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It's not clear from the text whether in describing the homunculus as a "little man", "man" is being used generically (i.e. "human"), or to refer specifically to a male. Presumably the author intended the former, or else the homunculus theory of conception would not explain where women came from! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.33.43.145 (talk) 21:20, 14 March 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Does Frankenstein's monster count as a Homunculus? In Animamundi the Homunculi was made from bits & pieces of corpses with a secret ingredient to bring it to life. That sounds like Frankenstein to me.
Simply asserting that homunculi don't exist is highly misleading, especially when you consider the "sub-homunculi" as first postulated by Daniel Dennett in 1978. He elaborated on this in his 1991 work Consciousness Explained when he stated, "...theories that posit such homunculi ("little men" in the brain) are not always to be shunned, but whenever homunculi are rung in to help, they had better be relatively stupid functionaries..." (emphasis added). Also, in an interview for the book States of Mind he wrote,
69.182.52.15 (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Dennet is misleading here. The fundamental objection to homunculi in philosophy is not that it is an infinite regress, but that it is a historical circular regress. “This is the same as that, only different.”, ad infinitum. A homunculi, even defined by Dennet, is a passenger talking to the driver to give directions. It could be a committee, though inaction, chaos and confusion would reign, as with all committees, a consensus decision is harder to reach. I prefer a homunculus free philosophy. The Psyche, or, personal integrity, can always choose to not react to history. Developing a standard of personal integrity demands any homunucli to remain a secondary rider, and not give it more attention than the choices you have made to meet your goals. A homunculi doesn’t require any attention at all since it is only there for the ride.It goes where you go. Choose a path, and, if you still claim to have homunculi, it will still be there. If you don’t have a homunculi, it won’t be missed.69.182.52.15 (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thus, even if only "out of courtesy," such neuronal functionaries deserve to be mentioned under the heading of Homunculi (and they obviously exist).
Also, the philospher John R. Searle has written an essay entitled, "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?", the fifth section of which is: "Second Difficulty: The Homunculus Fallacy is Endemic to Cognitivism", which IMO is also relevant and at odds with what Dennett has written. Dennett thinks we can abolish the Homunculus fallacy by breaking down the one "homunculus" into "sub-homunculi" (i.e., an army of stupid functionaries); Searle disagrees and finds that the matter is not so simple--that, in fact, the attempt to abolish homunculi necessarily fails, since to embrace cognitivist theories is to necessarily embrace a homunculus (in the full sense), even if one doesn't want to. Thus, when a wikipedia author writes, "After all, homunculi do not exist," this should be changed to: "After all, infinite regresses do not exist." Let me stress that it is the necessary entailment of an infinite regress which renders the Homunculus Argument a fallacy and NOT the fact that the argument invokes homunculi. (And another thing--the section entitled "The homunculus argument in the philosophy of mind" needs to be massively rewritten. It contains some of the poorest writing I've ever seen on Wikipedia (the Ryle quote is not even correct, it is wordy and rambling, some statements are false and some are downright misleading even when true, and it is almost unintelligible at some points, etc.). I'll be rewriting it shortly, just as I expanded the Ryle's Regress page, but I hereby am alerting all others that it is far from even adequate--and so I think you should help too.) --Uroshnor 08:13, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I realize it is a long quote, but it just occurred to me while rereading the Searle article how brilliantly Searle treats of the issues. As such, I've decided to reproduce it here for all concerned (after all, it is only four paragraphs):
In light of Searle's critique of Dennett's argument (which I agree with), IMHO the proper means of avoiding the Homunculus Fallacy is to avoid cognitivism implicitly by embracing Behaviorism. The Homunculus Fallacy is endemic to cognitivism not Behaviorism. B.F. Skinner was correct when, in his 1974 work About Behaviorism, he stated, "Behavior is the achievement of a person, and we seem to deprive the human organism of something which is his natural due when we point instead to the environmental sources of his behavior. We do not dehumanize him; we dehomunculize him" (i.e., we take the ‘inner man’ out, or show that by no means do we even need to take a homunculus into account in the first place). Behaviorists focus exclusively on the functional laws of behavior (with behavior as the dependent variable); their theories implicitly reject an inner determining agent and knowledge of any inner states (the latter of which we rarely, as scientists, have available to us anyway). This is how we abolish the Homunculus Fallacy, which is otherwise endemic. --Uroshnor 09:46, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
And I am going to make sure that no one overlooks the disease connotations of the word 'endemic' by bringing it up now. --Uroshnor 09:56, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
For the record, I am aware that this is hardly a forum for the expression of personal views, so it wasn't exactly relevant to inform everyone what I do and do not agree with. However, I believe a truly complete and proper encyclopedic entry for the Homunculus Argument (Fallacy) would hardly be complete or proper if it failed to include a detailed treatment of how Behaviorist theories dehomunculize human beings. As I noted on the Ryle's Regress page, in The Concept of Mind, Ryle was writing from a logical behaviorist standpoint. It is from this fertile ground that the Homunculus Fallacy springs. As such, I believe the page must emphasize its Behaviorial origin and kinship with other Behavioral critiques of cognitivism. Otherwise it is not an encyclopedia entry at all; for instance in its current incarnation I would liken it to an apologia for the Mentalistic stance of most psychologists. --Uroshnor 08:37, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Removed the original research tag. I heard Gregory mention the fallacy of confusing the homunculus argument with the regress argument in a lecture about 30 years ago! They are obviously different and it is good that Wikipedia is differentiating between them.
The use of a homunculus is inserted into psychological discourse in order to deny the physical origen of thought and decision making. If the source is entirely physical, then there are philosophical and religious implications, regarding responsibility. There is also the element of vanity, in that many persons do not want to see themselves as machines, but as spiritual beings, with the spiritual element being responsible for decision making.
As for infinite regress, a can of Pet Milk used to have a picture on it of a can of Pet Milk, with a cow's head sticking out of one end. One the side of that can was another pictures of a can of Pet milk, on which was another picture, etc., ad infinitum.
Where does the homunculus get its thought? Either it appears from nowhere, or it in turn has its own humunculus, which itself has another homunculus, which also has... etc., ad infinitum.
I edited the statement about John Searle's Chinese Room because its relevance to the homunculus argument (rather than merely homunculus) seemed to me unclear.
Along with the rest of the videogames listed, Homunculi are monsters in Nethack (aggressive to you by default if you're non-chaotic), which is at least as notable as a Diablo2 expansion pack. The help page on them reads,
--128.143.167.95 28 June 2005 21:12 (UTC)
Sadly, all this text was way to much for me to read ;) But I saw small parts of it, and let me just say, the human brain is in no way comparible to a digital computer. No way. The human brain uses quantum effects to get its caluculations, which can't be proparly simulated on a digital computer. You need quantum computers for that. --Soyweiser 29 June 2005 20:05 (UTC)
To add to my description of the Homonculus in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, The soul of the homonculus (a bullet soul) lets you summon a small, grayish, humanoid type creature which walks along the ground and does damage to other monsters it may touch. It also has a little antenna and one eye. The fact that it is so little reffers back to the idea that Homonculus means "Little man". --Ajici Otaro 20:26, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Adding link to "Cortical Homunculus" if noone minds. Within the realm of psychology/neurology/biology this is not the philosophical homunculus in the experimental and behaviorist debate but a useful concept image for understanding how the body and brain connect on the more superficial level of movement and senses. --Jgrant 04:20, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Added a bit about a japanese graphic novel titled Homunculus, it's about an eccentric analyst who underwent a trepanation procedure which left him seeing things he otherwise could not see. Anyone who is interested in weird comics should definitely check this one out.68.163.103.9 03:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I hate to sound whiney, because I have nothing to contribute, but this has to be the article with the most confusing introduction ever. I think what needs to be done is to add a "Legend" section at the top, similar to the one found in Alraune so people understand that the concept of a homunculus is twofold, one as a representative of mental and bodily functions, and the other as alchemic nonsense. --copperheadclgp 10:25, 2 March 2006
Where exactly does the citation from Dr. David Christianus come from? I have found a large number of references to his method on the internet, however I have been unable to find the name of the book from which this method comes. Furthermore, the online library catalogue at the University of Giessen reveals no documents authored by him, nor does that of Yale University. I have also checked google scholar and the library of the University of Pittsburgh, and yet there is no trace of Dr David Christianus.
The creation of Homunculus is a rather important part of the plot of Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, and it seemed to use a rather simplified verison of the first method described in the wiki.
In the Anime series Wolf's Rain (I don't know about the manga), the main character "Cheza" the "Flower Maiden" is said to be created from lost scientific and alchemical knowledge. Considering she's 'made from a lunar flower', would this qualify her for homunculus status?--65.188.55.90 05:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What about the homunculus in art? In art, a homunculus was a small human; that is to say, a human who has all the proportions of a full grown man with the only difference being in size. Baby Jesus was often depicted as a homunculus in paintings and drawings made before the Renaissance period.
However, I haven't been able to find any examples yet-- my friend and I couldn't believe they didn't have any at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Also, since Jesus is the only example I really know of homunculi in art, I'm not sure whether "little man" could be read as either gender or not. ^^;
Spiffy 07:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The whole final paragraph of homunculus of alchemy seems ridiculous, and is full of grammatical errors. Should be allowed to stay as an example of 'what some believe' or just deleted?138.253.160.174 12:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I removed the entire 21st century literary representations section. It contained the following:
This reads like a blatant advertisement. And it isn't true either, since Jane R Goodall's 2004 novel The Walkers predates Paxton's by two years. I removed it, and added a mention of the Paxton book to the 20th century literary representations section, which I renamed to Contemporary literary representations. --Radioflux 13:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The TV series Once Upon a Time... Life, explains human body using anthropomorphic red and white blood cells, neurotransmitters or even spermatozoa. How about agree it under the TV section?85.55.129.16 22:44, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This section needs to be sorted better. -Sox207 18:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See the link in French for an early use of the homunculus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:53, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The bulk of the article's introduction was about Charles Darwin's support of pangenesis. Although interesting, it was misleading since neither Darwin nor pangenesis were mentioned again and no direct connection to the article subject was made.
I really did find this one of the most confusing introductions I have seen in a Wikipedia article, so I tightened things up by removing the paragraph. I hope I didn't overstep. Being bold here. 71.198.202.79 15:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The section "Homunculus of Spermists" contains some well-known, but still completely wrong assertions. (1) Most importantly, the term homunculus carefully never was used by spermists, as its association with Paracelsus and alchemy was poisonous [2]. They only called them animalcules. (2) Spermism was one of two camps of preformationism, the other being ovism, of which you hear little. Ovists, like Theodor Kerckring, drew little preformed people as wel, but then in eggs [3]. Preformationism, ovism, and animalcules all predate the discovery of semen by many years, and so does the "reductio ad absurdum" mentioned in the text. (3) The first drawing of an animalcule in a sperm was made by Dalenpatius, a French aristocrate. Leeuwenhoek "himself was, at first, rather suspicious about these miniatures with hats and tails;" and claimed "in a certain book it is laid to my charge that I proclaimed that a human being will originate from an animalcule in the sperm, although I have on the contrary never expressed an opinion on this subject". Willing or not, Leeuwenhoek got associated with spermism, which was developed by Joseph de Aromatari, and then Marcello Malpighi and Jan Swammerdam before Hartsoeker made his drawing in 1694. (4) Nicolaas Hartsoeker never claimed to have seen these animalcules, but simply postulated their existence as part of the spermist theory.
These errors are spread all over textbooks and in wikipedia, so it will take some undoing. Afasmit (talk) 22:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Homo doesn't mean human being, it means man. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saturn orfeo (talk • contribs) 00:04, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
surely the use of them in the babylon 5 spin off "crusade" by the technomages should be mentioned. and the use of them by the dark eldar in warhammer 40,000 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.70.5 (talk) 23:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I checked the cited source (5) and there is no mention of "the head homunculus" in the article. Thus, the entry is a fabrication and a fraud and I am removing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.8.89.15 (talk) 19:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Would a halfling from D&D be counted as one, or would it have to be smaller? Livingston 10:57, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have replaced the erroneous "Ismaili" reference for Jabir ibn Hayyan with "Muslim". Jabir ibn Hayyan was a student of Ja`far al-Sadiq who was the father of Isma`il ibn Ja`far. Hence, he predates the very existence of Ismailism itself. Please see the Wikipedia entry for Jabir ibn Hayyan for confirmation of this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.46.207.189 (talk) 07:59, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Besides the length, this section mostly lists trivia. It needs to be made shorter and put in prose format explaining the significance the subject has had on popular culture while only listing a few notable examples.24.190.34.219 (talk) 07:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that the opening paragraph is extremely nebulous. The first sentence is adequate since, homunculus does indeed have various meanings in various contexts and gives a more or less basic definition. But what does the following mean: "It is often used to illustrate the functioning of a system"? This is extremely vague and the context is not established. Is this referring to an organ system (as in biology) or systems theory or what? And why is it relevant (and what exactly does it mean) that a homunculus can be "viewed as an entity or agent" in the sense of an "unknowable prime actor"? This seems very jargon-laden for an introductory paragraph on the concept of something with as many different meanings as "homunculus." Wolfdog (talk) 14:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly! I was about to write the precise same thing. It bothers me somewhat, too. May those lines simply be deleted, then? Homunculus (strange tales) 12:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they may as well be deleted until someone can come up with some justification for having them there. Wolfdog (talk) 17:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Removed. Well done. Homunculus (strange tales) 12:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is a big tag message on it saying that the section is bad, and there shouldn't be lists of trivia. Why is it still there? I did not want to delete it out of courtesy, but what good is it serving? I would be quite willing to ignore all rules if someone could explain its purpose. Otherwise in a few days I'm going to delete it. Homunculus (duihua) 15:48, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"truly" is an error. In Searle's set-up, the man in the room does not understand Chinese at all. If AI can be mechanized, it be done as manual labor. ( Martin | talk • contribs 20:50, 29 June 2010 (UTC))[reply]
This is also a mistake. Searle is not concerned with translation, nor is the Turing Test. Searle envisions a conversation between a Chinese speaker and a computer, and suggests replacing the computer with a literate laborer and the required books in the laborer's language. His assumption that the man could work as fast as the computer is not critical to the argument, nor is the assumption that the laborer speak English.
Does the elevator come because it realizes that we want to go up? You can't tell until the door opens and you can see. ( Martin | talk • contribs 20:49, 29 June 2010 (UTC))[reply]
== Trivia moved from Article to Talk == Does anyone have any knowledge of Homunculus being used in reference to an event where a small person was hidden in a box ( in the 1900 timeframe), and when people inserted questions into the box, the person in the box would reply with the answer, misleading the people into believing that it was an intelligent machine? Frankamaher
This article may contain minor, trivial or unrelated fictional references. Trivia or references unimportant to the overall plot of a work of fiction should be edited to explain their importance or deleted.
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Homunculi can be found in centuries worth of literature.
{{In popular culture|date=November 2009}} {{Multiple issues|section=November 2009|trivia=November 2009|prose=November 2009}}
References
Howdy. Did a giant clean up of the pop culture trivia. Looks like before it was just deleted full-on, then reverted. I'm in the process of fixing up the content in relation to alchemy and will add more re: Paracelsus. Added folklore section to deal with some of the pre-Paracelsus threads.
What's up with the Homunculus argument section? No refs? I'm not sure if it belongs here at all as more than a hatnote or link. At most it should be a couple paragraphs to avoid branching, right?Car Henkel (talk) 14:01, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Peter Lorenz who is the author of "Homunkuli" is different from the politician Peter Lorenz. Is there some way of clarifying this, without going through the work of making an entry for Peter Lorenz (author) and adding a header to the article for the politician? Please don't ask me to do this, I just spent half an hour searching the web to verify this, and this is the sum total of my knowledge of the subject. I'd just like to spare anyone else the same effort - and forestall the possibility that someone will decide to make a link here to the article on the politician. TomS TDotO (talk) 14:44, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The usage and primary topic of " Homunculus " is under discussion, see Talk:Homunculus patagonicus -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:48, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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So, this guy, from what I can assume to be Eastern Europe, stuck his own sperm in a chicken egg, here, and has done several experiments involving said creations. Would these be qualified as Homunculi, or are they not worthy of being mentioned here? 2601:195:4180:1843:C1E0:E6BF:1B8A:A33B (talk) 19:40, 26 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) :
homunculus n 1: a person who is very small but who is not otherwise deformed or abnormal [syn: manikin, mannikin, homunculus] 2: a tiny fully formed individual that (according to the discredited theory of preformation) is supposed to be present in the sperm cell
The definition is difficult to interpret, both since each definition doesn't clarify context obviously: aberrations in the Western Hemisphere grow laterally yet sparse. however, in 21st century homunculus represents and resembles pre-gothic development: for instance, there are grimoires, gargantuan(s), orcs, dwarves, and definitely lots of definitions in Western Europe historical epochs to re-do cartography for future memories. The reason I mentioned these above notes has to do with the impeccable producing of theories without a hint of ambiguity. Why defeat as Dennett apparently did when we know some people are.. just like that? We learn that Western imperialism prevents a lot of movement between One-to-Many perspectivism, what is unclear and vague consists of how many definitions and foreground luring is involved with tautologies in general (recuring themes that contribute to permanent state of paradoxical absurdities.)
/We/ the people are a failed gothic predicative that surmounts the worsened and worse evils as depiction of reality, a dystopia in all upheavals and regalia that we must be a small "shadow-y" personality, let alone the psychology needed to produce such failures. It's one of the reasons America for example weakens: they don't remember since historical epochs were replaced with the concept of refuge and forgetting the past indeterminates. It's another reason most of the world has history (to remember) but additional parameters that are self-determined and well-established to bellicose the entire structure of America as fundamentally weaker than Orientals or Europeans. The proof and methodical reason to stay within the boundaries of theory has to do with little others that circumvent what "collectivity" means to us beside the banalities of alienation that prevent movement or otherwise an Other to enlarge and relinquish some kind of power/force on self and other people.
Discontents prevents the paradox ultimately since it seeks answers regarding the grail of telos and the end-of-time predicament that will happen on our Earth no matter the chaos and basic dignitary failures most of our planet will suffer in the near future... Make catastrophic events before we engage vis-a-vis each other... This is also true of creative spirits.
I can read Lacan and draw analogues of objet-petite-a (the one who gazes smaller things), or the studious example of biology that teach much like herbivores did long ago that carnivores are somehow in the upper echelon of deterministic outcomes. If I give you an aberration of growth, what happens to it is surprising since it would require deprivation to experiment and entangle the largeness (imagine our planet without a moon. it is no longer a harsh mistress but a turf that cannot be won without a zero-summation victory.) The idea of amphibians come to mind as well: enlarged growth contributes to the shrinking of populations especially (pre)mammalian since the environment and ecology demand and supply of the causal chains to finally bring prey upon it's invoker of larger sentience: even whales in the ocean eat plankton and vignette sea creatures barely visible. hence, whales are blind and deaf.. they have sense-impressions that manifold as sonars and equivocate of travel. They actually /see/ the most and such did the great Leviathan in Old Testament texts because seeing is not within the eyes but a glance to finally encounter noumena which means a small gaze that emboldens your perspective for applying substratum beyond difference or the ugly topic of repetition: it is our past that needs to grow smaller and small enough to deviate from the norms of the future so to prevent any atrocity of large people (when you look back in the past and see older ancestors as some abominable large entity to rear... something in biology tries to prevent that issue...) aka the great enigma of Oocyte and plenums of woman since a small-woman achieves orgasm as mere anticipation, unlike the theory of small statue men which was caused by woman who cannot be small, boss-worthy.. otherwise, the rest of time is spent on why woman was used as peons to clean public places when they were destroyed. The idea and point being small men exist for similar reasons, and most of the homunculus theories seem short-sighted and/or longwinded, perhaps tunnel vision of the concept.
There exists long ago the theory of transmutation and effectively in associationism the term lycanthropy, which is when women gave evil eye to men, they would appear larger and more absurd.. it's one reason women often have troubles with sexual dysfunction: they (the woman) wants a small inanimate statue to upkeep their task of communication amongst other woman, it's truly a sad story that is worse than Sophocles and Oedipus Rex since that is when spell-bounds appeared as well in 12th century or so... most done through a 'homunculus' theory.