Philosophy of Neuroscience

Is the sense of smell a source of aesthetic perception? Traditional philosophical aesthetics has centered on vision and audition but eliminated smell for its subjective and inherently affective character. This article dismantles the myth that olfaction is an unsophisticated sense. It makes a case for olfactory aesthetics by integrating recent insights in neuroscience with traditional expertise about flavor and fragrance assessment in perfumery and wine tasting. My analysis concerns the importance of observational refinement in aesthetic experience. I argue that the active engagement with stimulus features in perceptual processing shapes the phenomenological content, so much so that the perceptual structure of trained smelling varies significantly from naive smelling. In a second step, I interpret the processes that determine such perceptual refinement in the context of neural decision-making processes, and I end with a positive outlook on how research in neuroscience can be used to benefit philosophical aesthetics.

How much does stimulus input shape perception? The common-sense view is that our
perceptions are representations of objects and their features and that the stimulus structures the perceptual object. The problem for this view concerns perceptual biases as responsible for distortions and the subjectivity of perceptual experience. These biases are increasingly studied as constitutive factors of brain processes in recent neuroscience. In neural network models the brain is said to cope with the plethora of sensory information by predicting stimulus regularities on the basis of previous experiences. Drawing on this development, this chapter analyses perceptions as processes. Looking at olfaction as a model system, it argues for the need to abandon a stimulus- centred perspective, where smells are thought of as stable percepts, computationally linked to external objects such as odorous molecules. Perception here is presented as a measure of changing signal ratios in an environment informed by expectancy effects from top-down processes.

Neuromania has extended to the study of sex and gender, and there is a widespread desire to try to explain differences between the male and female genders through neuroscientific evidence. However, this “evidence” is tainted by cultural projections onto the findings. The desire to inject neuroscience into the cultural agenda to identify gender differences is yet another manifestation of neuromania and the arrogance of the belief that neuroscience is an infallible discipline that speaks to philosophical notions of the self with unprecedented precision. In reality, “the goal of many neuroscience studies is to add to an ever-growing catalogue of male-female differences”  In other words, neuroscience is merely a cog in the machine of the cultural waging of dissent on women, intersexuals, and any other gender identities.

Philosophical issues such as free will and the role of consciousness in human action have become a topic of interest to neuroscience. While this contribution is of great value to extend our knowledge on these issues, the lack of clarity about the concepts being investigated may interfere with the interpretation of the relevant results. An interesting experiment (Bode et al., 2011) that investigates whether decisions are generated consciously or unconsciously suggests a conclusion about whether human beings decide freely. These issues are considered relevant philosophical issues, but the experiment lacks conceptual precision, and this weighs on the interpretations of data and results. I argue that further conceptual analysis of decisions shows that the experiment investigates one kind of decision, while it unwarrantedly draws conclusions about human decisions in general. A better understanding of what is considered to be a decision helps clarify to which extent the results show that decisions are generated unconsciously. This shows that conceptual precision is crucial for research on the area as well as methodological rigor.

Assessing the scientific status of theories of consciousness is often a difficult task. In this paper, I explore the dialectic between the Integrated Information Theory (Oizumi et al., 2014; Tononi et al., 2016) and a recently proposed criticism of that theory: the 'unfolding argument' (Doerig et al., 2019). I show that the phenomenology-first approach in consciousness research can lead to valid scientific theories of consciousness. I do this by highlighting the two reasons why the unfolding argument fails: first, phenomenology-first theories are grounded, not circular. Second, falsificationism does not provide an adequate demarcation criterion in philosophy of science. I conclude that this specific debate has significance for how, in general, consciousness researchers test and criticize theories of consciousness, and how dismissing the phenomenology-first methodology in favour of a third person-based methodology means endorsing a position in philosophy of mind that has already been challenged.

Among those who reflect on the nature of neuroscience, there is a view about its scope and limits which we will call, with a certain amount of historical license, the neuron doc-trine.1 Roughly, the neuron doctrine is the view that the framework within which the science of ...

Each living creature exists as a unit, as self. Understanding the self, then should be a major goal of scientific research. This volume takes stock of current understanding of the self and its relation to the brain, and considers future directions for scientific research in a multidisciplinary context.

BACKGROUND:
In spite of its indusrial usefulness and varied daily uses, lead (Pb) pollution is a widespread ecological problem that faces the humans in the 21th century. Pb was found to produces a wide range of toxic effects including neurotoxicity especially to the developing and young offspring. Recently, the utilization of herbal plants has received a significant attention where there has been rising awareness in their therapeutic use; among these is the garlic.
AIM OF THE WORK:
In light of the above, the current study is designed experimentally in female pregnant rats in order to investigate the beneficial role of garlic extract in the protection from the maternal and fetal cerebellar damage that produced by administration of different doses of Pb during pregnancy.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
Positively pregnant female rats were divided into five groups; one control group, two Pb-treated groups (exposed to 160 and 320 mg/kg b.wt. of Pb, respectively) and two groups treated with both Pb and garlic (exposed to Pb as previous groups together with 250 mg/ kg b.wt. /day of garlic extract). Treatments started from day 1 till day 20 of pregnancy, where the mother rats of different experimental groups were sacrified to obtain the fetuses. Pb level in the maternal nd fetal blood and cerebellum was estimated by spectrophotometry. Specimens of the cerebellum of different mother and fetal groups were processed to histological and immunohistochemical staining for microscopic examination.
RESULTS:
The results showed that administration of Pb to pregnant rats resulted in a dose-dependent toxicity for both mothers and fetuses in the form of decrease of maternal weight gain, placental and fetal weights, brain weight and diminished fetal growth parameters, which were prominent in rat's group treated with larger dose of Pb. In Pb-treated rats, Pb level in blood and cerebellum was high when compared to the control. The histopathological examination of the cerebellum of treated dams and fetuses showed marked alterations mainly in the form of Purkinje cell degeneration and lack of deveopmet of fetal cerebellum. Co-treatment of garlic extract along with Pb resulted in a significant decrease in Pb levels as compared with those treated with Pb alone with improvement of the histopathological changes.
CONCLUSIONS:
This study was useful in evaluating the hazardous effects of uncontrolled use of Pb in general and in assessing the developmental and neurotoxicity of fetuses due to exposure during pregnancy in particular. Co-administration of garlic has beneficial effects in amelioration of Pb-induced neurotoxicity and reversing the histopathological changes of the cerebellum of mother rats and fetuses.
KEYWORDS:
garlic; glial fibrillary acidic protein; lead; purkinje cells

Special issue of "Culture Unbound". Through an introduction and six original articles, the issue investigates a variety of cultural and scientific discourses and practices that in different ways are related to neuroscience and the brain.

The special issue was edited by guest editors Peter Bengtsen and Kristofer Hansson.

Decades of cognition research have shown that external stimuli “spark” neural patterns in particular regions of the brain. This has fostered a view of the brain as a space that we can map: here the brain responds to faces, there it perceives a sensation in your left hand. But it turns out that the sense of smell—only recently attracting broader attention in neuroscience—doesn’t work this way. A. S. Barwich asks a deceptively simple question: What does the nose tell the brain, and how does the brain understand it?

Barwich interviews experts in neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, and perfumery in an effort to understand the biological mechanics and myriad meanings of odors. She argues that it is time to stop recycling ideas based on the paradigm of vision for the olfactory system. Scents are often fickle and boundless in comparison with visual images, and they do not line up with well-defined neural regions. Although olfaction remains a puzzle, Barwich proposes that what we know suggests the brain acts not only like a map but also as a measuring device, one that senses and processes simple and complex odors.

Accounting for the sense of smell upsets theories of perception philosophers have developed. In their place, Smellosophy articulates a new model for understanding how the brain represents sensory information.

It is often said, especially in philosophy and the neuroscience literature, that Skinner defended an anti-physiological position on the explanation of behavior. Aside from this, behavior analysts who discuss the relation between behavior analysis and physiology usually emphasize the independence of these two fields. Amid criticisms of Skinner's allegedly anti-physiological position and behavior analysts' defense of their discipline as an autonomous science, there is comparatively little discussion of Skinner's positive views on physiology. The goal of this paper is to present an analysis of these views, taking into account Skinner's writings from the 1930's to the 1990's. Among the topics to be discussed are the definition of the object of study of physiology, its role in the explanation of behavior, and the relation between behavior-analytic and physiological explanations. I pay special attention to Skinner's use of physiological hypotheses in developing his theories of private events and perception, and I hope to counteract the ill-founded notion that Skinner was always opposed to physiology in the study of behavior.

The " Natural Problem of Consciousness " is the problem of understanding why there are presently conscious beings at all. Given a non-reductive naturalist framework taking consciousness as an ontologically subjective biological phenomenon, how can we rationally explain the fact that the actual world has turned out to be one where there are presently living beings that can feel, rather than having developed as a zombie-world in which there would be no conscious experiences of any kind? This book introduces the Natural Problem by relating it to central problems in the philosophy of mind (metaphysical mind-body problem, Hard Problem of consciousness) and emphasizing the distinctive interest of its diachronic dimension. Ranging from philosophy to biology and neuroscience, it offers a thorough analysis aimed at better understanding what could explain why phenomenal consciousness has been preserved throughout evolution by natural selection. This is an original, engaging, and thought provoking philosophical study of a neglected but fundamental question regarding the nature and origin of consciousness.

I develop a distinction between two types of psychological hedonism. Inferential hedonism (or “I-hedonism”) holds that each person only has ultimate desires regarding his or her own hedonic states (pleasure and pain). Reinforcement hedonism (or “R–hedonism”) holds that each person's ultimate desires, whatever their contents are, are differentially reinforced in that person’s cognitive system only by virtue of their association with hedonic states. I’ll argue that accepting R-hedonism and rejecting I-hedonism provides a conciliatory position on the traditional altruism debate, and that it coheres well with the neuroscientist Anthony Dickinson’s theory about the evolutionary function of hedonic states, the “hedonic interface theory.” Finally, I’ll defend R-hedonism from potential objections.

This brief article presents a sketch of a possible philosophy of the human brain, in the context of the human person. It is inspired in the philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. It was read in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council of Culture (17 November 2017).

.....the double bind as constituting an entirely new, non-material, principle of evolution, major conceptual revisions may need to be made in our general understanding of evolution as contained within the “modern evolutionary synthesis”.

KEYWORDS:
behavior, communication, context, contradiction, deutero-learning, double bind, epistemology, evolution, incompleteness theorum, kinesics, learning, logical type theory, metacommunication, metamessages, metatheory, mystification, paradox, relationships, schismogenesis, schizophrenia,  scientific elegance, symmathesy, teleology, temporality, transcontextual, transdisciplinary, trauma

In Neurocognitive Mechanisms Gualtiero Piccinini presents the most systematic, rigorous, and comprehensive philosophical defence to date of the computational theory of cognition. His view posits that cognition involves neural computation within multilevel neurocognitive mechanisms, and includes novel ideas about ontology, functions, neural representation, neural computation, and consciousness. He begins by defending an ontologically egalitarian account of composition and realization, according to which all levels are equally real. He then explicates multiple realizability and mechanisms within this ontologically egalitarian framework, defends a goal-contribution account of teleological functions, and defends a mechanistic version of functionalism. This provides the foundation for a mechanistic account of computation, which in turn clarifies the ways in which the computational theory of cognition is a multilevel mechanistic theory supported by contemporary cognitive neuroscience.

Piccinini argues that cognition is computational at least in a generic sense. He defends the computational theory of cognition from standard objections, yet also rebuts putative a priori arguments. He contends that the typical vehicles of neural computations are representations, and that, contrary to the received view, the representations posited by the computational theory of cognition are observable and manipulatable in the laboratory. He also contends that neural computations are neither digital nor analog; instead, neural computations are sui generis. He concludes by investigating the relation between computation and consciousness, suggesting that consciousness may be a functional phenomenon without being computational in nature. This book will be of interest to philosophers of cognitive science as well as neuroscientists.

It’s fashionable to maintain that in the near future we can become immortal by uploading our minds to artificial computers. Mind uploading requires three assumptions: (1) that we can construct realistic computational simulations of human brains; (2) that realistic computational simulations of human brains would have conscious minds like those possessed by the brains being simulated; (3) that the minds of the simulated brains survive through the simulation. I will argue that the first two assumptions are implausible and the third is false. Therefore, we will not upload our mind to computers and, most likely, we will not upload anything resembling our mind to computers.

This paper aims to show that the thought of Aristotle can shed much light on the irksomeproblems that lurk around the philosophical foundations of neuroscience. First, we will explorethe ramifications of Aristotle’s mereological principle, namely, that it is not the eye that sees, butthe human person that sees by the eye. Next, we shall draw upon the riches of Maxwell Bennett’sand Peter Hacker’s Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (=PFN) in order to elucidate howAristotle’s mereological principle can be of service to contemporary neuroscientists, psychologists,and philosophers. In the third and fourth parts we aim to complement the project of PFN byshowing how Aristotle’s philosophical anthropology and doctrine of pros hen equivocation canstrengthen PFN’s response to eliminativists, reductionists, and other critics of “folk psychology.”Finally, our last section will investigate the kinds of correlations involved in brain scanningtechniques, such as fMRI, so as to determine whether the most recent empirical discoveries do infact support various critics’ rejection of “folk psychology.” We will show that the empiricalevidence does not in fact favor eliminativist or reductionist views, and that we would do well toturn to the more Aristotelian approaches to neuroscience adopted by PFN and ourselves.

Estudiamos en estas páginas la temática de la dualidad alma/cuerpo o espíritu/cuerpo. Es una cuestión tradicional en la filosofía, presente también en las creencias religiosas. El problema tiene que ver con la constitución misma del ser humano, es decir, es un problema esencialmente antropológico. Modernamente se plantea a veces, en la filosofía, en términos de dualidad mente/cuerpo, o mente/cerebro, sin que estas formulaciones excluyan necesariamente a las anteriores, que son más clásicas. En la actual filosofía de la mente éste es el primer problema que aparece cuando se trata de decir qué es la mente, y lo mismo sucede en los abordajes más o menos filosóficos intentados desde las neurociencias. Suelen señalarse diversas posiciones al respecto. Casi siempre son variedades de dualismos o monismos. La gente (científicos,
profesores, estudiantes) tiene muchas veces un fondo de creencias religiosas, de formación filosófica y de mentalidad científica que les motiva para tomar una posición ante la cuestión. En estas páginas intentaremos justificar la legitimidad de la afirmación de la existencia de algo no corpóreo en el hombre, llamémosle alma o espíritu, y de su compatibilidad con los conocimientos neurocientíficos.

This article is the second part of a two-part essay. The first part was published as: "Hylomorphic Animalism, Emergentism, and the Challenge of New Mechanisms in Neuroscience" Scientia et Fides 5 (2) /2017, 9-38

Abstract for Part II:
This article, the second of a two-part essay, outlines a solution to certain tensions in Thomist philosophical anthropology concerning the interaction of the human person's immaterial intellectual or noetic operations with the psychosomatic sensory operations that are constituted from the formal organization of the nervous system. Continuing with where the first part left off, I argue that Thomists should not be tempted by strong emergentist accounts of mental operations that act directly on the brain, but should maintain, with Aquinas, that noetic operations directly interact with psychosomatic operations. I develop a Thomist account of noetic-psychosomatic interactions that expands upon the first part's rapprochement between the new mechanist philosophy of neuroscience and psychology and hylomorphic animalism. I argue that noetic-psychosomatic interactions are best understood as analogous to the way diverse higher and lower order psychosomatic powers interact by actualizing, coordinating, and directing the operations of other psychosomatic powers. I draw on James Ross's arguments for the immateriality of intellectual operations as realizing definite pure functions in order to elucidate the way noetic operations uniquely actualize, coordinate, and direct the psychosomatic operations they interact with. I conclude with a conjectural sketch of how this presentation of Thomist philosophical anthropology understands the noetic and psychosomatic deficits brought about by damage to the nervous system.

Inhalt
Christoph Binkelmann: Objektivismus, Naturalismus und Ich
Über den Grund des Erkennens in Hegels Jenaer Metaphysik
Wibke Rogge: Ist das Dasein das Bewusstsein? Systematische Äquivalenz von Seinslogik und Selbstbewusstsein bei Hegel
Cristiana Senigaglia: Neurophilosophie, virtuelle Realität und der Standpunkt des Bewusstseins
Rainer Schmitz: »Ich, das Wir, und Wir, das Ich ist.« Das Ich zwischen Verdopplung und Verschwinden
Henrike Lerch: Vom Du zum Ding. Ernst Cassirers Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis im Ausgang des Ausdruckphänomens
Sebastian Ullrich: ›Ich‹, ›Du‹ und ›Es‹ als immanente Reflexionspositionen des Bildens. Ein Interpretationsvorschlag zu Ernst Cassirers Theorie der Basisphänomene
Federico Italiano: Der Nexus Mensch-Erde. Eine phänomenologische Annäherung an die Geopoetik
Lars Leeten: Wen meine ich, wenn ich ›wir‹ sage? Elemente der Ersten Person Plural
Monika Roscher: Perspektive als ästhetische Distanz
Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz: Der Status des Subjekts oder die persönliche Identität – was genau wird durch das intersubjektive Verhältnis gestiftet?
Cristiana Senigaglia: Die Frage der Subjektivität in der multimedialen Welt
Nico Nuyens: Cassirers Theorie der Subjektivität
Arthur Kok: Der freie Wille und das determinierte Gehirn
Kai Gregor: Gehirnparadox und Vernunft? Die Paradoxien des naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbildes zwischen Schopenhauer und Fichte
Burkhard Nonnenmacher: »Genau zu reden, hat also die Organisation der Natur nichts Analogisches mit irgend einer Causalität, die wir kennen.« –
Was sieht die Transzendentalphilosophie dennoch, was der Naturalismus im Inneren der Mühle gerade nicht sieht?
Sergueï Spetschinsky: Die Natur in der Kritik der Urteilskraft von Kant
Gianluca Mendola: Geist und Natur. Hegels nicht-materialistischer Materialismus
Andreas Woyke: »Gute« und »schlechte« Metaphysik in zweierlei Hinsicht?
Von der romantischen Naturforschung zur Restitution eines ganzheitlichen Naturverständnisses
Nico Nuyens: Ernst Cassirer and the Theory of Relativity
Francesca Michelini: Der Weg zum Organismus Spinoza zwischen Philosophie und Neurobiologie
Peter Remmers: Die Idee der Freiheit im Naturalismus
Karsten Schoellner: Eine Antwort auf Peter Remmers: Wie weit kommt naturalisierte Freiheit unserem Selbstbild entgegen?

In order to find a convincing position in the ‘free will’ debate, two sorts of determinism are distinguished. The merits of encompassing determinism, which is determinism as it is usually understood, and individual determinism, which focuses on the agent, are brought to the fore. The existence of encompassing determinism cannot conclusively be proven, but it may be demonstrated, on the basis of individual determinism, that actions come about in a determined way, leaving no room for ‘free will’. In order to facilitate the discussion, recent scientific developments in such diverse fields as, e.g., quantum mechanics and neuropsychology are incorporated. Balancing the arguments, I aspire to a consistent and nuanced viewpoint, not eschewing divergent conclusions.

In this essay I argue that contemporary versions of Aristotelian hylomorphism and the “new mechanist philosophy” in biology, neuroscience, and psychology share significant commitments about the reality of the organized causal components of mechanisms. My aim is to challenge the well-known narrative that hylomorphic and mechanistic ontologies are fundamentally incompatible by establishing that the new mechanist philosophy and Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism are not only complementary, but are defending many of the same ontological claims.
I begin with a brief sketch of the fundamental claims of hylomorphism (§I). I then situate the new mechanist philosophy (NMP) within recent developments in philosophy of science, before introducing the basic framework of NMP. In the last two sections of the paper I argue for the compatibility of hylomorphism and NMP. I start with the major points of agreement between hylomorphism and NMP (§III). Significantly, I establish that NMP is committed to organization or structure realism (a touchstone of hylomorphism), and neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism is committed to the reality of mechanisms or causal powers that produce, underlie, or maintain the behavior or capacity of (i) phenomena that are constituted through the (ii) spatial, temporal, and active organization of their (iii) component entities and (iv) component activities (the four hallmarks of NMP). In the last section (§IV) I introduce some possible points of disagreement between these two positions pertaining to hylomorphism’s substance–attribute ontology, emergence, downward causation, and teleology. I show that the disagreements about these topics do not distinguish hylomorphists from new mechanists, but represent disagreements among hylomorphists and among new mechanists. I conclude that Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism should not been seen as fundamentally opposed to mechanisms, but that it can and should embrace the many complementary features of the new mechanist philosophy in biology, neuroscience and psychology.

I am tasked with addressing philosophical hazards in the neuroscientific study of religion. As a philosopher concerned with the well-being of neuroscientists studying religion, I am inclined to begin with the philosophical hazards of philosophy. I am well aware of the extraordinary difficulties of both tasks, for the hazards are many and it is easy to miss the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest. Instead of focusing on one issue in great detail, I shall hang a number of warning signs around a forest of issues that identify various philosophical hazards which deserve particular caution when it comes to neuroscience and religion. Since I am aiming for breadth over depth, my brief remarks on each issue shall be synoptic, non-exhaustive, contentious and suggestive for additional consideration and reflection. To redress such deficits, I have provided references for further reading.

The target of explanation for us is religion, the means by which it is to be investigated, studied, described and explained is by neuroscience. What hazards might a philosopher draw attention to here? My central claim is this: The most fundamental philosophical hazard for the neuroscientist studying religion to avoid vigilantly is the failure to appreciate adequately the unified and integrated whole that is religious, namely the human person. Human persons are religious, not their minds or brains. Neuroscience can only provide a partial explanation of religion insofar as the brain can only be but a partial – even if a sine qua non – factor in anything approximating a complete description and explanation of human persons, including those who are religious. Claims to explanatory comprehension that outstrip these limitations imperialistically exceed what is reasonable and true. The investigation of human persons and religion should be holistic and aim to illuminate, explain and integrate the vast multi-level interconnections to be found from subpersonal level attributes like molecules, genes, organelles, cells, organic systems (e.g. cardiovascular, immune, endocrine, neuronal and glial systems), organs, organisms, to the ways these causally and constitutionally enable but neither eliminate nor provide explanatory substitutes for the complex personal level psychosomatic, rational, social and historical factors that figure into the lives of human persons.

The other hazards I shall introduce and discuss are the following:
1) Hazard of the Unreflective Conceptual Framework
2) Hazard of theoretical models of psychological discourse
3) Hazards of the mind–body and mental–physical dichotomies
4) Hazards of the Mindless Body
5) Hazards of the Private Mind
6) Mereological Fallacy
7) Hazard of the Disappearing Person
8) Hazards of Mind, Body, Self Reification
9) Hazards of Cartesian and Lockean Personal Identity
10) Hazard of Simplified and Hasty Mind–Body Positioning
11) Hazards of Crypto-Cartesian Consciousness
12) Hazard of Zombie Neuroscience
13) Hazard of causal monism
14) Hazard of extreme reductionism
15) Hazards of the Computational and Representational
Theories of Mind
16) Hazard of scientism
17) Hazard of naturalised epistemology
18) Hazards of naturalised religion
19) Hazard of Numinous Neural Localisation
20) Hazards of Identifying Hazards

Paradigmatisch für die moderne philosophische Anthropologie sind, zumindest im deutschsprachigen Raum, noch immer die Werke von Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner und Arnold Gehlen aus den 1920er Jahren – aber auch die mit ihnen verbundenen Folgelasten: (1) Voraussetzung für den Versuch einer Wesensbestimmung des Menschen ist die Annahme anthropologischer Konstanten, d.h. die Ansicht, dass sich allgemeine Eigenschaften, Verhaltens- und Erfahrensweisen bestimmen lassen, die allen Menschen als Menschen zukommen. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass der Mensch immer nur in bestimmter historischer und kultureller Gestalt erscheint, selbst schon eine fragwürdige anthropologische These. (2) Auf der einen Seite erhebt die Anthropologie den Anspruch, philosophische Fundamentalwissenschaft schlechthin zu sein (und als solche die Grundlage abzugeben für alle Wissenschaften vom Menschen), andererseits ist sie auf die Vorgabe einzelwissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen, etwa der Biologie, Ethologie, Psychologie und Soziologie, angewiesen und verhält sich zu diesen im Grunde nur «reaktiv» und «verarbeitend» (Habermas). Je nach Bezugswissenschaft ändert sich die Ausrichtung der philosophischen Anthropologie. Doch wie lassen sich ihre Konzeptionen methodisch rechtfertigen? Und inwiefern können sie als genuin philosophisch gelten?

Im Zuge der gegenwärtigen Konjunktur naturalistischer Strömungen stellen sich diese Fragen erneut, verschärft noch durch die Entstehung neuer Disziplinen wie etwa der ‹Philosophie des Geistes›, der Neurowissenschaften, der Verhaltensforschung und der Erforschung der Künstlichen Intelligenz. Die aufkommenden ‹Enhancement-Techniken› drohen die individuellen und gattungsspezifischen Grenzen zu sprengen: die menschliche Natur gehört nun selbst zum Bereich des vom Menschen Veränderbaren. Was diese neue Situation für uns Menschen und unser Selbstverständnis bedeutet, ist denn auch – neben den unter den neuen Auspizien sich stellenden Fragen nach der natürlichen Bestimmung des Menschen im Lichte heutiger einzelwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse und insbesondere im Tier-Mensch-Vergleich – eines der Hauptthemen dieses Bandes.

Abstract for Part 1. "Hylomorphic Animalism, Emergentism, and the Challenge of the New Mechanist Philosophy of Neuroscience"

This article, the first of a two-part essay, presents an account of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism that engages with recent work on neuroscience and philosophy of mind. I show that Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism is compatible with the new mechanist approach to neuroscience and psychology, but that it is incompatible with strong emergentism in the philosophy of mind. I begin with the basic claims of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism and focus on its understanding of psychological powers embodied in the nervous system. Next, I introduce the new mechanist approach to neuroscience and psychology and illustrate how it can enrich the more abstract ontological framework of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism. In the third section of this article I establish in detail the many ways Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism is incompatible with strong emergentism in the philosophy of mind. Based on these fundamental differences I show why a criticism leveled against emergentism by the new mechanist philosophy does not hamper my proposed rapprochement between hylomorphism and the new mechanist philosophy. This conclusion, however, leaves untouched the problem I address in the second article, namely, is the new mechanist philosophy compatible with Aristotelian philosophical anthropology’s contention that intellectual operations are immaterial and interact with the psychosomatic operations of the rational animal?

Abstract for Part 2. "The Interaction of Noetic and Psychosomatic Operations in a Thomist Hylomorphic Personalism"

This article, the second of a two-part essay, outlines a solution to certain tensions in Thomist philosophical anthropology concerning the interaction of the human person’s immaterial intellectual or noetic operations with the psychosomatic sensory operations that are constituted from the formal organization of the nervous system. Continuing with where the first part left off, I argue that Thomists should not be tempted by strong emergentist accounts of mental operations that act directly on the brain, but should maintain, with Aquinas, that noetic operations directly interact with psychosomatic operations. I develop a Thomist account of noetic–psychosomatic interactions that expands upon the first part’s rapprochement between the new mechanist philosophy of neuroscience and psychology and hylomorphic animalism. I argue that noetic–psychosomatic interactions are best understood as analogous to the way diverse higher and lower order psychosomatic powers interact by actualizing, coordinating, and directing the operations of other psychosomatic powers. I draw on James Ross’s arguments for the immateriality of intellectual operations as realizing definite pure functions in order to elucidate the way noetic operations uniquely actualize, coordinate, and direct the psychosomatic operations they interact with. I conclude with a conjectural sketch of how this presentation of Thomist philosophical anthropology understands the noetic and psychosomatic deficits brought about by damage to the nervous system.

The notion of reduction continues to play a key role in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. Supporters of reductionism claim that psychological properties or explanations reduce to neural properties or explanations, while antireductionists claim that such reductions are not possible. In this book, I apply recent developments in philosophy of science, particularly the mechanistic explanation paradigm and the interventionist theory of causation, to reassess the traditional approaches to reduction in philosophy of mind. I then elaborate and defend a pluralistic framework for philosophy of mind, and show how reductionist ideas can be incorporated into it. This leads to a novel synthesis of pluralism and reductionism that I call pluralistic physicalism.

Abstract We argue that neural processes are neither analog nor digital computations; they constitute a third kind of computation. Analog computation is the processing of continuous signals; digital computation is the processing of strings of digits. But current neuroscientific evidence indicates that typical neural signals, such as spike rates, are graded like continuous signals but are constituted by discrete elements (spikes); thus typical neural signals are neither continuous signals nor strings of digits.

I distinguish between two types of representation, natural and nonnatural. I argue that nonnatural representation is necessary to explain intentionality. I also argue that traditional accounts of the semantic content of mental representations are insufficient to explain nonnatural representation and, therefore, intentionality. To remedy this, I sketch an account of nonnatural representation in terms of natural representation plus offline simulation of nonactual environments plus tracking the ways in which a simulation departs from the actual environment. This is a step towards a naturalistic, mechanistic, neurocomputational account of intentionality.

Ever since the rise of modern neuroscience, there has been a controversial discussion about its potential influence on topics that were traditionally seen as part of the domain of social sciences and humanities. At present, the formation of a large number of neuro-hyphenated disciplines such as neuro-theology, neuro-psychoanalysis, or neuro-economics shows the appeal of applying neuroscientific methods to traditional scientific fields. In philosophy, two distinct ways of dealing with the problems and prospects of neuroscience have been developed: While the philosophy of neuroscience tries to apply methods and classical approaches from the philosophy of science to neuroscience, so-called neurophilosophy takes a 2 different approach by applying neuroscientific findings to classical philosophical issues. I evaluate the premises and chances of both approaches by discussing their methods, theoretical assumptions, and explanatory aims. Finally, I will look into neurophilosophy´s claim to integrate neuroscientific findings into philosophical theory by analyzing the relation between memory and personal identity.

First (§1) I isolate the form of acquaintance that interests me, and next (§2) note some of its key epistemological and metaphysical features. Then (§3) I explore a promising metaphysical framework for naturalising acquaintance, higher-order theories of consciousness, and argue that existing variations within the framework are not up to the job. I go on (§4) to set out my own variant of a higher-order theory, and explain how it successfully approximates acquaintance. Since this model can be implemented physically, it is a way of rendering acquaintance perfectly natural.

This is the introductory chapter to the anthology:  Inner Speech: New Voices, to be published in fall 2018 by OUP.  It gives an overview of current debates in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience concerning inner speech, and situates the chapters of the volume with respect to those debates.

In this chapter, I argue that some aspects of cognitive phenomena cannot be explained computationally. In the first part, I sketch a mechanistic account of computational explanation that spans multiple levels of organization of cognitive systems. In the second part, I turn my attention to what cannot be explained about cognitive systems in this way. I argue that information-processing mechanisms are indispensable in explanations of cognitive phenomena, and this vindicates the computational explanation of cognition. At the same time, it has to be supplemented with other explanations to make the mechanistic explanation complete, and that naturally leads to explanatory pluralism in cognitive science. The price to pay for pluralism, however, is the abandonment of the traditional autonomy thesis asserting that cognition is independent of implementation details.