If you missed your college class of Phrenology 101, you are fortunate. Phrenology is the study of bumps on the skull that show moral dispositions. A bump on the back left, according to 19th century science, said you had a tendency toward vanity. The Phrenology 101 class hasn’t been taught for a century.
If you missed your college class in Neuro-psychology 101 or Evolutionary Biology 101 your were also fortunate. Both classes are nearly identical in content and relevance to Phrenology 101.
I owe the metaphor that explains my position to David Berlinski.
Phrenology is about the shape of the skull, neuro-psychology is about the contents of the skull and evolutionary biology is about the skulls of non-human animals.
To understand the fallacy of phrenology, neuro-psychology and evolutionary biology take the Intel chip off the motherboard of your PC and the EncoreST chip out of your Mac G4. Examine these two chips carefully using any and all tools from CAT scans to Electro-thermography. Take them apart if you want.
Can you tell me anything about the Adobe Photoshop program that runs on the PC or the Safari web browser that runs on the MAC from your examination?
The answer is no. No way. For the same reason bumps on the head, studies of the inside of the skull and observation of other animal skulls don’t tell you anything about the human mind.
The chip isn’t the programs that run on the chip and the brain isn’t the mind.
