The Neurological Fallacy

Reuven Tsur
Tel Aviv University

This non-article explores the limitations of applying brain science in “higher”

disciplines. Many brain scientists believe that it is only a matter of time that
everything human will be accounted for by the findings of brain science. Michael
Polányi in the nineteen-sixties and recently Michael Gazzaniga argued against
such determinism. They say that while “lower-level” processes constrain “higher-
level” ones, they cannot determine them. The human mind is an emergent process,
and it cannot be predicted from brain structure anymore than traffic can be pre-
dicted from the structure of a car. I claim that in many instances, the application of
brain science in psychology and literary studies merely re-states in brain-language
what has already been said in psychology-language or literature-language. It can,
however, be fruitfully applied when it refutes prevalent erroneous assumptions or
resolves certain incongruities in the domain of “higher” disciplines.

Keywords: brain processes and higher processes, brain science and literary
studies, emergence, neurological fallacy, principle of marginal control,
reductionism

1. Introduction

This is a non-article; it started as a compilation of my contributions to a discussion

on the PSYART list of a New York Times article (“Your Brain and Fiction”), which
I further elaborated in course of writing. From the point of view of academic writ-
ing it displays all the possible weaknesses. It ignores the existing literature on the
subject and is conspicuously initiated by the critique of a single piece of popular
science (based, though, on sound scientific research). My further examples too
can be said to be cherry-picked. If, nevertheless, I propose to publish it, it is be-
cause this is an exercise exposing a methodological fallacy that is widespread in
attempts to apply brain research as an explanation for phenomena in higher hu-
man behavior. In a wider perspective, Fodor called this fallacy “reductionism”, that
is, restating in terms of a “lower” science what has already been said in a “higher”

Pragmatics & Cognition 20:3 (2012), 429–446.  doi 10.1075/pc.20.3.01tsu

issn 0929–0907 / e-issn 1569–9943 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
430 Reuven Tsur

science, especially when the phenomena discussed are co-extensive in the two sci-
ences (Fodor l979: 9–26).

2. Odors, theories of mind, and fiction

The New York Times article “Your Brain on Fiction” by Anne Murphy Paul (March
17, 2012) purports to explore the relationship between brain regions, the reading
of fiction, and what fiction-reading does to you. “Brain scans are revealing what
happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor
or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing,
stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life”.
The author relies on neuropsychological evidence like the following study. In
a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked par-
ticipants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words,
while their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imag-
ing (fMRI) machine. When subjects looked at the Spanish words for “perfume”
and “coffee”, their primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words that
mean “chair” and “key”, this region remained dark. Likewise, researchers have dis-
covered that words describing motion also stimulate regions of the brain distinct
from language-processing areas, in the motor cortex, for instance.
The brain mechanisms related to story-understanding and theory of mind are
described as follows:
Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, performed an analy-
sis of 86 fMRI studies, published last year in the Annual Review of Psychology, and
concluded that there was substantial overlap in the brain networks used to under-
stand stories and the networks used to navigate interactions with other individu-
als — in particular, interactions in which we’re trying to figure out the thoughts
and feelings of others. Scientists call this capacity of the brain to construct a map
of other people’s intentions “theory of mind”. Narratives offer a unique opportu-
nity to engage this capacity, as we identify with characters’ longings and frustra-
tions, guess at their hidden motives and track their encounters with friends and
enemies, neighbors and lovers.

Another, related study explores what the reading of fiction or listening to stories
do to adults and young children:
Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported
in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read
fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them
and see the world from their perspective. […] A 2010 study by Dr. Mar found a
 Non-article: The Neurological Fallacy 431

similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them,
the keener their theory of mind.

In my comment on the PSYART list I claim that this is a beautiful specimen of the
neurological fallacy that plagues the cognitive study of literature for quite some
time. Suppose you begin to read this piece in the middle, where the experiments
with theories of mind, empathy and the reading of fiction are reported. You will
get very significant information about the relationship between theories of mind,
empathy and the reading of fiction. Now suppose you also read the sentence “there
was substantial overlap in the brain networks used to understand stories and the
networks used to navigate interactions with other individuals — in particular, in-
teractions in which we’re trying to figure out the thoughts and feelings of others.
Scientists call this capacity of the brain to construct a map of other people’s inten-
tions ‘theory of mind’ ”. You will learn that now we know what part of the brain
is responsible for our theories of mind. But will you have a better understanding
of the relationship between reading Crime and Punishment and your empathy? I
doubt. Now suppose you read the neurological findings at the beginning of the
paper, as “Words like “lavender”, “cinnamon” and “soap”, for example, elicit a re-
sponse not only from the language processing areas of our brains, but also those
devoted to dealing with smells”. That, at last, sounds like being of great artistic
significance. Words activate not only the language processing areas but also the
areas associated with sensations. We not only understand that there is a smell, but
actually experience it in one way or other. That really sounds like some artistic
masterpiece. If so, why not read out lists of such words instead of muddling about
Baudelaire’s complex poems that abound in olfactory imagery?
The truth is that all those neurological findings suggest one important thing.
That everything human (including fiction) is somehow related to the brain. This
has been known for ages. But now we have more detailed maps. Now the only
thing to find out remains what is the difference between being exposed to such
lists of words and reading Baudelaire. But the answer to that question will not be
found in the anatomy of the brain, but in aesthetics and literary theory. One can
only hope that some day someone will find a way to integrate those neurological
findings in one aesthetic analysis in a way that makes the analysis more illuminat-
ing, and not merely mention them in the same article. It is not enough to spot
the brain centers whose activity is correlated with certain actions or sensations.
As we shall see in a moment, the same stimulus may activate some center in the
secondary somatosensory cortex in certain conditions, and fail to do so in some
others. Such distinctions may be crucial for an understanding of the neurological
correlates of aesthetic response.
432 Reuven Tsur

One of the responses to the foregoing argument was: “I think it’s always ques-
tionable to judge a line of research from a popular account of it”.
To this I answered: I don’t “judge a line of research” in my comment. I referred
to a specific article brought to the list members’ attention. And I also referred to
a host of studies that commit the same fallacy. But I didn’t say “all”. What is more,
I myself do occasionally have recourse to this line of research. Two issues are at
stake. When is it legitimate to drag in neuroscience? and what do the experiments
substantiate, e.g., the ones reported in this paper, and what they don’t.
Suppose you observe some conspicuous incongruity between story-under-
standing and having a theory of mind, and you have difficulty to account for
their persistent co-occurrence. Then it would be a God-sent discovery that the
two relevant brain networks overlap. This overlap could explain the persistent co-
occurrence of two incongruous phenomena. As things stand, however, namely,
that story-telling is about understanding what’s going on in other people’s mind
(that is, story-telling and having a theory of mind are co-extensive in an impor-
tant sense), it shouldn’t be very surprising that the two brain networks too are
somehow related. In an important sense, it is re-stating in brain-language what has
already been said in psychology-language and literature-language.
Suppose you ask the man-in-the-street or kids in the nursery school whether
reading or listening to stories are somehow related to understanding what’s going
on in other people’s mind, there are good chances that they will answer the ques-
tion in the affirmative. Now suppose you ask them whether reading or listening to
stories helps people to better understand what’s going on in other people’s mind
in real life too, quite a few answers will probably be affirmative again. But notice
this: the first assertion doesn’t entail the second one. It may well be the case that
stories and the ability to understand other people’s mind are somehow related, but
reading or listening to stories don’t help us to better understand what’s going on
in other people’s mind. What the experiments did was to substantiate that there is
a significant correlation between reading or listening to stories and an improved
ability to better understand other people, empathize with them and see the world
from their perspective. But nothing has been substantiated regarding the relation-
ship between this correlation and the structure of the brain. In other words, it’s not
enough to conduct some successful experiment; we should also be aware of what
it is that we have proved.

3. Abstractions, space perception, and emotions

As I said, I myself sometimes have recourse to the findings of brain science. In a

series of publications I explore a problem that has haunted me for decades, and
 Non-article: The Neurological Fallacy 433

I found the solution only gradually, over decades. I have observed that abstract
nouns behave differently in different circumstances. Consider
1. For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,
 Wordsworth: Preface 1800 to Lyrical Ballads.
2. Oh listen! For the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.  Wordsworth: “The Solitary Reaper”
In both excerpts the word “overflow” is combined with an abstract noun. In
Excerpt 1 it is perceived as conceptual language, even though the word “feeling”
explicitly occurs in it; in Excerpt 2 — more as generating some dense atmosphere,
some invisible and intangible mass. Structurally, in Excerpt 1 “overflow” plus ab-
stract noun are detached from any concrete situation; in Excerpt 2, they occur in
a concrete landscape, turned into an immediate situation by the deictic element
implied by “Oh Listen!”. In the beginning I tried to solve this mystery with tools
borrowed from New Criticism and early cognitive science. I suggested that per-
ceptual categorization, unlike conceptual categorization, takes place in a situation
defined here and now, while the stimulus is present. In Excerpt 2 we have a verbal
imitation of perceptual categorization, because the deictic element generates such
an immediate situation.
When in the late seventies I was exposed to early brain research, I learnt that
language is related to the left hemisphere of the brain, where information pro-
cessing is sequential and compact; emotions and spatial orientation are related
to the right hemisphere, where information processing is holistic and diffuse. I
came to the conclusion that the concrete landscape and the deixis increase the role
of the right hemisphere in processing the poem, where both spatial orientation
and emotions are located, and information processing is holistic and diffuse (Tsur
2003b; 2008: 385–403). Later I ran into an interesting problem in Louis Martz’s
book Poetry of Meditation. The first stage of Jesuit meditation is “the composition
of place”. The Jesuit masters emphasized that the success of all the meditation cru-
cially depends on the proper performance of the composition of place. But neither
Louis Martz, nor the Jesuit masters offer any explanation. In a paper written in
collaboration with Motti Benari, we thought we had the clue for it. Meditation
requires the voluntary abandonment of voluntary control, which is a rather dif-
ficult accomplishment. By increasing the role of the right hemisphere in infor-
mation processing, such involuntary, nonconceptual, intuitive processes as emo-
tions and spatial orientation are activated. When the paper was already accepted
by Pragmatics and Cognition, I ran into a fascinating finding by Newberg et al.
(2001). By SPECT imaging of the brain of Tibetan meditators and Franciscan nuns
at prayer, these researchers found that meditation was intimately related to the
orientation association area. The emerging picture was much more complex than
434 Reuven Tsur

we initially thought and we had to substantially modify our analysis, but we clearly
seemed to be on the right track (Tsur and Benari 2002; reprinted in Tsur 2003a).
The bottom line of all this is as follows. I don’t object to the application of the
findings of brain research in literary criticism, but this application must solve some
problem that in other ways cannot be solved. Otherwise it is merely re-stating the
issue in brain language. In the same spirit, in my recent book (Tsur 2012: 259–264)
I compare my approach with another approach to the application of Persinger’s
(1987) findings in the neuropsychology of God beliefs to poetry.

4. Bottom-up unpredictability

A response to the foregoing argument included the following paragraph:

I also would urge that all of us who try to apply brain science to poetics avoid the
fallacy of localization. Pointing to a brain region needs to be supplemented by the
recognition that the brain system is important only because it is part of a larger
system or process.
To this I answered: I perfectly agree with this sentence. But I think it must be
translated into operational terms. In many of my writings I invoke Polányi’s con-
ception (in The Tacit Dimension l967: 40) that what we have here is not a mere
chain of subordinations; it is controlled by “the principle of marginal control”, that
is, the control that the organizational principle of a higher level exercises on the
particulars forming its lower level; the successive working principles control the
boundary left indeterminate on the next lower level (Ibid.: 41).
You can see, for example, how, in the hierarchy constituting speechmaking, suc-
cessive working principles control the boundary left indeterminate on the next
lower level. Voice production, which is the lowest level of speech, leaves largely
open the combination of sounds into words, which is controlled by a vocabulary.
Next, a vocabulary leaves largely open the combination of words into sentences,
which is controlled by grammar. And so it goes. Moreover, each lower level im-
poses restrictions on the one above it, even as the laws of inanimate nature re-
strict the practicability of conceivable machines; and again, we may observe that a
higher operation may fail when the next lower operation escapes from its control.
(Ibid.: 40–41).

Polányi wrote this long before the recent boom in brain research. Now the point is
that the lower levels (in this case the operations of the brain) leave an indetermi-
nate margin each, further organized by the organizational principles of the level
above. Thus, the brain can only constrain the operations of the levels above, but
one cannot predict the higher operations from the lower ones.
 Non-article: The Neurological Fallacy 435

This conception is reinforced in Gazzaniga’s mind-expanding book Who’s in

Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. It makes a point similar to Polányi’s,
but more blatantly brings out the unpredictability of the “complex system”:
A complex system is composed of many different systems that interact and pro-
duce emergent properties that are greater than the sum of their parts and cannot
be reduced to the properties of the constituent parts. The classic example that is
easily understandable is traffic. If you look at car parts, you won’t be able to pre-
dict a traffic pattern. You cannot predict it by looking at the next higher state of
organization, the car, either. It is from the interaction of all the cars, their drivers,
society and its laws, weather, roads, random animals, time, space, and who knows
what else that traffic emerges (Gazzaniga, 71).
In the past, it was thought that the reason such systems were complex was that
not enough was known about them and that once all the variables were identified
and understood, they would be completely predictable. Such a view is fully deter-
ministic. Over the years, however, experimental data and theories are questioning
such a conclusion. In fact, it is becoming accepted that complexity itself is rooted
in the laws of physics (Ibid.).

So, at least one eminent brain scientist argues that not only literature but the hu-
man mind itself is an emergent property, and one cannot establish a simple causal
relationship between brain anatomy, or even brain processes, and the processes
of the mind. This impossibility is not due to the fact that we don’t have yet all the
relevant information, but to the very nature of things.
In light of this conception, one must seriously revise such assertions in the
afore-mentioned response to my comments as:
I think one needs to keep in mind, however, that brain research makes a claim
that solving problems through poetics does not. That is, brain science will claim a
causal relationship between the brain activity and the resultant mind activity, such
as a response to a poem. I don’t think appeals to the solely language of, say, a poem
can do this legitimately.

5. Literary synaesthesia

One response to my comments mentioned Ramachandran’s work on synaesthesia.

This came opportune for me to sharpen my point in the present discussion. This
requires to present the gist of my conception on synaesthesia.
I have written quite a lot on literary synaesthesia. One of my main motives is
to distinguish between syaesthesia as a neuropsychological phenomenon and as
a literary phenomenon. In my paper “Issues in Literary Synaesthesia” (published
in Style) I make a few fundamental distinctions. Among other things, I refer to
436 Reuven Tsur

Ramachandran’s work, precisely as something that cannot explain literary effects.

To put it in terms of my preceding discussion, the principle of marginal control is
here at work. (This paper is included in my recent book Playing by Ear and the Tip
of the Tongue — Precategorial Information in Poetry).
First, I make a distinction between Synaesthesia as a Neuropsychological and a
Literary Phenomenon. The term synaesthesia suggests the joining of sensations de-
rived from different sensory domains. One must distinguish between the joining
of sense impressions derived from the various sensory domains, and the joining of
terms derived from the vocabularies of the various sensory domains. The former
concerns synaesthesia as a neuropsychological phenomenon, consisting in anom-
alous sensory perception: a stimulus in one sensory modality triggers an auto-
matic, instantaneous, consistent response in another modality (e.g., sound evokes
colour). The latter is Verbal Synaesthesia. Literary Synaesthesia is the exploitation
of verbal synaesthesia for specific literary effects, of which I will discuss emotional
and witty effects. One conspicuous contrast between “genuine” and literary syn-
aesthesia is that the former involves rigidly predictable combinations of sensory
modes, whereas the latter requires exceptionally great flexibility in generating and
understanding unforeseen combinations, and, by the same token, abandoning es-
tablished combinations. Literary synaesthesia is typically concerned with verbal
constructs and not with “dual perceptions”. When we use a synaesthetic metaphor,
it is its terms that are derived from two sensory domains; the reality referred to
may be elusive, undifferentiated, or “ineffable”, even “supersensuous”, but it need
not necessarily belong to two different sensory domains. Neurological mecha-
nisms underlying “genuine” synaesthesia may contribute to certain literary effects;
but in some instances, as we shall see, they fail to account for them.
To avoid confusion, one must be aware of what it is that one is explaining when
explaining synaesthetic metaphors. I have distinguished four kinds of explanation.
The first one is genetic explanation. What is it that made the poet think of precisely
these associations. The second kind I would call rhetorical explanation: What is
it that makes the reader accept these associations. Pointing at brain regions may
belong to both. The third kind I would call semantic interaction explanation: What
specific meanings arise from the attribution of e.g. certain colours to certain vow-
els. Fourth, as to literary synaesthesia, aesthetic considerations are most impor-
tant for it: what aesthetic effects are generated by synaesthetic transfers? By these
distinctions I want to make one sometimes overlooked point. Offering a genetic
explanation cannot account for the literary appeal of a poem. One of the most
intriguing issues in literary synaesthesia is that, e.g., the pairing of sounds and
colours in Rimbaud’s “Voyelles” does not conform with the one established for
genuine coloured hearing.
 Non-article: The Neurological Fallacy 437

I will briefly explore two stylistic considerations, one based on Ullmann’s

Panchronistic Tendencies in Synaesthesia, another on gestalt qualities. First,
Ullmann found that in Romantic poetry “transfers tend to mount from the lower
to the higher reaches of the sensorium, from the less differentiated sensations to
the more differentiated ones” (touch → taste → smell → sound → sight) (Ullmann
1957: 280). Out of some 2000 transfers, only a little more than one sixth go down-
ward (Ibid.: 282). I claim that important stylistic considerations may be derived
from these tendencies. Such upward transfers as “soft colors” or “warm sounds”
are intuitively more natural than such downward transfers as “colorful touch” or
“loud temperature”. Thus, we should not be surprised that mannerist poets like
John Donne or Oscar Wilde have occasionally recourse to such downward trans-
fers as “a loud perfume” or “mauve Hungarian music” and “the scarlet music of
Dvorák”, for witty effects.
Second, certain perceptual phenomena, as colour induction, overtone fusion
and illusory boundaries are inhibited across strong gestalt boundaries. Boundaries
must be weakened or disrupted in order to boost those processes. Likewise, objects
that have stable visual shapes resist synaesthetic fusion; synaesthetic transfers are
perceived as more natural when thing-free and gestalt-free qualities are involved.
The two effects can conveniently be illustrated by two excerpts from Keats:
3. And taste the music of that vision pale. (Keats, Isabella: XLIX)
4. The same bright face I tasted in my sleep (Keats, Endymion, I: 895)
Both excerpts are instances of upward transfer. Excerpt 3 is frequently regarded as
the paradigmatic synaesthetic transfer. It is perceived as smooth and has a power-
ful emotional effect. It speaks of music in terms of taste, and of vision in terms of
music. Both music and vision are thing-free qualities. Excerpt 4 too applies the
verb “taste” to an object derived from a higher sense. Yet it makes a very differ-
ent impression. Ullmann finds that it is a strange phrase (1957: 287), but cannot
account for this strangeness. By joining entities from different senses, intersense
transfer sharpens more than ordinary metaphor the logical contradiction involved
in metaphors. Inducing an emotional rather than witty quality requires smooth
fusion into a soft focus. Stable characteristic visual shapes tend to resist such fu-
sion, whereas thing-free qualities facilitate it. In these two examples, “The same
bright face I tasted” and “And taste the music of that vision pale” there is an “up-
ward” transfer, from tasting to seeing, and as such, both ought to be perceived as
“smooth” and “natural”. The stable characteristic visual shape of “face”, however,
appears to resist tasting. Suppose Keats wrote “The same brightness I tasted in my
dream” — this would sound at once less strange.
Ramachandran and Hubbard (2001: 28) hypothesized that if there is cross-
wiring between adjoining brain regions, “between primary gustatory cortex and
438 Reuven Tsur

adjoining hand and face regions of primary somatosensory cortex, the result might
be a person who ‘tastes shapes’ ”. Excerpt 4 can be regarded as an example par ex-
cellence for this. What can we learn about this excerpt from Ramachandran and
Hubbard’s suggestion? Not very much. Suppose we became convinced that their
hypothesis applied to Keats’s brain. We would account by it for the genesis of the
figure, not its literary effect. It would not explain or change Ullmann’s impression
that “it is a strange phrase”, that is, that tasting an object with a stable characteristic
visual shape yields a marked synaesthetic metaphor, with all the stylistic impli-
cations of this. Genetic explanations are guided by principles that are different
from those guiding aesthetic explanations. Moreover, taste is the dominant sense
in Keats’s synaesthetic transfers. The fact that in this large corpus there is one taste
→ face transfer gives little information about the contribution of adjacent brain
regions to Keats’s synaesthesia. What is more, from Ramachandran and Hubbard’s
hypothesis we should expect that Excerpt 4 should be perceived as more natural
than Excerpt 3, but the opposite is the case.
Ramachandran and Hubbard don’t indicate what kind of specific phenom-
ena they have in mind. From their verbal usage I strongly suspect that they may
have had in mind Cytowic’s (2003) book The Man Who Tasted Shapes (from
their description of the brain regions involved, one might expect “a person who
tastes hands and faces”). With this problem in mind, I had a look at the book. To
Cytowic’s surprise, the phenomenon had nothing to do with visual shapes. “ ‘This
is a mental image you see?’ I asked. ‘No, no’, he stressed, ‘I don’t see anything. I
don’t imagine anything. I feel it in my hands as if it were in front of me’ ” (65).
Later Cytowic summed up: “His sensations were elementary things, like hard and
soft; a smooth, rough, or squashy texture; warm or cool surfaces” (67). Moreover,
in the passage “Oh, dear”, he said, slurping a spoonful, “there aren’t enough points
on the chicken” (3), Cytowic’s informant doesn’t speak of shapes in terms of taste
(as “tasting shapes” would imply), but of tastes in terms of the sense of touch.
This, then, turned out to be a touch → taste association, in perfect compliance with
Ullmann’s panchronistic tendencies, as well as with my claim that stable visual
shapes resist smooth synaesthesia. So, tasting a face would not comply with the
synaesthetic perceptions of Cytowic’s informant either.
So, if I am right that Ramachandran and Hubbard had Cytowic’s book in
mind, their hypothesis explains the title of the book, but not the synaesthetic per-
ceptions of the informant. Likewise, in the case of Keats’s synaesthetic imagery, of
a wealth of taste imagery it accounts for the existence of a single metaphor, but not
for the aesthetic problems related to it. On the contrary rather: if we assume that
having good fit to some brain activity renders a metaphor more natural, it suggests
a conspicuously wrong prediction.
 Non-article: The Neurological Fallacy 439

6. Physical, perceptual, and illusory boundaries

For over a century it was assumed that the afore-mentioned behavior of percep-
tual boundaries — that is, that certain perceptual phenomena, as color induction,
overtone fusion and illusory boundaries are inhibited across strong gestalt bound-
aries, and that boundaries must be weakened or disrupted in order to boost those
processes — is caused by an analogy with physical boundaries. However, in case of
illusory objects, at least, we have now neuropsychological evidence that this is not
so. In my recent book I discuss these issues at some length, quoting an eminent
neuropsychologist (Tsur, 2012: 9–12, 29–33).
In Figure 1c no illusory boundaries are generated, because the boundaries of
all three circles are intact. In Figures 1a–1b, by contrast, illusory objects with il-
lusory boundaries are generated, because the real (black) boundaries of the circles
and the triangle are interrupted at the appropriate places, with directions carefully
controlled. Notice that the illusory white boundaries clearly stand out even against
a white background.
Recent brain research suggests that this is not an inference by analogy with
what we know is the case with physical boundaries, but rather an immediate re-
sponse of the brain’s visual cells. “Orientation selective cells are capable of respond-
ing to virtual lines. […] The interpretation is probably dictated by the physiology
of orientation selective cells in the cortex” (Zeki 2004: 181).
It has been supposed that the interpretation that the brain gives to the configura-
tion shown in Figure 1A is imposed top-down (Gregory, 1972). If so, then higher
areas of the brain should become engaged when subjects view such figures. But
imaging experiments show that, when human subjects view and interpret such
incomplete figures as triangles, activity in the brain does not involve the frontal
lobes. (Zeki 2004: 182).

I have discussed this issue in my book at some length. Here I wish to make only
one point. In this example, the reference to brain imaging conveys meaningful

A B C
Figure 1.  Closed Gestalt boundaries inhibit the generation of illusory objects across
them (C); their disruption may facilitate it (A and B).
440 Reuven Tsur

information. Suppose all the imaging experiments showed that the frontal or pre-
frontal lobes are involved in the perception of illusory images. This would confirm
that higher brain processes are involved, but not necessarily inference by analogy.
But since imaging failed to show this, the entire scientific notion must be re-eval-
uated. In psychological terms, even in the processing of highly “intellectual” geo-
metric shapes, in certain conditions information processing is based on incoming
data from the environment to form a perception, no inferences are involved.

7. Loss of control and elusive sensations

Or consider the following issue where reliance on brain research may render terms
of art criticism more meaningful. Rudolf Arnheim speaks, in relation to the vi-
sual arts, of the “actively organizing mind” versus the “passively receiving mind”.
Strong gestalts, palpable objects and clear-cut ideas appeal to the former, whereas
colours, weak gestalts, thing-free and gestalt-free qualities typically appeal to the
latter. For decades I found these terms attractive, but I was not sure what exactly
they may refer to. In an unpublished paper I propose now some neuropsycho-
logical findings that seem to fill them with more solid meaning. Regarding this
distinction between mental attitudes, Arnheim (1957: 325) comments: “It would
be tempting to explore these correlations between perceptual behavior and per-
sonality structure in the field of the arts. The first [passive] attitude might be called
a Romantic one; the second [active], classicist”. Arnheim makes this distinction in
the context of visual shapes and colours. I suggest that it may be valid in poetry
too, and that in French Symbolism such passive attitude would be more extreme
than in Romanticism.
In that paper I explore at great length passive attitudes and elusive perceptual
qualities in Verlaine’s poetry, and then I offer a neuropsychological model that
may account for the observation that the actively organizing mind is less sensitive
to elusive sensations than a passive attitude. In the target article of a special issue
of Pragmatics and Cognition issue dealing with neuroscience [issue 18(3): 2010],
on the emergence of consciousness, Christopher Frith quotes a number of experi-
ments that explore how our consciousness “of being in control of our actions, our
sense of agency” affects our sensations. “If somebody else tickles you, you find
this very intense and feel excited and giggly. If you tickle yourself with just the
same movements, the feeling is far less exciting and intense” (p. 513). Frith pres-
ents a cross section through the brain showing the two areas in each hemisphere,
locating the secondary somatosensory cortex. These areas are activated by touch.
“When Sarah-Jayne Blakemore tickles you, the activity there is very high. But
when you tickle yourself (tickling your left palm with your right hand) the activity
 Non-article: The Neurological Fallacy 441

there is much lower. Indeed it is no higher than when you are moving your right
hand but not actually touching your left palm”. So when you tickle yourself, the
activity normally generated by touch sensations is suppressed. Other experiments
suggest that our sense of agency (or lack of agency) may affect perceptions related
to our own movements too. After quoting a PET camera experiment in which
participants under hypnosis raised their hands voluntarily or involuntarily, Frith
concludes: The important result was that, when you have the delusion that your
arm is moving up and down by itself, this suppression of activity in [the secondary
somatosensory cortex] does not occur. The extent to which your awareness of your
own actions is suppressed depends on your belief about whether you are the agent
of the action or not (Idem, 55).
In this example, the neuropsychological experiments seem to have signifi-
cant contribution to art criticism. They illuminate two fuzzy but apparently useful
terms, “actively organizing mind” and “passively receiving mind”, by providing
neurological evidence that an active attitude is less sensitive to elusive sensations
than a passive attitude.

8. Comparing four approaches

Finally, we have seen two attempts to account for the co-occurrence of two higher
mental phenomena by relying on cross-wiring between two adjoining brain re-
gions, the New York Times article and Ramachandran and Hubbard’s work on
Synaesthesia. I wish to compare them to a more felicitous attempt.
In a thought-provoking study, “Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality
and Physical Cleansing”, Chen-Bo Zhong and Katie Liljenquist set out to inves-
tigate what they call the “Lady Macbeth” phenomenon: the belief that a little bit
of water can wash away one’s moral stains. It is a mere metaphorical relationship
between moral and physical cleanliness or contamination, yet their complete iden-
tification seems to be ubiquitous in human culture. Our everyday language is full
of metaphors applying terms taken from the semantic field of physical cleanliness,
dirt and disgust to moral qualities. The authors discuss only human culture and
psychology, but, as Fouts and Fouts tell us, chimps using sign language, too, create
spontaneously metaphors of this kind:
Washoe then climbed up on the enclosure fence and looked directly into the cam-
era and signed ‘DEB DIRTY DEB’. Washoe uses the DIRTY sign to refer to faeces,
soiled items or to humans or chimpanzees that she is displeased with (Fouts and
Fouts1993).
442 Reuven Tsur

One of the intriguing aspects of this identification is that physical cleansing has
been a focal element in religious ceremonies for thousands of years, in most major
religions. Remembering that regarding a partial identity as a complete identity is
a mere logical fallacy, the persistence of this practice requires an explanation. For
scholars who believe that culture begets culture the explanation is quite simple: it
is a tradition handed down from generation to generation. The authors, however,
rightly observe that “the prevalence of this practice suggests a psychological as-
sociation between bodily purity and moral purity”.
In what follows, I will report only those of their experiments in which a moral
stance was induced in experimental subjects by asking them to recall in detail
either an ethical or unethical deed from their past and to describe any feelings or
emotions they experienced The experimental tasks were very trivial. In one ex-
periment, participants engaged in a word completion task in which they converted
word fragments into meaningful words. Of the six word fragments, three (W _ _
H, SH _ _ ER, and S _ _ P) could be completed as cleansing-related words (wash,
shower, and soap) or as unrelated words (e.g., wish, shaker, and step). Participants
who recalled an unethical deed generated more cleansing-related words than
those who recalled an ethical deed.
In another experiment, participants engaged in the same recall task, and were
then offered a free gift and given a choice between an antiseptic wipe and a pencil
(verified in a control condition to be equally attractive offerings). Those who re-
called an unethical deed were more likely to take the antiseptic wipe (67%) than
were those who recalled an ethical deed (33%).
In the last study, all participants described an unethical deed from their past.
Afterwards, they either cleansed their hands with an antiseptic wipe or not. Then
participants were asked if they would volunteer without pay for another research
study to help out a desperate graduate student. Physical cleansing significantly
reduced volunteerism: 74% of those in the not-cleansed condition offered help,
whereas only 41% of participants who had a chance to cleanse their hands offered
help. Thus, volunteering dropped by almost 50% when participants had a chance
to physically cleanse after recalling an unethical behavior.
The paper refers to brain structure in only one verb phrase, not as a final cause,
but as one of several correlates of psychological processes: “previous research sug-
gests that pure disgust and moral disgust not only lead to similar facial expressions
and physiological activation but also recruit partially overlapping brain regions,
mainly in the frontal and temporal lobes”.
We have seen, then, four studies that offer explanations relying on the over-
lapping or cross-wiring of adjoining brain regions. Ramachandran and Hubbard
offer an explanation based on cross-wiring between primary gustatory cortex and
adjoining hand and face regions. But it is not clear what it is that they explain. If
 Non-article: The Neurological Fallacy 443

they refer to Cytowic’s informant, they rely on a misconstrued case suggested by

the book’s title, The Man who Tasted Shapes. If they have in mind some other case,
they don’t tell us what it is. I have offered an example that is tailor-made for their
explanation. In this case, however, their explanation merely restates in “brain lan-
guage” what has already been said in literary language, and fails to account for the
conspicuous literary effect; moreover, it suggests wrong predictions as to literary
effect.
The New York Times article accounts for the close relationship between stories
and the ability to understand what’s going on in other people’s mind by an overlap
in the brain networks used to understand stories and the networks used to con-
struct a theory of mind. But since stories are about what’s going on in other peo-
ple’s mind, this explains only the obvious. The experiments reported briefly sub-
stantiate the wide-spread intuition that reading or listening to stories not merely
allows an insight into the minds of fictional characters, but actually improves one’s
ability to construct theories of mind in real life. This finding is very important as
far as psychology and education go; but proves nothing about brain functioning.
In Zhong and Liljenquist’s study the reference to the overlap of adjoining brain
regions, brief as it is, serves to proffer a far more significant explanation. First of
all, brain structures are not presented as a final cause, but as one of several cor-
relates of a complex process. Secondly, it accounts for an otherwise puzzling fact:
the ubiquity and persistence of a logical fallacy that leads to maladaptive behav-
iour: washing one’s hands instead improving one’s ethical behaviour. This fallacy
underlies religious practices and a wide range of idiomatic expressions in a variety
of human cultures and languages (and, one might add, in chimpanzee language
too). We are not puzzled by this phenomenon only because it is so ubiquitous.
The study demonstrates that those religious practices are not mere arbitrary tradi-
tion handed down from generation to generation as many scholars would believe,
but have a good fit to the natural capacities and constraints of the human brain,
and their motives have psychological reality in our everyday life. By the same to-
ken it exposes the absurdity of some of our deeply-rooted responses that go on
unnoticed in our everyday life. What is more, it demonstrates that these absurd
responses not only relieve us of guilt feelings for past moral transgressions, but
even legitimize lack of empathy in the future . “Presumably, participants who had
cleansed their hands before being solicited for help would be less motivated to
volunteer because the sanitation wipes had already washed away their moral stains
and restored a suitable moral self ”. All this too can be handled in purely psycho-
logical terms, without reference to brain structure. But here the brain structure
can, as I said, account at least for the ubiquity and persistence of a fallacious and
maladaptive practice and also, perhaps, for the fact that chimps spontaneously cre-
ate metaphors so characteristically human.
444 Reuven Tsur

To do justice to this last point, I must add one more comment. Washing one’s
hands, chasing the scapegoat to the desert, or attending a performance of “Oedipus
the King” does not improve one’s moral self, but may involve a process of provid-
ing relief from guilt feelings or repressed emotions, thereby making people hap-
pier.1 By the same token, however, as Zhong and Liljenquist’s experiments suggest,
they may also legitimize future unethical behavior.
Finally, in my own work, the widespread association of landscape descriptions
and emotional qualities in poetry, as well as of “the composition of place” and an
altered state of consciousness in Jesuit meditation can be accounted for by the fact
that both state perception and emotional processes are located in the right hemi-
sphere of the brain.

9. Summary

The unprecedented flourishing of brain science during the past few decades piled
up a huge amount of knowledge about the human brain. Many brain scientists
believe that it is only a matter of time that we will be able to account for all hu-
man mental activities by referring to the structure and the functioning of the hu-
man brain. In the nineteen sixties, Michael Polányi expounded the Principle of
Marginal Control, according to which lower-level activities constrain higher-level
processes, but no amount of knowledge about the lower processes can explain the
working of the higher ones. In recent years, the eminent brain scientist Michael
Gazzaniga put forward a similar view, but more strongly emphasizing the unpre-
dictability of complex systems from their parts. The main focus of my discussion
has been brain science and literary theory, but with an eye on other disciplines as
well. I examined how the geographic proximity of brain regions has been utilized
in attempts to account for “higher-level” activities in literature and psychology. I
have found that it is hard to avoid redundancy in this process, and in many in-
stances brain science is recruited merely to restate the obvious. I suggested that
relying on brain structure and brain processes in accounting for higher-level pro-
cesses is most felicitous when it is used to refute some prevalent but erroneous
assumption in the received view, as with the case of illusory boundaries, or when
it clarifies fuzzy terms as with Arnheim’s “passively receiving mind”, or when it
settles some inconsistency in the higher processes, as with the maladaptive prac-
tice of “washing away one’s sins”, ubiquitous throughout human culture, or the
persistent co-occurrence of the seemingly unrelated features of intense emotional
qualities and landscape descriptions (or abstract nouns plus deixis) in Romantic
Poetry as well as in Jesuit Meditation.
 Non-article: The Neurological Fallacy 445

Note

1.  This paper is followed on the web by a comment by DAR ALRIYADH:

It amazed me to discover that this study was based upon a practice that Muslims are
requested to do when their “moods” are down due to anger, frustration or any blue
feelings. To be more precise, Muslims are asked to go into the process of “Ablution”
which involves washing main body parts — hands, arms, head, face and feet — with
fresh water. Again, Islam advises to do so mainly when getting angry or frustrated. It
would be very interesting if Mr. Chen-Bo Zhong would spotlight this fact and find a
scientific link between his study and this fact.
The link may be found in some higher discipline, some Jungian archetype, or theories of cathar-
sis, or simply in Freudian purge of suppressed guilt feelings. Low “moods due to anger, frustra-
tion or any blue feelings” may result from suppressed guilt feelings, which may be washed away,
according to Zhong and Liljenquist by “washing main body parts”.

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Author’s address
Reuven Tsur
The Cognitive Poetics Project
Tel Aviv University
http//www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx

About the author

Reuven Tsur is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature and Literary Theory at Tel Aviv
University. According to Literary Theory: An Oxford Guide, he is one of the founding fathers of
the cognitive approach to literature. He has applied his theory of Cognitive Poetics to rhyme,
sound symbolism, poetic rhythm, metaphor, poetry and altered states of consciousness, period
style, genre, archetypal patterns, translation theory, the implied critic’s decision style, and criti-
cal competence. In his books and articles he applied his theories to English, French, German,
Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew poetry, ranging from the Bible, through the eleventh,
sixteenth and seventeenth century, to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century. He is
the author of eighteen scholarly books in English and Hebrew (one of them was translated into
Japanese), and many articles in English, Hebrew, German and Hungarian. He was awarded the
Israel Prize in 2009, and Doctor Honoris Causa in 2013 from Osnabrück University.