Dennetts response to Bennett and Hackers Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (original) (raw)
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In an intellectual atmosphere still marked by the ideological failures of the twentieth century, the expectations for neuroscience are extremely high, even in fields traditionally sheltered from the seductions of neurobiological explanations, such as political theory, sociology and philosophy. In an attempt to problematize the reception that this neuroscientific vocabulary has received, I provide in this article a cartography of three major lines of philosophical criticism of neuroscience – ‘conceptual’, ‘societal’ and ‘embodied-enactive’ – put forward recently by philosophers of different intellectual traditions. Although these criticisms are important in shedding light on some epistemological inconsistencies of the neuroscientific programme, the need remains to supplement this philosophical work with a different kind of critique, one that could address more directly the social and political relevance of neuroscience as well understand our epoch's urge to ‘turn neurobiological’ previously cultural or sociological phenomena.
Bennett and Hacker on Neural Materialism
In their recent book Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Max Bennett and Peter Hacker attack neural materialism (NM), the view, roughly, that mental states (events, processes, etc.) are identical with neural states or material properties of neural states (events, processes, etc.). Specifically, in the penultimate chapter entitled " Reductionism, " they argue that NM is unintelligible, that " there is no sense to literally identifying neural states and configurations with psychological attributes. " This is a provocative claim indeed. If Bennett and Hacker are right, then a sizeable number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, etc., subscribe to a view that is not merely false, but strictly meaningless. In this article I show that Bennett and Hacker's arguments against NM, whether construed as arguments for the meaninglessness of or the falsity of the thesis, cannot withstand scrutiny: when laid bare they are found to rest upon highly dubious assumptions that either seriously mischaracterize or underestimate the resources of the thesis.
In Defense of Some ‘Cartesian’ Assumptions Concerning the Brain and Its Operation
Biology and Philosophy, 2003
I argue against a growing radical trend in current theoretical cognitive science that moves from the premises of embedded cognition, embodied cognition, dynamical systems theory and/or situated robotics to conclusions either to the effect that the mind is not in the brain or that cognition does not require representation, or both. I unearth the considerations at the foundation of this view: Haugeland’s bandwidth-component argument to the effect that the brain is not a component in cognitive activity, and arguments inspired by dynamical systems theory and situated robotics to the effect that cognitive activity does not involve representations. Both of these strands depend not only on a shift of emphasis from higher cognitive functions to things like sensorimotor processes, but also depend on a certain under- standing of how sensorimotor processes are implemented - as closed-loop control systems. I describe a much more sophisticated model of sensorimotor processing that is not only more powerful and robust than simple closed-loop control, but for which there is great evidence that it is implemented in the nervous system. The is the emulation theory of representation, according to which the brain constructs inner dynamical models, or emulators, of the body and environment which are used in parallel with the body and environment to enhance motor control and perception and to provide faster feedback during motor processes, and can be run off-line to produce imagery and evaluate sensorimotor counterfactuals. I then show that the emulation framework is immune to the radical arguments, and makes apparent why the brain is a component in the cognitive activity, and exactly what the representations are in sensorimotor control.
(2012) Cognitive neuroscience versus epistemologically different worlds
Bucharest University Press, 2010
Content Introduction ...................................................................... 9 1. The hyperverse versus the “unicorn-world” ................. 15 1.1 The oldest paradigm of human thinking: the unicornworld .......................................................................... 15 1.2 The Epistemologically Different Worlds (EDWs) ...... 16 2. The “I” as an epistemological world .............................. 31 2.1 The physical human subject ......................................... 31 2.2 Llinas' view regarding the brain, the body and the external world .............................................................. 43 2.3 The human subjectivity or the “I” as an EW ............... 55 2.4 The principle of “correspondence” within the EDWs perspective ................................................................... 67 2.5 Frith’s approach to the mind-body problem and the EDWs perspective ........................................................ 73 3. The surrealistic “extension of the mind” ....................... 90 3.1 Clark’s robots and the EDWs ...................................... 90 3.2 Clark’s strong “embodied cognition” .......................... 108 3.3 One attack against Clark’s position: the “couplingconstitution fallacy” ..................................................... 118 3.4 Gestures and thoughts .................................................. 124 3.5 Noë’s “sensorimotor dependencies” and Clark’s “hybrid” model ............................................................ 130 4. Representations, “emulators”, and Descartes’ ghost ... 144 4.1 Grush’s new Cartesian framework .............................. 144 4.2 Wheeler and the “Cartesian psychology” .................... 156 8 5. “Mental mechanisms” and the phantoms of levels ......... 164 5.1 Bechtel’s notion of “mechanism” ................................ 164 5.2 Decomposability and localization of the mechanisms . 179 5.3 “What is it like to be a cell?” ....................................... 199 5.4 What fMRI “decomposition” and “localization” are good for? ...................................................................... 214 5.5 The self, its “freedom” and “dignity” .......................... 220 6. “Molecules and cells” versus cognition and life .............. 223 6.1 Bickle’s “molecular and cellular cognition” approach . 223 6.2 Cells and life in Kauffman’s theory of complexity ..... 239 7. Matter in the hyperverse ................................................... 260 7.1 Particles vs. fields (waves) ........................................... 263 7.2 Gravity and Newton vs. Einstein ................................. 277 7.3 Other problematic notions from physics ...................... 283 7.4 The hyperspace versus the hyperverse ......................... 302 Conclusion .............................................................................. 314 Reference ................................................................................ 321
Psychological Concepts in Cognitive Neuroscience
PROMETHEUS, 2020
Psychological Concepts in Cognitive Neuroscience: Some remarks On Bennett & Hacker's Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. The use of psychological concepts in cognitive neuroscience is heavily criticized by Bennett & Hacker's Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. The central objections to neuroscience's attribution to the brain of psychological concepts that are meaningful only when applied to the entire being. That is supposedly the case of "seeing," "communicating," and "reading." Bennett & Hacker identify in such attributions what they call a mereological fallacy. The critical revision of Bennett & Hacker's argument is an opportunity to present the debate about philosophy and psychological neuroscience and outline a Wittgensteinian perspective about the meaning of psychological concepts, its interest, and its relevance to scientific research. KEYWORDS: Cognitive Neuroscience. Philosophy of Mind. Wittgenstein. RESUMO: O uso de conceitos psicológicos na neurociência cognitiva é fortemente criticado por Bennett & Hacker em Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Sua objeção central dirige-se à atribuição ao cérebro pela neurociência de conceitos psicológicos que são significativos apenas quando aplicados a todo o ser. Esse é supostamente o caso de "ver", "comunicar" e "ler". Bennett & Hacker identificam em tais atribuições o que eles chamam de falácia mereológica. A revisão crítica do argumento de Bennett & Hacker é uma oportunidade para apresentar o debate sobre filosofia e neurociência psicológica e delinear uma perspectiva wittgensteiniana sobre o significado dos conceitos psicológicos, seu interesse e sua relevância para a pesquisa científica.
Gabriel Vacariu (2012) Cognitive neuroscience versus epistemologically different worlds
Bucharest University Press, 2021
CONTENT Introduction .................................................................................. 9 1. The unexpected: “Epistemologically Different Worlds” .......... 15 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................ 15 1.2 Definitions .......................................................................... 16 1.3 Propositions for its .............................................................. 18 1.4 Propositions for Its and being ............................................ 24 1.5 The hyperverse ................................................................... 30 2. A general view on cognitive neuroscience................................ 37 3. Optimism for localization and the “mind reading”................... 58 3.1 Bechtel’s optimism ............................................................. 58 3.2 Gallant’s laboratory work................................................... 67 3.3 Other optimistic works ....................................................... 75 4. Skepticism in cognitive neuroscience....................................... 81 4.1 Hardcastle’s skepticism ...................................................... 81 4.2 Uttal’s skepticism ............................................................... 88 5. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) of fMRI and local field potentials (LFPs)............................................................. 107 6. The localization problem (segmentation vs. integration) ......... 126 7. The binding problem ................................................................ 138 7.1 Introduction ....................................................................... 138 7.2 The “Feature-Integration Theory” (FIT)............................. 146 7.3 The synchrony or temporal coding theory (temporal binding). 153 7.3.1 Oscillations – a general framework ....................... 153 7.3.2 More details about frequency bands, activated neural areas and cognitive functions ........................ 160 8 7.3.3 Gamma range in visual cognition ............................. 168 7.3.4 Communication among neural areas through synchronized oscillations.......................................... 177 7.3.5 The main critics for temporal coding hypothesis... 187 8. Perception and object recognition ........................................... 194 8.1 Perception and object recognition.................................... 194 8.2 A few words about other notions in cognitive neuroscience .................................................................... 210 9. Space and the mind................................................................... 218 10. Crossmodal interactions ......................................................... 244 11. Holism in cognitive neuroscience........................................... 254 11.1 The parts-whole relationship ........................................... 254 11.2 Raichle’s default network............................................... 269 11.3 Conscious and unconscious mental states...................... 278 12. Fingelkurts’ approach or the status of cognitive neuroscience........................................................................... 293 Conclusion: The status of cognitive neuroscience: “No ontology landscape”..................................... 317