Doctrine Of Specific Nerve Energies Research Articles

Realism without tears II: The structuralist legacy of sensory physiology

This paper examines the implications of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies for contemporary philosophy and psychology. Part I analyzed Johannes Peter Müller’s canonical formulation of the Doctrine, arguing that it follows from empirical results combined with methodological principles. Here, I argue that these methodological principles remain valid in psychology today, consequently, any naturalistic philosophy of perception must accept the Doctrine’s skeptical conclusion, that the qualities of our perceptual experience are not determined by, and thus do not reveal the nature of, their causes in the world. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we must be global skeptics; rather, I argue that contemporary epistemology of perception should embrace Müller’s own response to the Doctrine: epistemic structural realism. As articulated by Müller’s student, Helmholtz, structural realism follows from the Doctrine once we recognize that active exploration constitutes part of the mechanism that determines perceptual experience, a view congenial to contemporary theories of embodied perception in cognitive science. Structural realists in philosophy of science should likewise heed the lessons of the Doctrine, as it played a critical part in the early history of their view, and may still serve a constructive role as exemplar today.

Realism without tears I: Müller’s Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies

The Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies has been and continues to be enormously influential in the physiology, psychology, and philosophy of perception. In simple terms, the Doctrine states that we directly perceive in the first instance the activity of our nerves, rather than properties in the external world. The canonical early statement of the Doctrine by the physiologist Johannes Peter Müller had profound influence on both the philosophy and psychology of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially as reformulated and transmitted by Müller’s student Helmholtz. A common assumption of historical and ongoing debate about the Doctrine has been its supposedly idealist or skeptical implications. What is not commonly recognized is that Müller himself advanced a realist interpretation along lines that would be recognized today as a form of epistemic structural realism. This paper analyzes Müller’s structuralist epistemology in detail and reconstructs his articulation and defense of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies in its canonical form. Part II argues for the continued importance of the Doctrine and its structuralist interpretation for contemporary psychology, philosophy of perception, and history of philosophy of science.

A Test of the Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Perception

Two theories define the relationship between sensory experience and perception of location. The doctrine of specific nerve energies relies on hard-wired, genetically specified relationships between stimulation and perception, modifiable only within limits by adaptation. In a newer sensorimotor account, experience tunes the relationship between stimulation and perception. The perception of pressure phosphenes can differentiate the two theories, because the phosphene appears at a location predicted by physiological optics and in a modality predicted by specific nerve energies. Moving a finger vertically along the outer orbit of the eye while pressing gently on it through the lid during nasally directed gaze results in apparent motion of the phosphene out of phase with the finger, therefore in contradiction to information from motor efference to the finger, tactile sense at the fingertip, eyelid and bulb, joint receptors, and proprioception from muscles driving the finger. A test of the sensorimotor theory giving it every advantage had six observers in darkness moving their fingers along the eye and observing phosphenes for 1 h and 2400 motion cycles; the phosphene always obeyed the doctrine of specific nerve energies, never adapting or changing modality as the sensorimotor theory predicts.

Galileo's Eye: A New Vision of the Senses in the Work of Galileo Galilei

Reflections on the senses, and particularly on vision, permeate the writings of Galileo Galilei, one of the main protagonists of the scientific revolution. This aspect of his work has received scant attention by historians, in spite of its importance for his achievements in astronomy, and also for the significance in the innovative scientific methodology he fostered. Galileo's vision pursued a different path from the main stream of the then contemporary studies in the field; these were concerned with the dioptrics and anatomy of the eye, as elaborated mainly by Johannes Kepler and Christoph Scheiner. Galileo was more concerned with the phenomenology rather than with the mechanisms of the visual process. His general interest in the senses was psychological and philosophical; it reflected the fallacies and limits of the senses and the ways in which scientific knowledge of the world could be gathered from potentially deceptive appearances. Galileo's innovative conception of the relation between the senses and external reality contrasted with the classical tradition dominated by Aristotle; it paved the way for the modern understanding of sensory processing, culminating two centuries later in Johannes Müller's elaboration of the doctrine of specific nerve energies and in Helmholtz's general theory of perception.

James Gibson's Passive Theory of Perception: A Rejection of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies

James Gibson's Passive Theory of Perception: A Rejection of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies

Müller's doctrine of specific nerve energies. A reevaluation in view of perceptual development.

Abstract.— Some principles underlying Müller's doctrine are presented. This doctrine is briefly evaluated in view of modem research in sensory and perceptual psychology, whereupon its relationship to problems of perceptual development is examined. Two positions concerning developmental changes of intersensory relationships are presented. According to the first position, development starts with a well integrated supra‐modal system and proceeds by a gradual differentiation of the separate modalities. According to the second, the senses constitute relatively independent functions by the infant, while integration of these functions takes place when the child grows. It is shown that studies supporting either of the two positions have been based on different behaviour systems, and that these studies, therefore, need not contradict each other. Consequently it is suggested that sensory functions should be defined in relation to particular forms of behaviour, and that forms of organism‐environment interactions should serve as frames of reference for classifications of the senses.

Are Invertebrate Nervous Systems Good Models for the Functional Organization of the Brain?

This chapter discusses whether invertebrate nervous systems are good models for the functional organization of the brain. Biologists have found that the study of simpler organisms has revealed principles applicable to all animals. The genetic code is the same from bacteria to man and nerve impulses and synaptic transmitters are very similar in all animals. The central difficulty in the study of the nervous system arises from the method of coding that it adopts. Each item of information is, in the main, carried in a distinct channel. An enormous number of channels are, thus, involved and the problem is to discover the way signals passing along so many different paths cooperate to produce behavior. Thomas Young suggested as early as 1801 that color discrimination involved passing signals along 3 different channels. Helmholtz and Muller confirmed this and developed the doctrine of specific nerve energies. The understanding of complex brain patterns depends upon finding the principles that control not only development but also later changes in connectivity. These later changes include those involved in adaptive response and regeneration and culminate in those that produce learned behavior. To study these, the parts of the nervous system that show various degrees of patterning are required. The displays of color shown by an octopus have proved to be very suitable for the study of pattern regeneration.

A Reply to Bishop and Heinbecker's "Fiber Distribution in Optic and Saphenous Nerves."

In a paper by Bishop and Heinbecker there occurs a serious misinterpretation of a statement published by us. They quote from our paper as follows, “The results therefore fail to support the view (of Bishop and Heinbecker), that there are fiber types distinguishable by time to maximum, conduction rate, irritability and refractory period.....Since it is possible to recognize differences in the physiological responses of individual axons, it is no longer incumbent upon physiologists to adhere to the doctrine of specific nerve energies.” These two passages they gratuitously take to mean “that the same fiber mediated (mediates) different sensations by means of impulses of different character” (italics theirs) and then proceed to attack, with facetiousness as their weapon, the windmill they have erected. As a matter of fact, we had no intention of conveying any such meaning and presented no evidence in support of such a point of view. The misinterpretation presumably was caused by reading as'responses of an individual axon'the words ”responses of individual axons”. In so far as the doctrine of specific nerve energies is concerned, the point we wished to make, and would have made in as many words had there been space in an abstract, was that since it is possible to distinguish in the fibers of a nerve a very wide and apparently continuous range in the characters of their responses the possibility exists of a transmission of impulses along paths in the central nervous system adapted to impulses of specific configurations. This is an elaboration, based on more definite information, of a point of view previously presented by Erlanger, Gasser and Bishop and since by Adrian.

Fiber Distribution in Optic and Saphenous Nerves

“Either the nerves themselves may communicate impressions different in quality to the sensorium, which in every instance remains the same; or else the vibrations of the nervous principle may in every nerve be the same,….”, etc.1“The results therefore fail to support the view (of Bishop and Heinbecker), that there are fiber types distinguishable by time to maximum, conduction rate, irritability and refractory period…. Since it is possible to recognize differences in the physiological responses of individual axons, it is no longer incumbent upon physiologists to adhere to the doctrine of specific nerve energies.”2The latter quotation seems to present a third alternative to those recognized by Johannes Muller in the former, a formulation of his doctrine of specific nerve energies. Muller emphasized the specificity of the whole sensory pathway, being unable to decide whether the differences in sensory pathways were assignable to qualitative differences in the responses of the nerve fibers concerned, or to dif...