Hm, I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand the difference between labeling and defining in this case? Since CT is a materialist hypothesis, it ultimately aspires to find the biological cause of a function. But perhaps you mean that the word "function" is best used to describe, abstractly, the operation it performs - while the associated biological regions would not be its "function" but the function's physical location?

In that case, I suppose I am choosing to include its physical location and its functionality into the same overarching meta-definition of the "function/axes" as phenomenon. A function is a description of a certain processing operation, as well as the physical root from which it's thought to emerge. And I would probably also include its associated genetic code into it. But I can certainly get behind the effort to differentiate these things, and perhaps give another name to the whole 'phenomenon', etc. I'm open to suggestions on this, but I just use function/axes as a meta-label for practical purposes for now. 🙂

Going back to your examples:

You're right that exclusive clustering of functions like A-to-B/B-to-A travel, or faces-vs-eyes preferences, would not demonstrate support for CT. There would have to be a match to the appropriate or relevant functionality in the clustered areas.

So we can use an example that is more directly related to what we currently know. For example, the detection of animate and inanimate objects, essentially biotic (F) vs abiotic (T), has a speculated regional localization. Here's a study which says that:

The fMRI data showed ventrolateral activation for animate objects and ventromedial activation for inanimate objects.

And this study shows that animacy/non-animacy is more complex than just object shape, but extends complexly into object behavior. But what is most interesting to me about these studies is how there are suggestions  by some scientists of a natural dichotomy at play. In practice our detection of objects is somewhat spectral, for example a toy robot will activate some inanimate/mechanical areas, but also some animate/human-like areas, which is as it should be. But in my view, the emergence of a complex final opinion about an object's mixed animacy, doesn't mean that the specific regions themselves (which come together to form an emergence) are not linear and binary in their own operations.

Anyhow, if we take this animacy/non-animacy example and say that we know its location in the brain, then we can see for example whether there is a "firing pattern" in some people where, when the animacy sections fire, the executive regions (perhaps Fp1) fire together in the same neural clique, while in other people, the inanimacy regions fire alongside Fp1 instead. This would effectively give us F+Je and T+Je cognition respectively. Now, if we could brain-scan individuals and group together those who have a closer neural activation between animacy+execution versus inanimacy+execution, we could then check if there is a vultological difference between the two scanned groups. The prediction would be that the first group would show Handling vultology and the second would show Candid vultology.

This is just one way we might discover a biological grounding of CT's hypothesis, but by no means the only arrangement. I don't really know what to expect, and we won't know until we start testing brains alongside vultology- which is an exciting prospect. But the point of this thread was just to point out that, however it may come out in the end, CT's view of the functions are in some way speculated to be biologically grounded. That does leave quite a lot of room still for exactly how they are grounded, and the theory itself will evolve and adapt to whatever is discovered.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.

I see, hah! Yes, I suppose in the opening post, I didn't specify much about what that 'software' contains. So my definition was essentially like saying: "A function is a piece of brain software that is one way in some people, and another way in others." And that is wholly nondescript, I agree.

I was hoping it went without saying that we have written descriptions of metabolism and behaviorism, etc, which flesh these things out more. My aim with the OP was just to answer the question of what sort of ontology do the functions possess. "What relationship do they have to reality?" ...Or at least, that is how I understood the question. I understood it more as "what is a function, really?" ...not any particular feature of its operations, but the existent nature of a function more essentially and philosophically.

In that light, my answer is designed to frame what a function is as a contrast to other more purely phenomenological definitions we find on one hand , and purely heuristic definitions on the other. The former will lean towards asserting that they are "Reality itself, divided into dualities" and it leads to approaching the universe from a sort of mind-centric/panpsychic viewpoint, in which the functions are fundamental facets of existence, because it's reasoned that existence is consciousness. I don't wish to say that, as I think that's a dead end to Jungian typology. Then the latter definition, where functions are seen as useful but arbitrary tools for gaining personal understanding, is far too weak and is also not what CT suggests the functions are.

In defining a function as a neurological phenomenon, which gives rise to mental operations, we localize the definition of a function in a physicalist philosophy. And it also allows us to have a hypothesized physical reality to types that is non-arbitrary, and potentially verifiable/falsifiable. Clarifying this was my main purpose for saying the above. 🙂

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.

Great question. The core ideas are not entirely out of date, although I'd frame things differently if writing them now.

There's been a lot more research on animate vs inaimate object detection that I've come across lately - which is essentially the F vs T detection mechanism. And some studies that focus on animacy vs inanimacy aim to theorize about the purpose of such distinctions. One study says:

Rumiati and co-workers applied this method to the recognition of social groups. "The concept of "social" category is crucially important for humans in evolutionary terms, and for this reason it's reasonable to think that specific, ad hoc circuits exist in the brain that ensure efficiency and speed in recognition."

I'm of a similar opinion to these researchers, and think that animacy has a special circuit in us because we need to know social/interpersonal information, as a species.

So as far as the boundaries of the definition of "F" goes, we could strictly stop at the detection of an object as animate or inaimate, but if we wish, we could extend the definition of "F" to also include its intended purpose; social comprehension. The same area that lights up when it detects animacy, also lights up more when objects have faces.

We used both searchlight-based and ROI-based representational similarity analysis (RSA) to test whether the presence of a face explains the animate-inanimate distinction in the VTC. The searchlight analysis revealed that when animals with faces were removed from the analysis, the animate-inanimate distinction almost disappeared.

It seems that the detection of faces is part of this circuit. And faces are also where emotions are observed.

In summary

What I previously called a "connection to the emotional register" can now be reframed more accurately as a comprehension of humanness/livingness, which includes within it a few subcomponents like: agency, animacy, faces and emotions. The acknowledgement of these "properties" in an object is what F does.

However, it's a bit misleading to say there is a "connection to the emotional register" if by emotional register we mean the amygdala. I no longer think F is connected to the limbic system directly and affectively. However, it'd be lying if I said that recognition of humanness/livingness/animacy/emotions had no correspondence to limbic activation. Indeed, recognizing livingness in something allows for compassion to flow, and the recognition of its pain, feeling moral zealotry, etc. But emotion is a very broad experience that can come from the joy of Pe play, for example, or the rush of Je ambition, or the worry of Pi, etc. All functions can indirectly "activate" the emotional register (amygdala). And therefore we do need to be more precise in our language use here.

That said, I think the animacy that F assigns to objects does cause a unique "range" of affects to trigger in the limbic system; affects that pertain specifically to moral valuation. Feeling righteous, feeling evil, wanting justice, wanting mercy - the feelings of "right" and "wrong." All these feelings flow more intimately from F activation, even if they are not identical to it. Carl Jung extended the definition of F to include this sub-category of affects, and I can see the case for that choice, so long as it's differentiated from all emotional experience, more broadly. It may be more accurate to call this sub-category of emotional affects the moral register.

In that case, I would say the strictest definition of F would be the assignment of animacy to an object. But secondary effects include the corresponding activation of the moral register, depending on the conditions that the animate-object evokes.

I hope that answers the question, I may have rambled on again.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
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• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Juan E. Sandoval.
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