Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T09:52:01.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the Alleged Backwards Referral of Experiences and Its Relevance to the Mind-Body Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Patricia Smith Churchland
Patricia Smith Churchland*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of Manitoba
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A remarkable hypothesis has recently been advanced by Libet and promoted by Eccles which claims that there is standardly a backwards referral of conscious experiences in time, and that this constitutes empirical evidence for the failure of identity of brain states and mental states. Libet's neurophysiological data are critically examined and are found insufficient to support the hypothesis. Additionally, it is argued that even if there is a temporal displacement phenomenon to be explained, a neurophysiological explanation is most likely.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 1981 , pp. 165 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was read at a symposium with Benjamin Libet and Howard Shevrin at the annual meetings of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in March 1980. I am especially indebted to Jennifer Clinch and Larry Jordan for generous help and advice, and also to Stephen Stich and Daniel Dennett for asking me to look into Libet's work for the SPP meetings. This research was supported by Grant 451-790466 of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

References

Brodal, A. (1969), Neurological Anatomy, 2nd. Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, Patricia Smith (forthcoming), “In defense of physicalism” in Proceedings of the Birmingham Colloquium on the Mind-Brain. Edited by Hick, John and Hookway, Christopher. Oxford: Blackwells.Google Scholar
Churchland, Patricia Smith and Martin, David (unpublished), “Retroactive referral of conscious experiences: some counter-evidence”.Google Scholar
Divenyi, P. L. and Hirsh, I. J. (1975), “The effect of blanking on the identification of temporal order in three-tone sequences” in Perception and Psychophysics 17, 3: 246–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, F. (1971), Subliminal Perception: The Nature of a Controversy. London: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Eccles, J. C. and Popper, K. R. (1977), The Self and Its Brain. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.Google ScholarPubMed
Fehrer, Elizabeth and Biederman, Irving (1962), “A comparison of reaction time and verbal report in the detection of masked stimuli” in Journal of Experimental Psychology 64, 2: 126–130.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fehrer, Elizabeth and Raab, David (1962), “Reaction time to stimuli masked by meta-contrast” in Journal of Experimental Psychology 63, 2: 143–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. A., Bever, T. G. and Garrett, M. F. (1974), The Psychology of Language. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Gazzaniga, Michael and LeDoux, Joseph E. (1978), The Integrated Mind. New York: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, Richard L. (1977), Eye and Brain, 3rd. Edition. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Halliday, A. M. and Mingay, Rosemary (1961), “Retroactive raising of a sensory threshold by a contralateral stimulus” in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 13: 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, Alice F. (1974), “Separating item from order information in short-term memory”, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 13: 644–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolers, Paul A. (1966), “Naming sequentially presented letters and words”, Language and Speech 9: 84–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kolers, Paul A. (1972), Aspects of Motion Perception. London: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Libet, Benjamin (1965), “Cortical activation in conscious and unconscious experience”, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 9: 77–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Libet, Benjamin (1966), “Brain stimulation and the threshold of conscious experience” in Brain and Conscious Experience. Edited by Eccles, J. New York: Springer-Verlag: 165–81.Google Scholar
Libet, Benjamin (1973), “Electrical stimulation of the cortex in human subjects and conscious sensory aspects” in Handbook of Sensory Physiology. Edited by A. Iggo. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2: 743–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Libet, Benjamin (1978), “Neuronal vs. subjective timing, for a conscious sensory experience” in Cerebral Correlates of Conscious Experience. Edited by Buser, P. and Rougeul-Buser, A. Amsterdam: Elsevier: 69–82.Google Scholar
Libet, Benjamin, Alberts, W. W., Wright, E. W. Jr., Delattre, L. D., Levin, G. and Feinstein, B. (1964), “Production of threshold levels of conscious sensation by electrical stimulation of human somatosensory cortex” in Journal of Neurophysiology 27: 546–578.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Libet, Benjamin, Alberts, W. W., Wright, E. W. Jr., and Feinstein, B. (1972), “Cortical and thalamic activation in conscious sensory experience’ ’ in Neurophysiology Studies in Man. Edited by Somjen, G. G. Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica: 157–68.Google Scholar
Libet, Benjamin, Wright, E. W. Jr., Feinstein, B. and Pearl, D. K. (1979), “Subjective referral of the timing for a conscious sensory experience: a functional role for the somatosensory specific projection in man” in Brain 102: 193–224.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Melzack, R. and Wall, P. D. (1963), “Masking and metacontrast phenomena in the skin sensory system” in Experimental Neurology 8: 35–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mountcastle, Vernon (1966), comments in discussion of Libet (1966).Google Scholar
O'Keefe, John and Nadel, Lynn (1978), The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Olton, David S., Becker, , James, T., and Handelmann, Gail E. (1979), “Hippocampus, space, and memory” in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2,3: 313–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penfield, Wilder (1958), The Excitable Cortex in Conscious Man. Fifth Sherrington Lecture. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Scheibel, M. E. and Scheibel, A. B. (1968), “The brain stem reticular core—an integrative matrix” in Systems Theory and Biology, Edited by D, M. Mesarovic, New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Schmid, Ethel (1961), “Temporal aspects of cutaneous interaction with two-point electrical stimulation” in Journal of Experimental Psychology 62: 400–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turvey, M. T. (1973), “On peripheral and central processes in vision: inferences from information-processing analysis of masking with patterned stimuli” in Psychological Review 80, 1: 1–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Hoesen, G. W., Pandya, D. N. and Butters, N. (1972), “Cortical afferants to the entorhinal cortex of the rhesus monkey” in Science 175: 1471–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar