". In other words, the materialistic-reductionistic model is not as wrong as it is incomplete. By doing so, you can still allow your healthy dosis of woo, soul-stuff and Jeezus into the equation that was built by serious and hard working people, and someday, hopefully, maybe get students to learn about the controversy between psychical research, religion and actual science. This "not the whole story" thing is an extremely effective (and boring) ploy that I encounter again and again. There is not a single argument in the world that cannot be complemented, if not refuted, by the very cheap statement "you might be right, but this is not the whole story". Hey, you can actually write more than 800 pages with such a brilliant strategy. The deluded love it, as it's not really important that they don't have the whole story either. They simply like it when they don't understand something, which is why psi believers make so great scientists nowadays.

Well, that's the message, folks, there's nothing else in there. The authors of IM are simply deep into the explanatory gap, up to their neck, and they have no idea of how to get out. Nor do they really want to, of course, for it really feels good down there, it's all cozy and warm, bathing in your own tedious imaginary world, full of ignorance and smugness, without actually accomplishing anything of value in the real world. Mental causation, yeah, that's the problem we're told, that's the real issue. You cannot explain it without woo, and, well, you cannot explain woo without more woo. That's all there is in the book, and it can be formalized as follows:

Explanatory Gap + Psychic Phenomena + Tribute to Frederic Myers = Quantum Babble + Whitehead

Don't ask for more theoretical details, there aren't any in the book. Overall, it really reminds me of the title Richard Dawkins gave to the final chapter of The God Delusion: "a much needed gap". Apparently, as Dawkins found out, it is not uncommon for book reviews to state things such as "this book fills a much needed gap". While this is of course funny, it actually does apply perfectly to IM. Indeed, its authors need the gap they have made up, as their main business is to pretend there is a need to fill it.

There is much more to say about IM and its authors, but for the moment try to grab a copy of the current issue of Skeptic and read my nasty review. If you don't have access to that excellent magazine, ask me for a reprint.

One last comment, something else about the "transmissive" theory. I've noticed that my fellow infidel and NDE-realist Keith Augustine has been caught in a discussion of this very idea. You can read it there in the comments, although I wouldn't really recommend you spend too much time there. The point is that Keith tries to defend the "productive" theory against a horde of believers, and in doing so provides an analogy he thinks might be effective in conveying the fallacy behind the "transmissive" theory. It all started with another analogy involving the Mars Rover, and here's what Keith wrote:

"Perhaps an analogy is appropriate here. Let's say we have two separate, interacting things: A Predator drone and the remote pilot controlling it from a distance. The drone is captured and its captors start fiddling with its transmitter/receiver. What's the worst the captors can do to the remote pilot, miles away? They can destroy the drone's camera, making it blind. The person controlling the drone will no longer be able to see the environment around the drone. They can destroy the microphone, making it deaf, and again, the radio controller will no longer be able to hear what is going on. Ditto if the wires connecting the camera and microphone to the transmitter are severed. Information from the senses has been cut off. Next, suppose that the wires connecting the receiver to the drone's engines are severed. Now the pilot cannot even blindly control the drone. It seems inescapable to me that any form of substance dualism is committed to predicting that the mind (the controller) is largely independent from the brain (the drone's transmitter/receiver). The worst you can do to the controller by manipulating the drone's transmitter/receiver is make the controller deaf or blind regarding the drone's environment, or unable to move the drone. You cannot affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces. You cannot get the controller to go into a psychotic rage by manipulating the drone's radio. But you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain. In short, basic neuroscientific facts are simply inexplicable on any variety of substance dualism."

Well ok, sure. But this is a convoluted way to address a simple problem. Indeed, the "transmissive" theory is unwarranted simply because it is useless to account for the facts. It is an inacceptable violation of Occam's razor, and the only way to address it is with similarly idiotic explanations. What causes crop-circles? Well, there is evidence that some of them are human made, but this does not mean that aliens, from their spaceship, have not taken control of those humans in order to produce their oeuvres. I call this the "middleman" theory of crop-circles. Show me the evidence against it. (it's fun, you can apply the unnecessary logic of the "transmissive" theory of mind-brain relationships to just about any theory or event or fact observed in the real world, try it for yourself! Quine would have loved it!).

The Phantomologist is just born

Welcome to the Phantomologist, my new blog. My name is Sebastian Dieguez, I am a PhD student working on the cognitive neuroscience of self-awareness, I live in Lausanne (Switzerland), I am Spanish, and if you come back here you will perhaps learn more about me.
Here's some info about what I plan to do here: the phantomologist will be a bilingual (french-english) blog mostly about my opinions on science, beliefs, the neurosciences, the human body, religion, politics, local affairs, AND SO FORTH.
Why the "Phantomologist"? Well, following the prophetic Stanislaw Lem and its current guru Peter Brugger, "phantomology" can be defined as the science "whose aim [it] is to study the virtual reality of bodily awareness - from phantom limb to phantom body". This seems a bit over-specialized stuff, but when you get to the bottom of the idea you realize that it encompasses pretty much anything remotely associated with the human mind and human behaviour, which is extremely convenient when you plan to discuss phantom limbs, out-of-body experiences, and doppelgangers, but also pseudoscience, art, politics and stupidity in general.
I will try to balance the number of posts in english and in french, but it might very well turn out that the choice of language will depend on the topic adressed. Well, in any case I think that this is an interesting experiment, as I don't know of any other bilingual blog (but then I haven't really looked for one).

Good, so that was my introduction. Stick around for the upcoming display of arrogance and sarcasm, this should be fun.