From the Editor

June 2022

MIND AND PERCEPTION

“Constructing the World from Inside Out,” by neuroscientist György Buzsáki, is a fascinating and slightly troubling read. What the author explains exceptionally well for a nonscientist reader such as me is how various “outside-in” models of cognition fail in their basic methodological approach: these models have long assumed that the brain must work like a computer, with something akin to a central processor handling the duty of arranging sense data into coherent perceptions. As Buzsáki points out, this entails something like a “homunculus,” a separate experiencer sitting in a mental theater and taking in what the brain “shows” it. As his research demonstrates, this approach is an outdated, overly simplistic and now, it seems, experimentally disproved argument about how cognition works. A better model would be one that shows cognition to arise from “inside out,” as he says, from the interplay of neurons and action, which in turn means that perception is always bound up with action and is therefore always embodied perception.

What the article fails to mention is that this is not a new idea. There has been long-standing criticism in the philosophy of mind of the very argument Buzsáki attacks: computationalism, the idea that a centralized cognitive “processor” exists in the mind. His conclusions’ similarity to philosophical arguments against compu-

“If cognitive neuroscientists spoke more often to their colleagues in philosophy departments, would this breakthrough about how cognition works have happened sooner?”

zach sharp austin, tex.

tationalism is striking. For example, philosopher Hubert Dreyfus’s thesis in his 1972 book What Computers Can’t Do was that cognition cannot be codified in the symbolic language of computers. And he took computationalism to task for assuming that cognition can even occur absent the “background” of lived human experience, the very interplay of neurons and action Buzsáki describes.

The absence of even a brief mention of such debates is yet another symptom of the breakdown of discourse between science and the humanities. While not wishing to diminish the importance of the author’s work, I can’t help but wonder: If cognitive neuroscientists spoke more often to their colleagues in philosophy departments and if those philosophy departments were more inviting and less insular, would this breakthrough have happened sooner? Zach Sharp Austin, Tex.

Buzsáki’s article reminds me of my dad reproaching me and my siblings by saying, “You look with your eyes, not your hands.” I think little kids are compelled to check things out physically by picking them up and feeling and testing them. John DiTraglia Portsmouth, Ohio

FIGHTING COVID ON A GLOBAL SCALE

Steven W. Thrasher’s piece on how “One Million Dead from COVID Is Not Normal” [Forum] has a major global corollary. The acceptance of the scale of deaths as normal in the U.S. facilitates a view that nothing further needs to be done to fight COVID in the Global South. This global normalization sets aside the science that the virus that causes COVID can mutate anywhere in the world. As I have argued in the report The Three COVID Crises and Multistakeholderism, domestic acceptance of high national deaths and of vaccine and antiviral hoarding creates conditions, if not legitimation, for what can best be described as a “silent COVID war” between the Global North and South.

The corollary is that a stand-back-andtake-no-action approach by the North—in the face of well-documented scientific research showing that responding to COVID requires a global campaign—means that the normalization of COVID deaths in the North and the acceptance of a silent COVID war in the South are two sides of the same unhealthy coin. In this sense, the silent COVID war and its devastating impact on the Global South join other silent wars, such as those on climate and hunger, where there is a strong domestic Northern denialism and clear scientific evidence that illnesses and deaths will occur unless there is a coordinated global response. Harris Gleckman

Senior fellow, Center for Governance and Sustainability, University of Massachusetts Boston, and research affiliate, Transnational Institute, Amsterdam

PLANETARY GENDER ALIGNMENT

Thank you to Spencer Greenberg and Holly Muir for “Men Aren’t from Mars, nor Are Women from Venus” [Mind Matters]. Ever since its publication, I have objected to Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and the frequent references to it in movies, television and other media. Ignoring the vast variations in individual personalities, which Greenberg and Muir acknowledge in their discussion, the book generalizes some differences between some men and women— perhaps the types who would read dating guides to begin with—and exploits those differences without recognizing basic commonalities between the two genders. Men and women are two parts of the human whole, and humans are from Earth! Charles West Salem, Va.