I assume this is the part of the second appendix you’re referring to:
A congenitally blind person develops dramatically different functional areas, which suggests in particular that their person-concept will be at a radically different relative position than the convergent person-concept location in sighted individuals. Therefore, any genetically hardcoded circuit which checks at the relative address for the person-concept which is reliably situated for sighted people, will not look at the right address for congenitally blind people.
I really wouldn’t call this decisive. You’re citing a study that says the physical structure of the brain is different in blind people. The problem is that we seem to have no idea know how the physical structure of the brain corresponds to the algorithm it’s running. It could be that these physical differences do not affect the person-concept or the process that checks for it.
More generally, I’m skeptical that neuroscience studies can tell us much about the brain. I see a lot of observations about which neurons fire in different circumstances but not a lot of big-picture understanding. I’m sure neuroscience will get there eventually, but for now, if I wanted to know how the brain works, I would go to a machine learning researcher before a neuroscientist.
I assume this is the part of the second appendix you’re referring to:
I really wouldn’t call this decisive. You’re citing a study that says the physical structure of the brain is different in blind people. The problem is that we seem to have no idea know how the physical structure of the brain corresponds to the algorithm it’s running. It could be that these physical differences do not affect the person-concept or the process that checks for it.
More generally, I’m skeptical that neuroscience studies can tell us much about the brain. I see a lot of observations about which neurons fire in different circumstances but not a lot of big-picture understanding. I’m sure neuroscience will get there eventually, but for now, if I wanted to know how the brain works, I would go to a machine learning researcher before a neuroscientist.