“Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator. In other words, nothing that is, in so far as it appears, exists in the singular; everything that is is meant to be perceived by somebody. Not Man but men inhabit this planet. Plurality is the law of the earth.”
Hannah Arendt
Abstract
Face recognition depends upon the uniqueness of each human face. This is accomplished by the patterns formed by the unique relationship among face features. Unique face-patterns are produced by the intrusion of random factors into the process of biological growth and development. Processes are described which enable a unique face-pattern to be represented as a percept in the visual sensory system. The components of the face recognition system are analyzed as is the manner in which the precept is connected through microcircuits to a memory file so that the history of a perceiver’s encounters with a familiar face enables the perceiver to access a memory store that is a record of the outcome of past encounters with the perceived. The importance of the face recognition system in enabling humans to individuate members the social group is discussed, as well as the importance of face recognition in the development of the individual’s social identity and ability to be a collaborative member of the social groups to which it belongs. The role of prosopagnosia—the inability to recognize familiar faces—in furthering an understanding of the face recognition system is examined, as is its importance in demonstrating the crucial nature of face recognition in human social functions. It is proposed that human face recognition is not a unique phenomenon but is an elaboration of processes existing in nonhuman primates as well as in lower animals.
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Notes
We have previously discussed the mechanisms by which such transfers are established. The transferred patterns become representations in the form of neuronal ensembles in mammalian sensory systems (Swan and Goldberg 2010; Goldberg and Rosenblum 2013; Goldberg and Swan 2011). We called these representations “brain-objects” and noted the requirement that they must represent with fidelity the morphological patterns of the objects in the environment which they represent. Representations in mammals also depend on the presence of extensive, high resolution, receptor sheets such as the retina, cochlear membrane, and mechanoreceptors in finger pads (Goldberg and Swan 2011).
See a discussion on the formation of brain-objects in Swan and Goldberg (2010).
The timing of the word identification process from stimulus onset to vocalization of the identified word is discussed in detail in Goldberg and Rosenblum (2013).
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Leonard Rosenblum for his invaluable help in the development of the concepts presented in this paper.
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Goldberg, L.J. Face Recognition and the Social Individual. Biosemiotics 6, 573–583 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-013-9188-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-013-9188-2