In Neuroscience and Philosophy three prominent
philosophers and a leading neuroscientist clash over the
conceptual presuppositions of cognitive neuroscience.
The book begins with an excerpt from Maxwell Bennett and
Peter Hacker's Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
(Blackwell, 2003), which questions the conceptual
commitments of cognitive neuroscientists. Their position
is then criticized by Daniel Dennett and John Searle,
two philosophers who have written extensively on the
subject, and Bennett and Hacker in turn respond. Their
impassioned debate encompasses a wide range of central
themes: the nature of consciousness, the bearer and
location of psychological attributes, the
intelligibility of so-called brain maps and
representations, the notion of qualia, the coherence of
the notion of an intentional stance, and the
relationships between mind, brain, and body.Clearly
argued and thoroughly engaging, the authors present
fundamentally different conceptions of philosophical
method, cognitive-neuroscientific explanation, and human
nature, and their exchange will appeal to anyone
interested in the relation of mind to brain, of
psychology to neuroscience, of causal to rational
explanation, and of consciousness to self-consciousness.
In his conclusion Daniel Robinson (member of the
philosophy faculty at Oxford University and
Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Georgetown
University) explains why this confrontation is so
crucial to the understanding of neuroscientific
research. The project of cognitive neuroscience, he
asserts, depends on the incorporation of human nature
into the framework of science itself. In Robinson's
estimation, Dennett and Searle fail to support this
undertaking; Bennett and Hacker suggest that the project
itself might be based on a conceptual mistake. Exciting
and challenging, Neuroscience and Philosophy is an
exceptional introduction to the philosophical problems
raised by cognitive neuroscience. |
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