The Numskulls

Jamal

One of the most memorable comic strips from my childhood was The Numskulls. It's about a group of technicians who live inside a man's head, receiving inputs and controlling his actions. The implication is that everyone has numskulls in their head.

The Numskulls themselves are:

Brainy: head Numskull, in charge of the brain.
Blinky: controls vision and the eyes.
Radar: controls hearing and the ears.
Snitch: controls smell and the nose.
Cruncher: controls taste and the mouth.

In one particularly fascinating story, shown below (click to view larger), the man is on stage having his mind read by Mario the Mind Reader, who asks him to think of any number and he'll read it from his mind. Within the man's head, Brainy is reading off the number from the teleprinter, which seems to be where the man's thoughts are printed out. Brainy reads the number and says "11089—I'd better hold on to this bit of paper! I've got a shocking memory!" Then a numskull from the mind-reader's head breaks in, demands to see the number and beats up Brainy to get it before running back to the mind-reader's head. The mind-reader, continuing his stage act, writes the number down and asks the man to say out loud what it is. By that time Brainy has recovered from his beating but the piece of paper is upside down, so the man ends up saying "68011".

What is the metaphysics of mind lying behind this, and is it consistent? And the question that as far as I know the strip never faces up to: are the Numskulls controlled by their own numskulls?

Mongrel

Brainy has a shocking memory. Nerves are tiny electrical devices. X-) They're in the wrong rooms, though. Blinky should be in Radar's room.

hunterkf5732

↪jamalrob

The recent kids movie "Inside Out'' shares this same idea of miniature ''people'' living inside our minds,and controlling the things we do,the decisions we make,etc.You'd enjoy checking it out.

A flaw,however,that both of these pieces of literature have is that they make it seem as if these numskulls themselves have personalities of their own,thus leading to the natural question of whether they have ''sub-numskulls'' of their own,living inside their heads.

And this infinite regress,I think,could be avoided if you simply made these numskulls representative of individual and distinct aspects of mental states.

For an example,you could have a numskull who represents the emotion of happiness and nothing more,which would thus reduce this numskull to a mere emblem of living joy,thus deleting his personality.The same would apply to the numskulls representing other aspects of the mind.Now the question of sub-numskulls is answered since these numskulls couldn't possibly have any sub-numskulls since they don't have any personality in the first place.

BC

The phantasy of the numbskull or bureaucratic brain is compelling: Control rooms, warning lights or bells, teletype printers or LED screens, lots of printed circuitry, wiring, or pneumatic tubes delivering messages (depends how steam punkish one's brain is) -- it's a nice way of representing how we think we think. Here, as in the cartoon, there has to be a final (or ultimate) source of an idea, emotion, physical act, etc. Mental activity can't be represented in its full, multidimensional, multilevel, multi-sourced reality because we can't imagine too many complicated things happening all at the same time.

One could more accurately picture one's brain-control room as a large room filled with functionaries who are milling about, chatting, arguing, looking at dials, working at lab tables, and so on. The conscious mind is in the middle of the room trying to make sense of everything else. If Mr. Brainy is the conscious mind, then he needs the unconscious mind to be hard at work below deck and sending up messages to him, as needed, and whether needed or not.

More accurate, more verisimilitude, but I can't manage simultaneous dialogue and stage directions for more than one or two characters in this drama at a time.

Punshhh

We do have numbskulls in a way. In the sense that our selves are supported by a group of individually acting cells, cooperating and working in concert. Each of us is a multicellular colony with differing cells tailored to different tasks and cooperating to "be" a fully conscious self, with a mind and able to do metaphysics.

The Numskulls

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