Homunculus argument

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A homunculus argument accounts for a phenomenon in terms of the very phenomenon that it is supposed to explain. Homunculus arguments are always fallacious. In the psychology and philosophy of mind, 'homunculus arguments' (or the 'homunculus fallacies') are extremely useful for detecting where theories of mind fail or are incomplete.

Homunculus arguments are common in the theory of vision. For example, how do we explain (human) vision? It might be argued that the light from the outside world forms an image on the retinas in the eyes and something in the brain looks at these images (as if they are images on a movie screen)(this was, more or less, the view of David Marr, amongst others). But the next question is: 'who' is it who is looking at this 'internal' movie inside the brain? The obvious (although rarely stated) argument is that there is a 'little man' or 'homunculus' inside the brain 'looking at' this movie. The Homunculus Argument shows this is not a full explanation because all that has been done is to place an entire person, or homunculus, behind the eye who gazes at the retinas (i.e. it must be argued that there is a 'little man' or 'homunuculus' who is 'inside' the brain 'looking at' the internal movie). A more sophisticated argument might propose that the images on the retinas are transferred to the visual cortex where it is scanned. Again this cannot be a full explanation because all that has been done is to place a little person in the brain behind the cortex. The reason why this is a fallacy is that an obvious problem then presents itself: how does the homunculus 'see' this internal movie? The obvious answer is that there is a homunculus inside its 'head' or 'brain' and then another homunculus inside this other homunculus' head and so forth. In other words, we are in a situation of infinite regress. This is always a sure sign that an argument has gone wrong.

Another example is with cognitivist theories that argue that the human brain uses 'rules' to carry out operations (these rules often conceptualised as being like the algorithms of a computer program). For example, in his work of the '50s, '60s and '70s Noam Chomsky argued that (in the words of one of his books) human beings use Rules and Representations (or to be more specific, rules acting on representations) in order to cognise (more recently Chomsky has abandoned this view: c.f. the Minimalist Program).

Now, in terms of (say) chess, 'we' are given 'rules' to follow. The question remains: 'who' uses these rules? The answer is obvious: the players of the game use the rules. In other words, the rules themselves are 'nothing': merely inert marks on paper until a human being reads, understands and uses them.

But what about the 'rules' that are, allegedly, inside our head (brain)? Who reads, understands and uses them? Again, the implicit answer is a 'homunculus': a little man who reads the rules and then gives orders to the body to act on them. But again we are in a situation of infinite regress, because this implies that the homunculus has cognitive process that are also rule bound, which presupposes another homunculus inside its head, and so on and so forth.

The Homunculus fallacy is closely related to Ryle's Regress.