Rationalizations and alien limbs
June 28th 2010 18:09
A child is playing with a toy car, imagining that it's life-sized, when an adult steps in the path of the car. What does the child think? The incident is immediately incorporated into the fantasy -- a giant's foot!
An actor is serving food on stage, when a teacup drops from the table -- it shatters on the floor. Does she pretend it didn't happen, and continue with the scene? No, she's in the moment; she's flustered; she immediately feels it's her responsibility to clean it up, and she heads off stage to collect a rag.
A scientist has a theory, when there's apparent falsifying evidence. What happens? Well, we know from Kuhn and Lakatos that there's always a choice in whether to regard a disconfirmation as disconfirming. You can always deflect to an auxiliary hypothesis, or search for the factor that you didn't account for.
A friend of mine, IW, tells of this experiment: People stick their arms into a container, and are then tricked -- they see another arm, but are convinced it's theirs.
When the arm is observed to move this way and that, the subjects give reasons for why they moved it.
Oliver Sacks (The man who mistook his wife for a hat (1985)), tells various stories of "alien limbs" -- the opposite of phantom limbs -- where people have lost some bodily sense, and no longer believe a body part is theirs.
"When I arrived I found the patient lying on the floor by his bed and staring at one leg. His expression contained anger, alarm, bewilderment and amusement... He had come in, that morning, for some tests, he said. He had no complaints, but the neurologists, feeling that he had a 'lazy' left leg -- that was the very word they had used -- thought he should come in. He had felt fine all day, and had fallen asleep toward evening. When he woke up he felt fine too, until he moved in the bed. Then he found, as he put it, 'someone's leg' in the bed -- a severed human leg, a horrible thing! He was stunned, at first, with amazement and disgust -- he had never experienced, never imagined, such an incredible thing. He felt the leg gingerly. It seemed perfectly formed, but 'peculiar' and cold. At this point he had a brainwave. He now realised what had happened: it was all a joke! It was New Year's Eve, and everyone was celebrating. Half the staff were drunk; quips and crackers were flying; a carnival scene. Obviously one of the nurses with a macabre sense of humour had stolen into the Dissecting Room and nabbed a leg, and then slipped it under his bedclothes as a joke while he was still fast asleep. He was much relieved at the explanation; but feeling that a joke was a joke, and that this one was a bit much, he threw the damn thing out of the bed. But -- and at this point his conversational manner deserted him, and he suddenly trembled and became ashen-pale -- when he threw it out of bed, he somehow came after it -- and now it was attached to him."
Sacks then discusses with the patient the possibility that it's his own leg.
"'Listen,' I said. 'I don't think you're well. Please allow us to return you to bed. But I want to ask you one final question? If this -- this thing -- is not your left leg' (he had called it a 'counterfeit' at one point in our talk, and expressed his amazement that someone had gone to such lengths to 'manufacture' a 'facsimile') 'then where is your own left leg?'
Once more he became pale -- so pale I thought he was going to faint. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I have no idea. It's disappeared. It's gone. It's nowhere to be found...'"
***
An actor is serving food on stage, when a teacup drops from the table -- it shatters on the floor. Does she pretend it didn't happen, and continue with the scene? No, she's in the moment; she's flustered; she immediately feels it's her responsibility to clean it up, and she heads off stage to collect a rag.
***
A scientist has a theory, when there's apparent falsifying evidence. What happens? Well, we know from Kuhn and Lakatos that there's always a choice in whether to regard a disconfirmation as disconfirming. You can always deflect to an auxiliary hypothesis, or search for the factor that you didn't account for.
***
A friend of mine, IW, tells of this experiment: People stick their arms into a container, and are then tricked -- they see another arm, but are convinced it's theirs.
When the arm is observed to move this way and that, the subjects give reasons for why they moved it.
***
Oliver Sacks (The man who mistook his wife for a hat (1985)), tells various stories of "alien limbs" -- the opposite of phantom limbs -- where people have lost some bodily sense, and no longer believe a body part is theirs.
"When I arrived I found the patient lying on the floor by his bed and staring at one leg. His expression contained anger, alarm, bewilderment and amusement... He had come in, that morning, for some tests, he said. He had no complaints, but the neurologists, feeling that he had a 'lazy' left leg -- that was the very word they had used -- thought he should come in. He had felt fine all day, and had fallen asleep toward evening. When he woke up he felt fine too, until he moved in the bed. Then he found, as he put it, 'someone's leg' in the bed -- a severed human leg, a horrible thing! He was stunned, at first, with amazement and disgust -- he had never experienced, never imagined, such an incredible thing. He felt the leg gingerly. It seemed perfectly formed, but 'peculiar' and cold. At this point he had a brainwave. He now realised what had happened: it was all a joke! It was New Year's Eve, and everyone was celebrating. Half the staff were drunk; quips and crackers were flying; a carnival scene. Obviously one of the nurses with a macabre sense of humour had stolen into the Dissecting Room and nabbed a leg, and then slipped it under his bedclothes as a joke while he was still fast asleep. He was much relieved at the explanation; but feeling that a joke was a joke, and that this one was a bit much, he threw the damn thing out of the bed. But -- and at this point his conversational manner deserted him, and he suddenly trembled and became ashen-pale -- when he threw it out of bed, he somehow came after it -- and now it was attached to him."
Sacks then discusses with the patient the possibility that it's his own leg.
"'Listen,' I said. 'I don't think you're well. Please allow us to return you to bed. But I want to ask you one final question? If this -- this thing -- is not your left leg' (he had called it a 'counterfeit' at one point in our talk, and expressed his amazement that someone had gone to such lengths to 'manufacture' a 'facsimile') 'then where is your own left leg?'
Once more he became pale -- so pale I thought he was going to faint. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I have no idea. It's disappeared. It's gone. It's nowhere to be found...'"
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