"Uhmm Alice... well I got bad news.."

[Rounder]

“It seems you have Mirror Agnosia”… Now if you resist the temptation to follow the bunny down the hole, you might want to read up on your condition.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~jokeeffe/lookglass.text.html
http://www.notathing.com/other/brain/mirroragnosia.php

Hey Ladies,

Thought I’d throw all of you a cookie today, since we all know how much philosophers love thought experiments, and there’s nothing more exciting then one that’s carried out in real life. I’ve heard of blind sight patients before, and neglect… and most of what Ramachandran talked about in his Reith lectures, but I had never heard of this “looking glass syndrome” until today. As always I’m fascinated about brain behavior, and I assume most philosophers would love to rap their heads around this one. It is possible most of you are already familiar with this condition.

What I would like to hear is some philosophical consequences due to these types of conditions. Personally considering this phenomena what first came to mind is a coherence theory of truth. Probably because its been on my mind for some time initiated by the reading of Spinoza.

What I think an experiment like this does is in an extremely vivid fashion show us what we should expect from a concept of truth. Now I think most modern philosophers can agree that there is no platonic truth, ultimate… yada yada… but in recognizing this fact most end up doing a nose dive into the deep end forgetting to tie up their shorts.

I find a lot of philosophers take the idea too far, and what we wind up with is a culture full of hippie/philosopher crossbreed who tend to hummmmm in unison that truth is relative, and they shouldn’t have to shave their armpits.

I am not a relativist, at least not in the extreme form. There most certainly is a form of relativism I ascribe to, I agree that people are influenced by their local culture, background etc… and that their notions of truth are therefore different. But I am opposed to the strong form whereby people assert that their notion of truth is “Just as good”, “its just as good a path to enlightenment”, or of “knowing the world”. Different views of the world are not just as good, and I think that the Mirror Agnosia is a good case for a version of truth.

So we can agree that there is no platonic truth, so at least when I say the word truth you can be sure I’m not talking about some completely objective fact. The problem is that objective, and truth have taken on these narrow meanings. It seems to me that ultimately any form of truth worth wanting is going to be in the form of a coherence theory, and in a framework such is this semantics, logic, and science can guide us to more useful versions of truth.

So as for the experiment:

So what we have is a lady of about 70 years old, who otherwise is completely rational, aside from this one extremely illogical belief. So if it is as Ramachandran has posited that it is a fault in logic

Well I think what happens is this patient’s brain is saying, speaking metaphorically, look that’s a mirror, I know it’s a mirror, that’s a reflection, therefore the object is on my left but left doesn’t exist in my universe. Therefore the object must be inside the mirror, however absurd it seems to all of you chaps, and therefore I’ll reach into the mirror, bang, bang, bang. All of that abstract knowledge about the laws of optics and mirrors is now distorted to accommodate this strange new sensory world that the patient finds herself trapped in.

This is ultimately the truth for this woman. Her senses and intuition have failed her though, and her truth is actually false. Completely totally false. The only way you can actually negate that statement is to hide in a solipsistic world, and well if you’re committed to that I can’t touch you, and you should probably get on your way to becoming a monk.

Why is it false? Why is it not the truth? Because she cannot get the pen, she cannot grasp it, her reasoning has failed to be effective. I can, you can, and a monkey can, and therefore our notion that the pen is behind our left shoulder is a correct view of the world. It is not an absolute truth, but let’s leave fairytales behind and talk about truth worth wanting, or as Spinoza would say lets talk about adequate ideas.

Peace,
Rounder

[Blindseer]

I can, you can, and a monkey can, and therefore our notion that the pen is behind our left shoulder is a correct view of the world.

Then would that not be an objective truth? There are some things that may be relative yes, but as you’ve pointed out, i think logic is “platonic” truth, where 2 + 2 will always equal 4.

[Gobbo]

Rounder,

There is an operation which you may know of, I forget what it’s called but it’s when they sever the the axis between the two brain halves (corpus callosum). It is meant to be preventative for some diseases, but it has an unusual byproduct of actually (sort of) separating that person into two ‘people’.

For instance the individual many be buttoning up his shirt with one hand, and at the same time unbuttoning another.

The plane of immanence thus is often called a plane of consistency accordingly. As a geometric plane, it is in no way bound to a mental design but rather an abstract or virtual design; which for Deleuze, is the metaphysical or ontological itself: a formless, univocal, self-organizing process which always qualitatively differentiates from itself.

If we compare this to the diseases we’re talking about, it actually appears to fit in quite nicely. Take, for instance, the looking glass syndrome; the ‘nothing’ present to us that the subject cannot experience now becomes both real and the contradiction, and thus self differentiating…?

[Tab]

Excellent post Rounder.

[SirEbrum]

Are there any examples of this ‘Mirror Agnosia’ in younger patients, and of this flawed perception persisting indefinitely with these younger patients?

I mean this lady is 70 right? She has suffered major brain damage and, if she were younger, perhaps she would be able to re-learn her perception of the physical world. But she’s not younger, her brain is hard-wired, or, to quote the old saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

Maybe…?

[Tab]

All of that abstract knowledge about the laws of optics and mirrors is now distorted to accommodate this strange new sensory world that the patient finds herself trapped in.(from source)

I think beyond the specifics of any given neural accident, it is important to remember the common theme that runs through all such events - in that after a loss, a deficit or an excession in some area of brain function, due to a completely mundane, physical breakdown - an electrical short in your car’s wiring metaphorically - the ‘rational’ self immediately alters its whole worldview to acommodate this novelty into a coherrent (“nothing wrong with me Doctor”) narrative.

And even more importantly - they will persist in supporting this worldview in spite of logic, common sense, scientific laws… Everything beyond consistancy of self is secondary.

A few more examples - paraphrased from “The Emerging Mind” By V. Ramachandran

Phantom Limbs (somatosensation): Sometimes for whatever reason we lose the internal sensation of a part of our bodies - the body image that tells us where that limb is, how it’s feeling. Poof.

“I woke up and discovered something horrible ! There was a horrible dead hairy leg in bed with me ! I couldn’t believe it - Maybe some doctor put it there as a joke. I threw it out of bed, and suddenly I was falling !!! This horrible foreign leg was… Attached to me.!!!”

Emotional dissociative disorders: Sometimes a very small area of the brain - fusiform gyrus - concerned with processing faces, gets damaged. Sometimes, the connection between the area of the brain that processes faces and the area that processes associated emotional response to a said face gets cut.

“Well she looks like my mother, but she’s a copy, a robot a clone. Keep her away from me !!! I know she sounds and smells just like her - but it would wouldn’t it - that’s how they make them these days…”

Doesn’t matter if the ‘copy’ goes on to relate deep family secrets, intimate details… The patient will remain locked into a illusionary “nothing wrong with me” world - compensating for his deficit.

And yet the same guy will, on the phone, simply from voice alone - recognize and accept his mother as real - because the auditory emotional linkage remains, now un-overridden by visual.

Sometimes, in severe cases, all emotional associative capabilities are cut - the brain loses its ability to assign an emotional response to any sensual stimulation, any sight, sound, smell, touch - all devoid of any emotive weight. The rationalization…?

“I’m dead. I must have died in my sleep. I’m a ghost.”
“But you’re walking around. I can see you.”
“Maybe I’m a zombie.”
“Zombies don’t bleed, you bleed.”
“No I don’t bleed - the dead don’t bleed.”
[pricks his finger]
“Well - whaddya know Doc - dead people bleed…!”

ie: What you believe of the world, how you believe that world works, is not a function of calm abstract, disconnected science, deductive thought etc… But simply a function of how you organically percieve, and process sensual data from that world.

And the self, you - your ‘I’ - simply a narrative linking past and present into one cohesive whole. With no regard for abstract truth.

jon.

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

Mirror Agnosia:
An insanity format.

[Tab]

Oh Dan… You can do better than that… What’s sane…?

[Impenitent]

a river?

-Imp

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

@Tabula Rasa

Oh Dan… You can do better than that… What’s sane…?

Telling the difference between fantasy and reality = sane.
Can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality = insane.

“I am literally in the mirror” = insane.
“Reality is an illusion” = nihilism.

Tabberz, what did you want for me to say?

[Tab]

Telling the difference between fantasy and reality = sane.
Can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality = insane.

Nope - because there is no fantasy/reality divide. The only world I will ever know exists between my ears. That is reality. Everything else is well - just what you say…

Would that make the sanity simply dependent on social status…?

Gee, I guess it would.

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

@Tabula Rasa

Telling the difference between fantasy and reality = sane.
Can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality = insane.

Nope - because there is no fantasy/reality divide. The only world I will ever know exists between my ears. That is reality. Everything else is well - just what you say…

Would that make the sanity simply dependent on social status…?

Gee, I guess it would.

Believe it or not, your imagination is capable of syncronizing with the real world, and this is called “sanity”.

If you want to pidgeon-hole the ability to comprehend reality as being “pure fantasy” – just because of the screwy people who can’t realize things very well – then that’s kind of sad.

When you hear some birds singing on a tree, believe it or not, they are actually there doing that. That’s reality.

Fantasy is different.
Fantasy is when a person creates within what is not without.

I was merely defending standard english termanology.

Would that make the sanity simply dependent on social status…?

Concent, or functionality?

If sanity was dependent upon concent, then “sanity” would just be popular opinion.

If sanity was dependent upon functionality, then “sanity” would be determined by the results and events observed or caused.

“Amorally, if this is done, that shall happen.”

Also, let us consider social status as a sort of validity.
Maybe if hundreds of people took on the job of observing…

Wait a minute…

This is science vs religion.

This is observation vs belief.

[Tab]

When you hear some birds singing on a tree, believe it or not, they are actually there doing that. That’s reality. Dan~

Immaterial. Say the linkages from the unconscious auditory processing areas of my brain to the areas that consciously process sound have been cut, or were non-existant from birth. Now, my ears still work, stimulus passes from my eardrum to the brain, but I can’t consciously hear it. The world is soundless. Luckily I have another quirk - synesthaesia - cross-overs in my senses. I ‘see’ sound as colour. The linkages from unconscious auditory to the conscious vision centres are not cut.

Now the birds in the trees are ‘colouring’. And believe it or not, they are actually doing that. That’s (my) reality.

Sanity is basically a lot of people saying: “Do you see that…?” “Phew - me too…! Er, it is blue isn’t it…?”

Of course, if there ever is a disagreement… Who do you think provides the final ‘accepted’ version, the pauper or the king…?

Fantasy is when a person creates within what is not without.

There is nothing within that was not without. If anything else, for me at least, that proves the external exists. It’s either that or believe I am just like whoa-creative.

This is observation vs belief.

There is no conflict and can be none. They are one and the same.

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

I smell the stench of obsession with absolute truth.

Sometime, somewhere, there’s going to be a lack of first-hand-experience, and then there will be education: words which only cause the mind to imagine a task not being actuated physically.

I’m not in the mood to say all sorts of little things.

I already agree with you about what you say.
I can’t afford to be insanely specific.

But, thought and feeling are seporate words.
English is a process of seporation of things into classes.

Then, at ILP, people break new ground by extending the class and continents of a single word, effectively destroying or altering the original meaning, as they become more aware of the interrelation of concepts.

Carry on.

[Tab]

I smell the stench of obsession with absolute truth.

[size=75][Sniffs pits tentively][/size]

• Gakk ! - you may be right, time to shower off in a cool refreshing spray of trashy sci-fi.

[Rounder]

@Old_Gobbo

For instance the individual many be buttoning up his shirt with one hand, and at the same time unbuttoning another.

The plane of immanence thus is often called a plane of consistency accordingly. As a geometric plane, it is in no way bound to a mental design but rather an abstract or virtual design; which for Deleuze, is the metaphysical or ontological itself: a formless, univocal, self-organizing process which always qualitatively differentiates from itself.

If we compare this to the diseases we’re talking about, it actually appears to fit in quite nicely. Take, for instance, the looking glass syndrome; the ‘nothing’ present to us that the subject cannot experience now becomes both real and the contradiction, and thus self differentiating…?

Yes split brain patients, one of the forerunners that displays the confabulatory talents of the self.

I haven’t read Deleuze as of yet, but rest assured he is on my Amazon wish list.

I don’t know exactly where you are heading with this Gobbo…My take in terms of Deleuze is that differentiation is much like Spinoza’s, where differentiation is different modes, while the underlying substance is unified. So I see this differentiation that you would be reffering to, but what I don’t see is why it would have significance, why it would have more significance then in the differentiation between our idea of apples, and our idea of apple pie. So what I see the differentiation in terms of the coherence theory of truth is basically that it interacts with itself, and thus is self differentiating. But I may be way off here, and probably am, again I haven’t read Deleuze yet.

@Tabula Rasa

Excellent post Rounder.

Thanks Tab

@SirEbrum

Are there any examples of this ‘Mirror Agnosia’ in younger patients, and of this flawed perception persisting indefinitely with these younger patients?

I mean this lady is 70 right? She has suffered major brain damage and, if she were younger, perhaps she would be able to re-learn her perception of the physical world. But she’s not younger, her brain is hard-wired, or, to quote the old saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

Maybe…?

Here is what I want to know, and this I think is an important question in lue of all of these syndromes. Tabula you may have an answer for this. What I want to know is that after any amount of time of reasoning, can the patient understand their condition? I mean the length of time doesn’t even matter.

Its important because the syndrome is not like alzheimer’s where it completely distorts your faculty of reasoning. If these patients cannot be reasoned with, cannot ignore their sense data, and understand what has happened, then this may be a more devestating blow.

I’ve e-mailed a someone I know who works closely with the field, so hopefully I’ll get something back from him within the next week.

@Tabula Rasa

I smell the stench of obsession with absolute truth.

[size=75][Sniffs pits tentively][/size]

• Gakk ! - you may be right, time to shower off in a cool refreshing spray of trashy sci-fi.

pmsl. The line that Tabula has taken in this thread is dead on, my sentiments exactly.

There is a move I am almost commited to making regarding a coherence theory. I think that a coherence theory should incorporate a correspondence theory. Something like S knows P if S tracks the fact ‘that P’. I’m just giving this short mention here because I’m not even sure if its would gain much opposition.

[Gobbo]

I don’t know exactly where you are heading with this Gobbo…My take in terms of Deleuze is that differentiation is much like Spinoza’s, where differentiation is different modes, while the underlying substance is unified. So I see this differentiation that you would be reffering to, but what I don’t see is why it would have significance, why it would have more significance then in the differentiation between our idea of apples, and our idea of apple pie. So what I see the differentiation in terms of the coherence theory of truth is basically that it interacts with itself, and thus is self differentiating. But I may be way off here, and probably am, again I haven’t read Deleuze yet.

Well basically I meant to point out that this is different than the apples and apple pie differentiation in that in the mirror agnosia cases both the concept of ‘real/possible/truth’ and the negation is actually differentiated, albeit unbenounced to the mirror agnosia subject. In other words… it demonstrates a sort of pseudo dualism within the unified substance, made apparent through the observer of the experiment.

I’m having trouble putting this into words… due to my lack of experience with Delueze as well.

[Tab]

I’ve e-mailed a someone I know who works closely with the field, so hopefully I’ll get something back from him within the next week.Rounder

Must admit, I don’t know if time blunts the irrationality, at a guess I’d say that the irrational, actually, lets say - pre-rational, I think that’s a better term, worldview change is permanant, but after a while the patient may come to form an intellectual ‘work-around’ rational response/ritual.

I seem to remember a looking glass alice with left side ‘neglect’ developed a way of tracking her wheelchair around to the right until a previously neglected object on the left field came into ‘view’. The ‘left’ as a concept still did not intuitively exist for her, and never would - but intellectually she understood it did exist and acted to compensate consciously for the unconscious lapse.

If short/medium-term memory is involved though - they’re fucked.

I too am eager to hear from your friend.

jon.

[Ierrellus]

Check out Dr. Szasz. Is he out to lunch?

[Rounder]

@Old_Gobbo

Well basically I meant to point out that this is different than the apples and apple pie differentiation in that in the mirror agnosia cases both the concept of ‘real/possible/truth’ and the negation is actually differentiated, albeit unbenounced to the mirror agnosia subject. In other words… it demonstrates a sort of pseudo dualism within the unified substance, made apparent through the observer of the experiment.

I’m having trouble putting this into words… due to my lack of experience with Delueze as well.

Where her truth is false for us, and her false belief is truth for us? the negation of that truth is also the truth? or that she has conflicting ideas possibly; “The pen is behind my shoulder”, “The pen is in the mirror”. If the former then I’m sorry I still don’t see the significance, if the latter I think we may be taking an interpratation of her thoughts too literally. I think we might pass on this until we are more comfortable with Deleuze, to make sure that we are not talking past eachother, and that we have not misenterpreted him. Unless you think you could clear up my ignorance after this second attempt.

@Tabula Rasa

I’ve e-mailed a someone I know who works closely with the field, so hopefully I’ll get something back from him within the next week.Rounder

Must admit, I don’t know if time blunts the irrationality, at a guess I’d say that the irrational, actually, lets say - pre-rational, I think that’s a better term, worldview change is permanant, but after a while the patient may come to form an intellectual ‘work-around’ rational response/ritual.

My guess would be the same. That after some time, and reasoning they could come to understand their predicament. Let us hope you have remembered correctly and that is so. I’ll let you know if I find out.