PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF NEUROSCIENCE

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1. telxosisJul 2026
   No offense, but you are just aren't that well read if you are mentioning Godel, Escher, Bach as proof of how much you are going to learn.

   This post is irony at a base level.

   You ultimately have to sift through a lot of books to get past popular books like Godel, Escher, Bach and on to something like Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience.

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2. beezlebroxxxxxxJan 2025
   That claim has a very robust history in philosophy of mind. Peter Hacker and M.R. Bennett, a philosopher and a neuroscientist respectively, cowrote Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience[0]. There was also a fascinating response and discussion in a further book with Daniel Dennett and John Searle called Neuroscience and Philosophy[1]. Both books are excellent and have fascinating arguments and counter-arguments; you get very clear pictures of fundamentally different pictures of the human mind and the role and idea of neuroscience.

   [0]: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Philosophical+Foundations+of+Neu...

   [1]: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/neuroscience-and-philosophy/97...

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3. mabub24Aug 2017
   The original comment I was responding to in the article was concerning the ways humans were unique from animals. I'm not describing intelligence full stop, or claiming that animals are the basis for intelligence or reasoning. I'm not saying animals need to be like humans to be intelligent. My point is that the thing that makes humans unique from animals is our ability to reason, our cogitative powers.

   They don't need to do it in the same way humans do; they don't do it in the same way humans do. In the absence of language, they have no way of expressing the depths of cogitation in the same way humans can.

   In regards to your last question, I have found PMS Hacker a particularly compelling author in this area. He is a very good analytical philosopher. His works are peer-reviewed, and extensively researched and amply sourced. He's an established professional philosopher. He has also written extensively with M.R. Bennet, an established neuroscientist with many papers, a good book of theirs is: The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-140510838X...)

   I'm not a professional scientist, I don't have access to papers. I have access to books.

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4. nerdfilesJan 2013
   1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiztsaCSds

   2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZx93eov5i4

   They may add clarity and precision where I have made a gloss.

   PMS Hacker and most Wittgensteinians come to this conclusion; it is largely the reason why they find any value in Freudian/Gestalt psychology: for the fact that these brands of psychology avoid, as much as they can, reductionist, and this is for the fact that their theories depend on building metanarratives _on top of_ "folk psychology" rather than attempting to undercut folk psychology with some more primitive theory. The whole debate turns on which theories have better "explanatory power" while preserving our intuitive notions of the brain. Wittgenstein criticized Freudians for mistaking "decision" for "discovery"; and this is exactly what "Crypto-Cartesians" do except what is discover is not a psychological law à la Freud, but rather a neurological law. Now, of course, in their own worlds, these laws make sense; there are law like relations between, say, joy and pain; their are laws between synaptic path/subsystems and the behavior of neurons. However, talking about those laws does not give us direct insight into the _organism for which those laws have constituted_.

   It should be clear that if free will is not possible, then we must wonder why we decided to look inside the brain, rather than the foot, to discover why it is not possible. The problem, like with the Freudians, is that identity claims like You === Your Brain are a matter of decision, not discovery. We might decide and agree such identity claims, but not without doing severe damage to the common language which we use to identify correlations and criteria which support as evidence those claims.

   What these scientists are trying to do is make their position _compelling_; that is the fundamental problem here since engaging in such "justificatory" activity is a feature of science itself (i.e., peer review). This feature of the structure of scientific practice, by and large, makes it "absurd, on its face." These scientists attempt to pass off as discovery what can, by the nature of science itself, only be suggestion, persuasion, justification.

   Please also review "[The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/369939.Philosophical_Foun...)."

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5. nerdfilesJun 2012
   We think into language. We do not think in language.

   The former is a more consistent notion than the latter. More consistent with the evidence, etc. cited. Thinking 'in' language implies passivity and representation, thinking into language implies evolutionarily novel linguistic production, autonomy of mind, etc.

   Please review The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience.

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6. dunefoxNov 2021
   Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, An Introductory Course in Computational Neuroscience, and Principles of Neural Design - all bought used for an okay price. Not exactly very theoretical books, but the topic fascinated me recently and I have to get started somewhere. Recommendations always welcome.

   Edit: I even have another half a dozen of them in my cart, but I can't keep buying books...

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