Editing Homunculus argument (section)

==In terms of rules==
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Another example is with [[Cognitivism (psychology)|cognitivist]] theories that argue that the human brain uses "rules" to carry out operations (these rules often conceptualised as being like the [[algorithms]] of a [[computer program]]). For example, in his work of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, [[Noam Chomsky]] argued that (in the words of one of his books) human beings use ''Rules and Representations'' (or to be more specific, rules acting on representations) in order to cognate (more recently Chomsky has abandoned this view; cf. the [[Minimalist Program]]).

Now, in terms of (say) chess, the players are given "rules" (i.e., the rules of chess) to follow. So: who ''uses'' these rules? The answer is self-evident: the players of the game (of chess) use the rules: it's not the case that the rules ''themselves'' play chess. The rules themselves are merely inert marks on paper until a ''human being'' reads, understands and uses them. But what about the "rules" that are, allegedly, inside our head (brain)? Who reads, understands and uses them? Again, the implicit answer is, and some would argue must be, a "homunculus": a little man who reads the rules of the world and then gives orders to the body to act on them. But again we are in a situation of [[infinite regress]], because this implies that the homunculus utilizes cognitive processes that are also rule bound, which presupposes another homunculus inside ''its'' head, and so on and so forth. Therefore, so the argument goes, theories of mind that imply or state explicitly that cognition is [[Rule of inference|rule]] bound cannot be correct unless some way is found to "ground" the regress.

This is important because it is often assumed in [[cognitive science]] that rules and [[algorithms]] are essentially the same: in other words, the theory that cognition is rule bound is often believed to imply that thought ([[cognition]]) is essentially the manipulation of algorithms, and ''this'' is one of the key assumptions of some varieties of [[artificial intelligence]].

Homunculus arguments are always [[fallacy|fallacious]] unless some way can be found to "ground" the regress. In [[psychology]] and [[philosophy of mind]], "homunculus arguments" (or the "homunculus fallacies") are extremely useful for detecting where theories of [[mind]] fail or are incomplete.

The homunculus fallacy is closely related to [[Ryle's regress]].