The homunculus problem is an extension of the philosophical problem of Cartesian Materialism and dualism. Dannett proposes the mind as mediator for stimulus correspondence and organization: Perceptions would resemble projected images on a screen where the mind analyses, interprets, categorizes and stores in memory. Thus, a person experiences cognition because the mind gives cognition. This argument is a logical fallacy; although it keeps cognition within the material- hence avoiding the introduction of the soul, it fails to define cognition. As the mind becomes mediator (homunculi), inquiry on how it mediates may only be resolved by postulating another homunculus within itself. In effect a regressive and inconclusive argument arises.
Cognitive psychology is an emerging empirical science. Predominantly cognitivistic in nature, it deals with how people perceive, remember, learn, and think. However, it alludes that the mind knows, like the homunculus, how it should give cognition. As a result, it too fall risk to the iniquity of infinite regression. At present the extent of this threat of inconclusiveness is real; yet since cognitive psychology is a recently emerging discipline, this may be mitigated with maturity. In the following article we will see how this may be so, as well as the arguments against it.
Cognitivism, the dominant contemporary approach of Cognitive Psychology, is by large a reductionist approach. By the systematic reduction of phenomena, cognitivism asserts that individual components of the mental function can be identified and meaningfully understood. It also represents cognition as discrete, internal mental states for algorithmic manipulation. For example, the mental processes activated during the identification of a tree can be componentially attributed to its sensation and perception. These stimuli percolate to the sensory stores, and then subsequently stored by the working memory to long term memory. Notably, the terms: sensation, perception, sensory memory, working memory, and long term memory are the stages of Broadbent’s information-processing model (IPA)- the work of cognitivism.
By the IPA these states are real, since they are verifiable with carefully controlled experiments i.e. Sperling’s report study ascertains the evidence for sensory memory. Yet phenomenologists assert it is precisely in this approach cognitive psychology fails to identify true cognition. By the holism argument, mental activity may be viewed as processes ‘seamlessly linked’ by their contextual meanings. Reductionism however strips contextual meaning from the processes, and reduces qualia into meaningless measurements: componential, abstract, and disembodied from reality. And as the mind transits these discrete states without accounting for the mechanisms of contextual transition, the illusion of an independent mind (the homunculus) thus arises. So, if STM is made distinct from LTM, the statement: “Through rehearsal, the information of the tree in STM was brought, (by the mind), to LTM” becomes homunculus reasoning, since it purports the logic: a person experiences cognition because the mind gives cognition. By induction, it can be shown that the homunculus reasoning extends to the whole of Cognitive Psychology.
Nevertheless, it would be naive to conclude that Cognitive Psychology should fall under the homunculus fallacy. There is a homunculus problem of theorising in cognitivism, and although much of Cognitive Psychology today theorizes under cognitivism, there is a growing influence in cognitive neurosciences and alternative approaches. Recent developments in connectionism postulate the mind as a neural net, and intellectual abilities arise via the parallel processing’s of neural networks. The Embodied Cognition Approach (ECA) argues that cognition is influenced by one’s sensorimotor capabilities, thus taking into account physical contextual effects . Notably, the ECA supports the holism argument for contextual effects. The connectionist model: the spreading activation neural network too gives a plausible account of how mental states transit.
The phenomenologist asserts that Cognitive Psychology is inconclusive as long as cognitivism holds. However psychologists need not abandon their existing theorizations for a radically new method to understanding the human mind. Cognitivism being empirically verifiable must hold certain truthful aspects. In fact, connectionism is not contradictory, but complements cognitivism. What is pertinent today, nevertheless, is to transcend the narrow vision that cognitivism is the full answer of the human mind, or that cognitive psychology will always be studied the way it has always been – one made in perpetual regression by the homunculus problem.
