 A further problem with Samuels’s primitivism is that some “biological” (i.e. not psychologically explainable) events can have pronounced psychological effects over an individual’s lifetime. For example, someone who undergoes brain trauma or suffers from the overuse of pharmaceuticals might thereby acquire certain beliefs or behaviors. Phineas Gage, the 19th century railroad worker who became famous for surviving a massive brain injury, is reported to have acquired several new personality traits after an iron rod pierced his prefrontal cortex (Twomey 2010). Samuels worries that according to primitivism such traits would be innate since they cannot, by hypothesis, be explained in psychological terms. He worries that this would be highly counterintuitive.