It’s persuasive if you fill in the unstated extra bit, which goes something like “… and can explain why in great detail, if you take the trouble to read his writing about it. But such detail is excessive for this comment thread.”

Well I was just reading some of his writing, but so far I am not persuaded. Further, I have noticed some critical flaws in his writing caused by his lack of understanding of epistemology.

Yeah, you noticed flaws in Ramachandran's thinking.

That'd be like me going up to Buckminster Fuller and saying "I don't think those dome things will work because I played with legos as a kid and don't see building it out of legos."

Or going up to Einstein and saying "I don't think your special relativity is good because I threw rocks at each other and then away from each other, and I didn't notice it happen."

You're a bit out of your league here, is what I mean to say. The point of Ramachandran's writing is to persuade people who know neurology, not to teach it to laypeople who don't have the intellectual integrity to admit they are out of their league.

You don't know what my league is, or what my areas of expertise are.

I do know that your arguments from authority are invalid.

I know what Ramachandran's league is. What areas of expertise do you have to such a degree that your intuitions upon a cursory glance at one or two of his papers carry more weight then his decades of study and work at the cutting edge of this field?

Appeals to legitimate authority are valid.

(disclaimer: Ramachandran is one of my biggest intellectual heros)

For example, I know a lot about epistemology, and I am already familiar with the common phenomenon where psychiatrists and neuroscientists accidentally stray into philosophical areas they know little about and make epistemic blunders.

I emailed you two passages from Ramachandran's essay. Could you confirm that they are representative of his view, and not out of date?

I did not get the message. Maybe the internets have a clog.

I wrote:

I'm sorry, I can't talk to you, my mail client says you're a spammer.

Do you think this is an accurate statement about mirror neurons?

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p2...

Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds."

And this from the next page?

Denying [one's own] paralysis is odd enough but why would a patient deny another patient's paralysis? We suggest that this bizarre observation is best understood in terms of damage to Rizzolatti's mirror neurons. It's as if anytime you want to make a judgement about someone else's movements you have to run a VR (virtual reality) simulation of the corresponding movements in your own brain and without mirror neurons you cannot do this.

The first one is trivially true because of the word 'might'

The second one I think is true and an extremely elegant solution for a bizarre neurological phenomena.

And critiquing Ramachandran's neurology on the basis of an epistemology ignorant of neuroscience seems a lot like critiquing Newton's physics on the basis of an astrology ignorant of astronomy. (this is hard for me to admit, my training is as a philosopher).

I've replied by email. Hopefully you'll receive it.