Philosophy of (Biological) Neuroscience Bibliography

I began this bibliography in late 2005 for a philosophy of neuroscience project that Ian Gold was working on at the time, and although there are some redundancies with other much more professional lists, this one aims at being comprehensive for the philosophy of biological neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience was by and large omitted, the pay-off being that the project became manageable. There is, of course, no clear line seperating the two, so I tried to err on the side of inclusion. For the purpose of this bibliography, "philosophy of neuroscience" is construed narrowly, as more or less a branch of philosophy of science. So, for example, I have not included the many interesting articles which point out the applicability of current neuroscience to traditional philosophical problems, such as concsiousness. I hope it is useful. John O'Dea

Arbib, Michael A. & Érdi, Péter 2000, “Précis of Neural organization: Structure, function, and dynamics”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.23, pp. 513–571.

This paper shows how theory and experiment can supplement each other in an integrated, evolving account of the brain’s structure, function, and dynamics. (1) Structure: Studies of brain function and dynamics build on and contribute to an understanding of many brain regions, the neural circuits that constitute them, and their spatial relations. We emphasize Szentágothai’s modular architectonics principle, but also stress the importance of the microcomplexes of cerebellar circuitry and the lamellae of hippocampus. (2) Function: Control of eye movements, reaching and grasping, cognitive maps, and the roles of vision receive a functional decomposition in terms of schemas. Hypotheses as to how each schema is implemented through the interaction of specific brain regions provide the basis for modeling the overall function by neural networks constrained by neural data. Synthetic PET integrates modeling of primate circuitry with data from human brain imaging. (3) Dynamics: Dynamic system theory analyzes spatiotemporal neural phenomena, such as oscillatory and chaotic activity in both single neurons and (often synchronized) neural networks, the self-organizing development and plasticity of ordered neural structures, and learning and memory phenomena associated with synaptic modification. Rhythm generation involves multiple levels of analysis, from intrinsic cellular processes to loops involving multiple brain regions. A variety of rhythms are related to memory functions. The Précis presents a multifaceted case study of the hippocampus. We conclude with the claim that language and other cognitive processes can be fruitfully studied within the framework of neural organization that the authors have charted with John Szentágothai. Google Scholar

Arbib, M.A. 1987, "Modularity and Interaction of Brain Regions" in Modularity in Knowledge Representation, ed. Jay Garfield, Mit Pr, Cambridge, pp. 333-363.

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Avison, Malcolm J. 2002, “Functional Brain Mapping – What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing? (Comments on The New Phrenology, by William R. Uttal)”, Brain and Mind, vol.3, pp.367–373.

Uttal’s contention seems to be, in a nutshell, that functional brain imaging is ill-suited to the study of distributed neuronal networks, and has an inherent bias towards localization. But a review of recent literature reveals significant effort, and some success in developing analytical strategies for examining not just the modulation of activity at individual brain locations, but also the interactions amongst these regions  Rather than reject functional imaging as a tool of the localizers, we should ask whether appropriately designed experiments utilizing these new techniques can be used to distinguish between alternate models/theories embodying differing degrees and/or types of cognitive modularity. Ingenta

Aydede, M. & Guzeldere,G. 2002, "Some Foundational Problems in the Scientific Study of Pain", Philosophy of Science, vol. 69, no. 3 Supplement, pp. S265-S283.

This paper is an attempt to spell out what makes the scientific study of pain so distinctive from a philosophical perceptive.  We argue that unlike the study of ordinary perception, the study of pain focuses from the very start on the experience itself and its qualities, without making deep assumptions about whether pain experiences are perceptual.  This in turn puts scientific explanation in a curious position due to pain’s inherently subjective epistemic nature. We end the paper by commenting on a discussion between two prominent pain scientists in the field, Don Price and Howard Fields, about the need to distinguish more dimensions in the phenomenology of pain and how to classify them vis-à-vis the recent scientific findings. Google Scholar

Bach-y-Rita, Paul 2005, “Emerging Concepts of Brain Function”, Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, vol.4, No.2., 183-205.

For over 40 years, since I first obtained evidence for nonsynaptic diffusion neurotransmission (most scientists call it Volume Transmission), I have been convinced that we scientists were ignoring organizational dynamics other than the mechanistic synaptic organization avenues to explore in brain function.  For many years it was an uneasy feeling, since I was aware that there are so many avenues to explore in brain function.  I have wondered how much we scientists have ignored, in our quest to understand how the brain really works, due to our efforts to “be scientific”.  In addition to the difficulty of understanding how the brain functions, how could we even begin to explore human experience?  In this paper I will first discuss some emerging concepts of brain function.  I will then comment on the development of concepts that have been a part of my own research experience. Google Scholar

Barny, W. & Erth, J. 1963, "Intra-Cortical Delay and Intelligence", Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa, vol. 33, pp. 147-202.

No abstract available

Barlow, Horace 2001, “Redundancy Reduction Revisited”, Network: Computation in Neural Systems, vol.12, pp. 241-253

Soon after Shannon defined the concept of redundancy it was suggested that it gave insight into mechanisms of sensory processing, perception, intelligence and inference. Can we now judge whether there is anything in this idea, and can we see where it should direct our thinking? This paper argues that the original hypothesis was wrong in over-emphasizing the role of compressive coding and economy in neuron numbers, but right in drawing attention to the importance of redundancy. Furthermore there is a clear direction in which it now points, namely to the overwhelming importance of probabilities and statistics in neuroscience. The brain has to decide upon actions in a competitive, chance-driven world, and to do this well it must know about and exploit the non-random probabilities and interdependences of objects and events signaled by sensory messages. These are particularly relevant for Bayesian calculations of the optimum course of action. Instead of thinking of neural representations as transformations of stimulus energies, we should regard them as approximate estimates of the probable truths of hypotheses about the current environment, for these are the quantities required by a probabilistic brain working on Bayesian principles. Google Scholar

Barlow, H. B.: 1972, “Single Units and Sensation: A Neuron Doctrine for Perceptual Psychology?”, Perception, vol.1, pp.371–394.

The problem discussed is the relationship between the firing of single neurons in sensory pathways and subjectively experienced sensations. The conclusions are formulated as the following five dogmas. Google Scholar

Beaulieu, Anne 2004, "From Brainbank to Database: The Informational Turn in the Study of the Brain", Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 35C, no. 2, pp. 367-390.

Brain in a vat scenarios in analytic philosophy feature both brains and technological apparatus. The relation between specimens and technology is an interesting aspect of these scenarios, and in order to explore this relation, I contrast here two kinds of scientific collecting practices: the collection of post-mortem brains versus the compilation of digital brain atlases. This contrast highlights a novel configuration of the relation between brains (in digital media) and new information technologies. This new configuration is traced back to the late 1980s, which saw the rise of a new kind of collection of brains, with a markedly different scope and nature: the neuroscience database. Brains are now easily captured in vivo, so that while post-mortem brains were precious and few, scanners provide an embarrassment of riches in the form of terabytes of data. The rise of the virtual brain as a new digital object for research is reliant on the development of new imaging technologies, but also on the growth of computerised tools, informatics, and electronic networks in this field. These developments contribute to an informational turn in scientific research. This article considers what is involved in the shift in type of object, from the scarce, wet, biological brain to a plentiful, digital, virtual one. It discusses the significance of this new object in terms of collections, institutions, and research practices. Google Scholar

Beaulieu, Anne 2001, “Voxels in the Brain: Neuroscience, Informatics and Changing Notions of Objectivity”, Social Studies of Science, vol.31, no.5, pp.635–680.

In the 1990s, the 'Decade of the Brain', a number of digital and electronic resources have been created to enable the rationalization and integration of the various sub-fields of neuroscience. This approach has been described as 'neuroinformatics'. An important subset of tools (atlases of the brain) developed in the Human Brain Project is examined in detail in order to understand how the use of these tools changes the practice of science. In the course of the development of atlases, what constitutes 'objective' neuroscientific knowledge is redefined in important ways, according to both technological possibilities built into these tools and to the constraints of standardization inherent in projects that involve multiple measurements. The constitution of objectivity is examined across a number of levels (ontological, epistemic, pragmatic) and the concept of 'digital objectivity' is suggested as a label for a particular configuration of ideals, techniques and objects of knowledge in cyberscience. Google Scholar

Bechtel, W. 2002, "Decomposing the Mind-Brain: A Long-Term Pursuit", Brain and Mind, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 229-242.

This paper defends cognitive neuroscience’s project of developing mechanistic explanations of cognitive processes through decomposition and localization against objections raised by William Uttal in The New Phrenology. The key issue between Uttal and researchers pursuing cognitive neuroscience is that Uttal bets against the possibility of decomposing mental operations into component elementary operations which are localized in distinct brain regions. The paper argues that it is through advancing and revising what are likely to be overly simplistic and incorrect decompositions that the goals of cognitive neuroscience are likely to be achieved. Google Scholar

Bechtel, W. 2000, “From Imaging to Believing: Epistemic Issues in Generating Biological Data”, R. Creath and J. Maienschein (eds.) Epistemology and Biology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp.138-163.

"Seeing is believing." Or so we are often told. But we don't have to go far to find examples in which seeing offers insufficient grounds for believing. Google Scholar

Bechtel, William and Mundale, Jennifer 1999, “Multiple Realizability Revisited: Linking Cognitive and Neural States”, Philosophy of Science, vol.66, no.2, pp.175-207.

The contention that psychological states are multiply realizable in different substrates has been used to support the contention that neuroscience is not likely to be very useful in guiding an understanding how cognition works. But in the context of scientific research, how seriously should we really take this threat of multiple realizability? By examining how brain areas are identified in neuroscience (where the approach is comparative and employs functional criteria), we show that the skepticism about neuroscience's role in understanding cognition is misguided and that the apparent success of multiple realizability is based on methodological error. With respect to the former point, we develop and analyze a representative case in which the organization of the brain provides crucial information about the organization of the cognitive system. Then we show that the initial plausibility of claims to multiple realizability rest on (a) mismatching a broad-grained criterion (to show sameness of psychological states) with a fine-grained criterion (to differentiate brain states), and (b) a failure to attend to the purposes for which taxonomies of brain and psychological states are developed. Google Scholar

Bechtel, W. 1983, "A Bridge between Cognitive Science and Neuroscience: the Functional Architecture of Mind", Philosophical Studies, vol. 44, pp. 319-330.

This paper proposes that we approach the relation of mental events to brain events via Pylyshyn’s (1980) notion of a functional architecture.  After an overview of the conflict between Identity Theory and Functionalism, I will turn to explicating the notion of functional architecture and show how it provides a more more useful ontological framework for understanding how neuroscience and the emerging discipline in cognitive science can realte to each other. Google Scholar

Bickle, J. 2001a, "New Wave Metascience: Replies to Beckermann, Maloney, and Stephan", Grazer Philosophische Studien, vol. 61, pp. 285-293.

This article replies to critical notices of my book, Psychoneural Reduction: The New Wave (MIT Press, 1998), by Beckerman, Maloney, and Stephen. I clarify the relationship espoused in the book between intertheoretic reduction and ontological conclusions. I then offer a new interpretation of the book's project, suggesting that it is better thought of as a metascientific investigation of contemporary neuroscience rather than a contribution to the ontology of mind. Finally, I address Maloney's worry that my semiformal account of intertheoretic reduction cannot rule out certain contrived (nonscientific) counterexamples that meet the conditions but aren't intuitively reductions. Google Scholar

Bickle, J. 2001b, "Understanding Neural Complexity: A Role for Reduction", Minds and Machines: Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 467-481.

Psychoneural reduction is under attack again, only this time from a former ally: cognitive neuroscience. It has become popular to think of the brain as a complex system whose theoretically important properties emerge from dynamic, non-linear interactions between its component parts. “Emergence” is supposed to replace reduction: the latter is thought to be incapable of explaining the brain qua complex system. Rather than engage this issue at the level of theories of reduction versus theories of emergence, I here emphasize a role that reductionism plays – and will continue to play – even if neuroscience adopts this “complex systems” view. In detailed investigations into the function of complex neural circuits, certain questions can only be addressed by moving down levels and scales. This role for reduction also finds a place for approaches that dominate mainstream neuroscience, like the widespread use of experimental techniques and theories from molecular biology and biochemistry. These are difficult to reconcile with the anti-reductionist sentiments of the “complex systems” branch of cognitive neuroscience. Google Scholar

Bogen, Jim 2002, “Epistemological Custard Pies from Functional Brain Imaging”, Philosophy of Science, vol.69, No.3, pp.S59-S71.

This paper discusses features of an epistemically valuable form of evidence that raises troubles for the received and new epistemological treatments of experimental evidence. Google Scholar

Bogen, Jim 2001, "Functional Imaging Evidence: Some Epistemic Hot Spots" in Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, ed. P.K. Machamer, Univ of Pitt Pr, Pittsburgh, pp. 173-199.

The use of computer generated functional images of the brain as evidence with which to test theories of cognition is a striking counter the shortcomings of standard empiricist epistemological theories. It also raises problems for Woodward's and Mayo's sophisticated accounts of how conclusions are drawn from experimental data. Those are the custard pies. After setting them out, I sketch the beginnings of what I take to be a better account of the evidential value of functional images. Google Scholar

Brazier, Mary A.B. 1979, “Challenges from the Philosophers to the Neuroscientists”, Brain and Mind, Ciba Foundation Symposium vol.69, pp. 5-43.

A practical science of the brain scarcely existed before the 17th century except in terms of gross anatomy. In all countries vitalistic concepts held sway, yielding only slowly to more materialistic views. These developed at a different pace in different countries, due, in each case, to the dominant philosophies of the time: the English empiricists; the French Enlightenment; the Italian and German schools of experimental neurophysiology. The last to accept the materialists' viewpoints was Russia, whose scientists imported them from their training in Western Europe in the 19th century. A brief outline is given of how the history of brain science parallels the history of ideas in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Breidbach, O. 2001, "The Origin and Development of the Neurosciences" in Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, ed. P.K. Machamer, Univ of Pitt Pr, Pittsburgh, pp. 7-29.

Central concepts of modern neuroscience were in place at the end of the nineteenth century, that is, before modern physiological ideas about the neuronal organization of the brain had developed. This situation is described in greater detail for one of these concepts, that of neuronal networks, which was formed out in the last decades of the nineteenth century. There is a mismatch in timing between the development of concepts and the development of experimental techniques in the neurosciences. It is asked to what extent this disparity is of relevance to modern discussions of mind, brain, and cognition. Google Scholar

Buller, David j. & Hardcastle, V.G. 2000, “Evolutionary Psychology, Meet  Developmental Neurobiology: Against Promiscuous Modularity”, Brain and Mind, vol.1, pp.307–325.

Evolutionary psychologists claim that the mind contains “hundreds or thousands” of “genetically specified” modules, which are evolutionary adaptations for their cognitive functions. We argue that, while the adult human mind/brain typically contains a degree of modularization, its “modules” are neither genetically specified nor evolutionary adaptations. Rather, they result from the brain’s developmental plasticity, which allows environmental task demands a large role in shaping the brain’s information-processing structures. The brain’s developmental plasticity is our fundamental psychological adaptation, and the “modules” that result from it are adaptive responses to local conditions, not past evolutionary environments. If different individuals share common environments, however, they may develop similar “modules,” and this process can mimic the development of genetically specified modules in the evolutionary psychologist’s sense. Google Scholar

Caramazza, Alfonso 1984, “The Logic of Neuropsychological Research and the Problem of Patient Classification in Aphasia”, Brain and Language, vol.21, no.1, pp.9-20.

A critical analysis is presented of the assumptions that must be made to use the data from aphasia to constrain models of normal language processing. The implication of these assumptions for patient classification and research methodology in aphasia is considered. Google Scholar

Cherniak, C. 1994, "Philosophy and Computational Neuroanatomy", Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, vol. 73, no. 2-3, pp. 89-107.

A sketch of how a philosophical perspective focussed on bounded- resource models of cognition defines a research agenda at the concrete level of computational neuroanatomy. Some results are reported regarding applicability of combinatorial network optimization theory to brain structure. The interpretation of these findings raises metaphilosophical issues concerning interrelations between abstract "software" and concrete "hardware" levels of explanation in mind-brain science. The computational neuroanatomy case studies identify a number of routes of interrelation between philosophy and empirical science, and between cognitive and neural domains of cognitive neuroscience. PDF | Google Scholar

Churchland, P.M. & Churchland, P.S. 1994, "Intertheoretic Reduction: A Neuroscientist's Field Guide" in The Mind-Body Problem: A Guide to the Current Debate, ed. R. Warner, Blackwell, Cambridge.

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Clark, Austen 2001, “Some Logical Features of Feature Integration”, in Neuronal Coding of Perceptual Systems, ed Werner Backhaus, World Scientific, New Jersey.

One of the biggest challenges in understanding perception is to understand how the nervous system manages to integrate the multiple codes it uses to represent features in multiple sensory modalities. From different cortical areas, which might separately register the sight of something red and the touch of something smooth, one effortlessly generates the perception of one thing that is both red and smooth. This process has been variously called "feature integration", "binding", or "synthesis". Citing some current models and some historical precursors, this paper makes some simple observations about the logic of feature integration. I suggest that "feature conjunction" is not strictly speaking conjunction at all, but rather joint predication; and that the critical task in "binding" is not simply grouping scattered representations together, or providing them a common label, but rather identifying those that have a common subject matter-those that are about the same thing. If this is correct, it follows that the vocabulary of sense includes not only features but something analogous to referring terms. PDF | HTML

Cory, G.A. 2002, "MacLean's Evolutionary Neuroscience, the CSN Model and Hamilton's Rule: Some Developmental, Clinical, and Social Policy Implications", Brain and Mind, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 151-181.

This chapter builds on MacLean’s work to bring together new insights into the neural architecture of human development, hierarchy, conflict behavior, and reciprocity in the form of the Conflict Systems Neurobehavioral (CSN) Model. Hamilton’s rule of kinship altruism or inclusive fitness is proposed to be the gene’s eye complement to MacLean’s evolutionary neuroscience and the CSN Model derived therefrom. Hierarchy, conflict behavior and reciprocity are also central issues in healthy development as well as in clinical syndromes of depression, mania, and other social maladjustments. The emerging insights permit the integration of the concept of inclusive fitness underpinning evolutionary psychology with MacLean’s perspective on evolutionary neuroscience as well as the definition of new challenges for mental health and social stability. The policy implications are indicated. Ingenta

Couch, Mark B. 2004, “A Defense of Bechtel and Mundale”, Philosophy of Science, vol.71, no.2; p. 198-204.

Kim claims that Bechtel and Mundale's case against multiple realization depends on the wrong kind of evidence. The latter argue that neuroscientific practice shows neural states across individuals and species are type identical. Kim replies that the evidence they cite to support this is irrelevant. I defend Bechtel and Mundale by showing why the evidence they cite is relevant and shows multiple realization does not occur. Google Scholar

Craver, Carl.F. 2007, Explaining the Brain. Oxford University Press.

What distinguishes good explanations in neuroscience from bad? Carl F. Craver constructs and defends standards for evaluating neuroscientific explanations that are grounded in a systematic view of what neuroscientific explanations are: descriptions of multilevel mechanisms. In developing this approach, he draws on a wide range of examples in the history of neuroscience (e.g. Hodgkin and Huxleys model of the action potential and LTP as a putative explanation for different kinds of memory), as well as recent philosophical work on the nature of scientific explanation. Readers in neuroscience, psychology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science will find much to provoke and stimulate them in this book. Google Scholar

Craver, Carl.F. 2005, “Beyond Reduction: Mechanisms, Multifield Integration and the Unity of Neuroscience”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 36C, no. 2, pp. 373-395.

Philosophers of neuroscience have traditionally described interfield integration using reduction models. Such models describe formal inferential relations between theories at different levels. I argue against reduction and for a mechanistic model of interfield integration. According to the mechanistic model, different fields integrate their research by adding constraints on a multilevel description of a mechanism. Mechanistic integration may occur at a given level or in the effort to build a theory that oscillates among several levels. I develop this alternative model using a putative exemplar of reduction in contemporary neuroscience: the relationship between the psychological phenomena of learning and memory and the electrophysiological phenomenon known as Long-Term Potentiation. A new look at this historical episode reveals the relative virtues of the mechanistic model over reduction as an account of interfield integration. Google Scholar

Craver, Carl F. 2004, “Dissociable Realization and Kind Splitting”, Philosophy of Science vol.71, No.5, pp. 960-971.

It is a common assumption in contemporary cognitive neuroscience that discovering a putative realized kind be dissociably realized (i.e. to be realized in each instance by two or more distinct realizers) mandates splitting that kind.  Here I explore some limits on this inference using to deceptively similar examples: the dissociation of declarative and procedural memory and Ramachandran’s argument that the self is an illusion. Google Scholar

Craver, C.F. 2003, "The Making of a Memory Mechanism", Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 153-195.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP) is a kind of synaptic plasticity that many contemporary neuroscientists believe is a component in mechanisms of memory. This essay describes the discovery of LTP and the development of the LTP research program. The story begins in the 1950’s with the discovery of synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus (a medial temporal lobe structure now associated with memory), and it ends in 1973 with the publication of three papers sketching the future course of the LTP research program. The making of LTP was a protracted affair. Hippocampal synaptic plasticity was initially encountered as an experimental tool, then reported as a curiosity, and finally included in the ontic store of the neurosciences. Early researchers were not investigating the hippocampus in search of a memory mechanism; rather, they saw the hippocampus as a useful experimental model or as a structure implicated in the etiology of epilepsy. The link between hippocampal synaptic plasticity and learning or memory was a separate conceptual achievement. That link was formulated in at least three different ways at different times: reductively (claiming that plasticity is identical to learning), analogically (claiming that plasticity is an example or model of learning), and mechanistically (claiming that plasticity is a component in learning or memory mechanisms). The hypothesized link with learning or memory, coupled with developments in experimental techniques and preparations, shaped how researchers understood LTP itself. By 1973, the mechanistic formulation of the link between LTP and memory provided an abstract framework around which findings from multiple perspectives could be integrated into a multifield research program. Google Scholar

Craver, C.F. 2002, "Interlevel Experiments and Multilevel Mechanisms in the Neuroscience of Memory", Philosophy of Science, vol. 69, no. 3 Supplement, pp. S83-S97.

Here I develop a taxonomy of interlevel experimental strategies for integrating the levels in such multilevel mechanisms. These experimental strategies include activation strategies, interference strategies, and additive strategies. These strategies are mutually reinforcing, providing a kind of interlevel and intratheoretic robustness that has not previously been recognized. Google Scholar

Craver, Carl 1998, “Neural Mechanisms: On the Structure, Function, and Development of Theories in Neurobiology”, Doctoral Dissertation, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 

Cruse, H. 2001, "The Explanatory Power and Limits of Simulation Models in the Neurosciences" in Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, ed. P.K. Machamer, Univ of Pitt Pr, Pittsburgh, pp. 138-154.

Software and hardware simulations (1) allow for concise description of many data, (2) provide hypothetical explanations, (3) allow for (testable) predictions, (4) allow testing of the feasibility of a hypothesis, (5) may show emergent, i.e., unexpected properties. For systems with no internal perspective (NIP systems) I see no limitations concerning the explanatory power of simulations. For systems that have an internal perspective (HIP systems) the situation is more difficult. Those properties which concern only the external perspective most probably can also be explained by simulations. Concerning the internal perspective, an explanation might or might not be possible by simulation studies. Google Scholar

Dodds, W. J., 'On the localisation of the functions of the brain: being an historical and critical analysis of the question,' J. Anat. Physiol. Lond., 12 (1878), 340-63, 454-94, 636-60.

 

Érdi, Péter 2000, “On the ‘Dynamic Brain’ Metaphor”, Brain and Mind, vol.1, pp.119-145.

Dynamic systems theory offers conceptual and mathematical tools for describing the performance of neural systems at very different levels of organization. Three aspects of the dynamic paradigm are discussed, namely neural rhythms, neural and mental development, and macroscopic brain theories and models. Google Scholar

Evers, Kathinka 2005, “Neuroethics: A Philosophical Challenge”, American Journal of Bioethics, vol.5, pp.31-33.

Illes and Racine (2005) give a detailed and useful description of how developments in neuroscience and related technologies have brought about numerous ethical, social, and legal challenges. These challenges, they argue, are akin to those posed by modern genetics; describing, for example, how both domains require scientific as well as socio-cultural levels of interpretation. Their main message, however, is that neuroethics goes beyond “genethics” in raising unprecedented difficulties in interpretation and application. This message is basically correct and well presented, but there is a further theme that ought to have been treated more thoroughly: the need for philosophical analyses of central notions used by neuroscientists when describing their theories and data. Google Scholar

Farah, M.J. & Wolpe, P.R. 2004, "Monitoring and Manipulating Brain Function: New Neuroscience Technologies and Their Ethical Implications", Hastings Center Report, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 35-45.

What the 1990’s may, in retrospect,  be remembered for is the growth of neuroscience beyond those two categories, “basic” and “clinical,” into a host of new applications.  From the measurement of mental processes with functional neuroimaging to their manipulation with ever more severe drugs, the new capabilities of neuroscience raise unprecedented ethical issues.  These issues must be addressed if society is to benefit from the neuroscience revolution now if progress. Google Scholar

Fingelkurts, Andrew A., Fingelkurts, Alexander A. & Kähkönen, Seppo 2005, “Functional Connectivity in the Brain — Is It an Elusive Concept?”, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, vol.28, pp.827–836.

Even though functional brain connectivity is an influential concept in modern cognitive neuroscience, it is a very controversial notion. This is why further theoretical and methodological clarification are needed to help define precisely what is meant by functional connectivity and to help frame-associated issues. In this review we present the neurophysiological concept of functional connectivity, which utilizes in a plausible manner the notion of neural assemblies, as well as local and large-scale levels of description. Here functional connectivity is the mechanism for the coordination of activity between different neural assemblies in order to achieve a complex cognitive task or perceptual process. Our theoretical and empirical findings offer new insights into possible implications of the concept of functional connectivity for cognitive neuroscience. Google Scholar

Foss, J. 1988, "The Percept and Vector Function Theories of the Brain", Philosophy of Science, vol. 55, pp. 511-537.

Physicalism is an "empirical" theory of the mind and its place in nature. So the physicalist must show that current neuroscience does not falsify physicalism, but instead supports it. Current neuroscience shows that a nervous system is what I call a "vector function system". I provide a brief outline of the resources that empirical research has made available within the constraints of the vector function approach. Then I argue that these resources are sufficient, indeed apt, for the physicalist enterprise, by offering a vector functional, hence physicalist, theory of the "percept"--the perceptual experience itself, a paradigm of phenomenally immediate, introspectively accessible consciousness. Google Scholar

Garson, Justin 2003, “The Introduction of Information into Neurobiology”, Philosophy of Science, vol.70, no.5, pp.926-936.

The first use of the term "information" to describe the content of nervous impulse occurs in Edgar Adrian's The Basis of Sensation (1928). What concept of information does Adrian appeal to, and how can it be situated in relation to contemporary philosophical accounts of the notion of information in biology? The answer requires an explication of Adrian's use and an evaluation of its situation in relation to contemporary accounts of semantic information. I suggest that Adrian's concept of information can be to derive a concept of arbitrariness or semioticity in representation. This in turn provides one way of resolving some of the challenges that confront recent attempts in the philosophy of biology to restrict the notion of information to those causal connections that can in some sense be referred to as arbitrary or semiotic. PDF | Google Scholar

Gerrans, P. 2003, "Nativism and Neuroconstructivism in the Explanation of Williams Syndrome", Biology and Philosophy, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 41-52.

Nativists about syntactic processing have argued that linguistic processing, understood as the implementation of a rule-based computational architecture, is spared in Williams syndrome, (WMS) subjects – and hence that it provides evidence for a genetically specified language module. This argument is bolstered by treating Specific Language Impairments (SLI) and WMS as a developmental double dissociation which identifies a syntax module. Neuroconstructivists have argued that the cognitive deficits of a developmental disorder cannot be adequately distinguished using the standard gross behavioural tests of neuropsychology and that the linguistic abilities of the WMS subject can be equally well explained by a constructivist strategy of neural learning in the individual, with linguistic functions implemented in an associationist architecture. The neuroconstructivist interpretation of WMS undermines the hypothesis of a double dissociation between SLI and WMS, leaving unresolved the question of nativism about syntax. The apparent linguistic virtuosity of WMS subjects is an artifact of enhanced phonological processing, a fact which is easier to demonstrate via the associationist computational model embraced by neuroconstructivism. Google Scholar

Gillett, G.R. 1989, "Perception and Neuroscience", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol.40, pp. 83-103.

Perception is often analysed as a process in which causal events from the environment act on a subject to produce states in the mind or brain. The role of the subject is an increasing feature of neuroscientific and cognitive literature. This feature is linked to the need for an account of the normative aspects of perceptual competence. A holographic model is offered in which objects are presented to the subject classified according to rules governing concepts and encoded in brain function in that form. This implies that the analysis of perception must consider not only the fact that there is an interaction between the perceiving subject and the perceived object but also that the interaction is shaped by a system of concepts which the subject uses in thought and action. Google Scholar

Glymour, C. 1994, "On the Methods of Cognitive Neuropsychology", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 815-835.

Contemporary cognitive neuropsychology attempts to infer unobserved features of normal human cognition, or cognitive architecture', from experiments with normals and with brain- damaged subjects in whom certain normal cognitive capacities are altered, diminished, or absent. Fundamental methodological issues about the enterprise of cognitive neuropsychology concern the characterization of methods by which features of normal cognitive architecture can be identified from such data, the assumptions upon which the reliability of such methods are premised, and the limits of such methods-- even granting their assumptions-- in resolving their uncertainties about that architecture. With some idealization, the question of the capacities of various experimental designs in cognitive neuropsychology to uncover cognitive architecture can be reduced to comparatively simple questions about the prior assumptions investigators are willing to make. This paper presents some of simplest of those reductions. Google Scholar

Gold, Ian & Stoljar, Danial 1999, “A Neuron Doctrine in the Philosophy of Neuroscience”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.22, pp. 809-869.

Many neuroscientists and philosophers endorse a view about the explanatory reach of neuroscience (which we will call the neuron doctrine) to the effect that the framework for understanding the mind will be developed by neuroscience; or, as we will put it, that a successful theory of the mind will be solely neuroscientific. It is a consequence of this view that the sciences of the mind that cannot be expressed by means of neuroscientific concepts alone count as indirect sciences that will be discarded as neuroscience matures. This consequence is what makes the doctrine substantive, indeed, radical. We ask, first, what the neuron doctrine means and, second, whether it is true. In answer to the first question, we distinguish two versions of the doctrine. One version, the trivial neuron doctrine, turns out to be uncontroversial but unsubstantive because it fails to have the consequence that the nonneuroscientific sciences of the mind will eventually be discarded. A second version, the radical neuron doctrine, does have this consequence, but, unlike the first doctrine, is highly controversial. We argue that the neuron doctrine appears to be both substantive and uncontroversial only as a result of a conflation of these two versions. We then consider whether the radical doctrine is true. We present and evaluate three arguments for it, based either on general scientific and philosophical considerations or on the details of neuroscience itself, arguing that all three fail. We conclude that the evidence fails to support the radical neuron doctrine. Google Scholar

Gray, Jeremy R.  & Thompson, Paul M. (2004), “Neurobiology of Intelligence: Science and Ethics”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience vol.5, pp.471-482.

Human mental abilities, such as intelligence, are complex and profoundly important, both in a practical sense and for what they imply about the human condition. Understanding these abilities in mechanistic terms has the potential to facilitate their enhancement. There is strong evidence that the lateral prefrontal cortex, and possibly other areas, support intelligent behaviour. Variations in intelligence and brain structure are heritable, but are also influenced by factors such as education, family environment and environmental hazards. Cognitive, psychometric, genetic and neuroimaging studies are converging, and the emergence of mechanistic models of intelligence is inevitable. These exciting scientific advances encourage renewed responsiveness to the social and ethical implications of conducting such research. Google Scholar

Griffiths, Timothy D. and Warren, Jason D. 2004, “What is an Auditory Object?” Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, vol.5, pp. 887-892.

Objects are the building blocks of experience, but what do we mean by an object? Increasingly, neuroscientists refer to ‘auditory objects’, yet it is not clear what properties these should possess, how they might be represented in the brain, or how they might relate to the more familiar objects of vision. The concept of an auditory object challenges our understanding of object perception. Here, we offer a critical perspective on the concept and its basis in the brain. Google Scholar

Hacker, P.M.S. & Bennett, M.R. 2003, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Blackwell Publishing, Malden MA

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories, including those of Blakemore, crick, Damasio, Edelman, Gazzaniga, Kandel, Kosslyn, LeDoux, Penrose and Weiskrantz. they propose that conceptual confusions about how the brain relates to the mind affect the intelligibility of research carried out by neuroscientists, in terms of the questions they choose to address, the description and interpretation of results and the conclusions they draw. (publisher, edited). Google Scholar

Hardcastle, V.G. 2003, “Neuroscience and the Art of Single Cell Recordings”, Biology and Philosophy, vol.18, pp.195-208.

This article examines how scientists move from physical measurements to actual observation of single-cell recordings in the brain. We highlight how easy it is to change the fundamental nature of our observations using accepted methodological techniques for manipulating raw data. Collecting single-cell data is thoroughly pragmatic. We conclude that there is no deep or interesting difference between accounting for observations by measurements and accounting for observations by theories. Ingenta

Hardcastle, V.G. 2001a, "Theory Structure in the Neurosciences" in Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, ed. P.K. Machamer, Univ of Pitt Pr, Pittsburgh, pp. 30-44.

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Hardcastle, V.G. 2001b, “A View from Within. Critical Review of John Horgan’s ‘The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Mind Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation’”, Brain and Mind, vol.2, pp.239–242.

The subtitle of John Horgan’s The Undiscovered Mind promises to explain “how the human brain defies replication, medication, and explanation.” It doesn’t deliver. It doesn’t even try to deliver. Instead, The Undiscovered Mind is a collection of vignettes about Horgan, by Horgan, as he interviews or otherwise interacts with a few scientists involved in studying the mind/brain. Google Scholar

Hardcastle, V.G. 1999a, “What We Don’t Know About Brains”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 05C, no. 1, pp. 69-89.

Most everyone knows that we don’t know everything there is to know about the brain. Most everyone also probably knows that we really know very little about it. However, what is less known is that we don’t even know how to conceptualize the brain in the most general way. We don’t know what the relevant processing units are, much less how they operate or how they connect to anything else. This essay serves as a serious warning to those who wish to use neurophysiological considerations in bolstering philosophical or psychological arguments: we know not whereof we speak. You will get educated guesswork and piece-meal investigation held together by dogma and faith. But you will not get any definitive answers, for we do not even know how to tell that we are on the right track in our empirical testing of the brain. Google Scholar

Hardcastle, V.G. 1999b, “It’s O.K. to be Complicated: The Case of Emotion”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol.6, No.11-12, pp.237-349.

There is a dangerous trend developing in the study of emotion in neurophysiology and neuropsychology, a trend toward oversimplifying and reducing emotional responses to the point of distortion. We all know that scientists must abstract away from much of what is going on in order to produce quantitative and unambiguous data. We also know that scientists operate using several basic methodological, technological, and theoretical assumptions. The question I wish to address here is whether, in the case of emotions, scientists haven't gone too far in their tendency to modularize brain processes and to reduce reactions down to their simplest components. Google Scholar

Hardcastle, V.G. & Stewart, C.M. 2002, "What Do Brain Data Really Show?", Philosophy of Science, vol. 69, no. 3 Supplement, pp. S72-S82.

There is a bias in neuroscience toward localizing and modularizing brain functions. This essay examines the tension between current experimental methods and large-scale views of the brain. We argue that this disconnection between experiment and what really are guiding theoretical metaphors seriously impedes progress in neuroscience. Google Scholar

Hatfield, G. 2000, "The Brain's "New" Science: Psychology, Neurophysiology, and Constraint", Philosophy of Science, vol. 67, no. 3 Supplement, pp. S388-S403.

There is a strong philosophical intuition that direct study of the brain can and will constrain the development of psychological theory. When this intuition is tested against case studies on the neurophysiology and psychology of perception and memory, it turns out that psychology has led the way toward knowledge of neurophysiology. An abstract argument is developed to show that psychology can and must lead the way in neuro-scientific study of mental function. The opposing intuition is based on mainly weak arguments about the fundamentality or objectivity of physics or physiology in relation to psychology. Google Scholar

Hatfield, Gary 1999, “Mental Functions as Constraints on Neurophysiology: Biology and Psychology of Vision”, in V. Hardcastle (ed) Psychology Meets Biology: Conjectures, Connections, Constraints, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp.251-271.

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Hintikka, J. & Symons, J. 2003, "Systems of Visual Identification in Neuroscience: Lessons from Epistemic Logic", Philosophy of Science, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 89-104.

The following analysis shows how developments in epistemic logic can play a nontrivial role in cognitive neuroscience. We argue that the striking correspondence between two modes of identification, as distinguished in the epistemic context, and two cognitive systems distinguished by neuroscientific investigation of the visual system (the "where" and "what" systems) is not coincidental, and that it can play a clarificatory role at the most fundamental levels of neuroscientific theory. Google Scholar

Horgan, John 2001a, “Precis of ‘The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation’”, Brain and Mind, vol.2, pp.215–225.

Neuroscientists have acquired an astonishing ability to probe the brain with microelectrodes, magnetic resonance imaging, positron-emission tomography and other tools. Neuroscience is clearly advancing; it is getting somewhere. The question is, Where? Neuroscience has had virtually no payoff in terms of diagnosing and treating mental illness. It has failed to winnow out all the competing unified theories of human nature, whether psychoanalysis or behaviorism or connectionism or evolutionary psychology. Neuroscience has failed to solve such ancient philosophical mysteries as free will and the mind-body problem. Google Scholar

Horgan, John 2001b, “John Horgan Responds”, Brain and Mind vol.2, pp. 253-259.

I was gratified that even the most critical respondents grant some of my basic points about mind-science, albeit reluctantly or inadvertently… Google Scholar

Horgan, John 1999, The Undiscovered Mind: How the Brain Defies Explanation, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.

[Blurb] In his acclaimed book The End of Science, John Horgan ignited a firestorm of controversy about the limits of knowledge in a wide range of sciences. Now in The Undiscovered Mind he focuses on the single most important scientific enterprise of all -- the effort to understand the human mind. Horgan takes us inside laboratories, hospitals, and universities to meet neuro-scientists, Freudian analysts, electroshock therapists, behavioral geneticists, evolutionary psychologists, artificial intelligence engineers, and philosophers of consciousness. He looks into the persistent explanatory gap between mind and body that Socrates pondered and shows that it has not been bridged. He investigates what he calls the "Humpty Dumpty dilemma," the fact that neuroscientists can break the brain and mind into pieces but cannot put the pieces back together again. He presents evidence that the placebo effect is the primary ingredient of psychotherapy, Prozac, and other treatments for mental disorders. As Horgan shows, the mystery of human consciousness, of why and how we think, remains so impregnable that to expect the attempts of scientific method and technology to penetrate it anytime soon is absurd. Google Scholar

Illes, Judy & Racine, Eric 2005, “Imaging or Imagining? A Neuroethics Challenge Informed by Genetics”, American Journal of Bioethics, vol.5, pp.5-18.

From a twenty-first century partnership between bioethics and neuroscience, the modern field of neuroethics is emerging, and technologies enabling functional neuroimaging with unprecedented sensitivity have brought new ethical, social and legal issues to the forefront. Some issues, akin to those surrounding modern genetics, raise critical questions regarding prediction of disease, privacy and identity. However, with new and still-evolving insights into our neurobiology and previously unquantifiable features of profoundly personal behaviors such as social attitude, value and moral agency, the difficulty of carefully and properly interpreting the relationship between brain findings and our own self-concept is unprecedented. Therefore, while the ethics of genetics provides a legitimate starting point—even a backbone—for tackling ethical issues in neuroimaging, they do not suffice. Drawing on recent neuroimaging findings and their plausible real-world applications, we argue that interpretation of neuroimaging data is a key epistemological and ethical challenge. This challenge is two-fold. First, at the scientific level, the sheer complexity of neuroscience research poses challenges for integration of knowledge and meaningful interpretation of data. Second, at the social and cultural level, we find that interpretations of imaging studies are bound by cultural and anthropological frameworks. In particular, the introduction of concepts of self and personhood in neuroimaging illustrates the interaction of interpretation levels and is a major reason why ethical reflection on genetics will only partially help settle neuroethical issues. Indeed, ethical interpretation of such findings will necessitate not only traditional bioethical input but also a wider perspective on the construction of scientific knowledge. Google Scholar

Jacobson, A.J. 2003, "Mental Representations: What Philosophy Leaves Out and Neuroscience Puts In", Philosophical Psychology, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 189-203.

This paper investigates how “representation” is actually used in some areas in cognitive neuroscience. It is argued that recent philosophy has largely ignored an important kind of representation that differs in interesting ways from the representations that are standardly recognized in philosophy of mind. This overlooked kind of representation does not represent by having intentional contents; rather members of the kind represent by displaying or instantiating features. The investigation is not simply an ethnographic study of the discourse of neuroscientists. If there are indeed two different kinds of representations, and the non-standard ones are the ones referred to in some areas of cognitive neuroscience, then we will have to give up the idea that appealing to inner representations with intentional contents is the defining distinction between cognitive neuroscience and behaviorist psychology (Montgomery, 1995). Further, if the conclusions of this paper are correct, many general accounts of how neural states represent are either false or theoretically ill-motivated. Google Scholar

Kaitaro, Timo 2001, “Biological and Epistemological Models of Localization in the Nineteenth Century: From Gall to Charcot”, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, vol.10, no.3, pp. 262-267.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the localizationist doctrines became closely associated with the memory trace paradigm. The analysis of the texts dealing with the localization and the nature of ‘the loss of articulated speech’ (motor aphasia) by Bouillaud, Lordat, Dax, Broca, Trousseau, Baillarger, Charcot and Wernicke shows how the biological paradigm of localization presented by Gall and based on the notion of organ-function correspondence was transformed into a model based on localizable memory traces. This change resulted in the theoretical unification of the mechanisms of motor and non-motor forms of aphasia. These forms, which the earlier authors tended to separate in their analyses of the underlying mechanisms, were now regarded as involving similar mechanisms related to the loss of mnestic images. The crucial step in this development was taken by Broca who presented the hypothesis that the faculty of coordination of speech movements, which according to his predecessors was the faculty lost in motor aphasia, was actually an intellectual faculty and a specific form of memory, and motor aphasia consequently a selective kind of amnesia. Theorists like Charcot and Wernicke generalized this idea into a comprehensive theory of the nature of localization based on the notion of memory traces. Thus, the localization of function was reduced to the localization of representations. Instead of biological paradigms, this model of localization is rooted in the epistemological tradition of psychology represented by Locke and Condillac, who were primarily interested in the problem of representation. In physiology, this approach usually resulted in attempts at localizing representations instead of functions. Google Scholar

Keeley, Brian L. 1999, “Fixing Content and Function in Neurobiological Systems: The Neuroethology of Electroreception”, Biology and Philosophy, vol.14: 395–430.

Are attributions of content and function determinate, or is there no fact of the matter to be fixed? Daniel Dennett has argued in favor of indeterminacy and concludes that, in practice, content and function cannot be fixed. The discovery of an electrical modality in vertebrates offers one concrete instance where attributions of function and content are supported by a strong scientific consensus. A century ago, electroreception was unimagined, whereas today it is widely believed that many species of bony fish, amphibians, sharks, skates, and rays possess this non-human sensory modality. A look at the history of science related to this discovery reveals a highly interdisciplinary endeavor, encompassing ethology, behavioral analysis, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. While each area provides important evidence, none is sufficient on its own to fix content and function. Instead, I argue that an interdisciplinary, neuroethological approach is required to carry out such determinations. Further, a detailed consideration of biological research suggests that while content and function claims are empirically underdetermined and uncertain, there is insufficient reason to believe in an additional problem of indeterminism. In particular, Dennett’s indeterminism arises from a research methodology – logical adaptationism – that generates evidence from only one of the areas of neuroethology. However, logical adaptationism does not reflect adaptationism as it is practiced in contemporary biology. I conclude that Dennett is faced with a dilemma: On the one hand, he can hold to logical adaptationism and the indeterminism that results from it, while giving up the relevance of his arguments to biological practice. On the other, he can embrace a more accurate version of adaptationism – one which plays a role in a larger neuroethological framework – but from which no strong indeterminacy claims follow. Google Scholar

Khalfa, Jean 2001, “Comments on John Horgan’s ‘The Undiscovered Mind’”, Brain and Mind, vol.2, pp.249–252.

Horgan’s scepticism on the possibility of a mind science rests on an inductive argument. Its validity can be measured along three lines: 1) is there really similar evidence of uncertainty within each approach? 2) is there really such a conflict between approaches? And, 3) what is the inductive value of such uncertainties and conflicts anyway? To put it bluntly, from the difficulties of and differences between approaches to physical reality, we cannot infer that a science of nature is impossible or even simply improbable. Google Scholar

Kim, Sungsu 2002,“Testing Multiple Realizability: A Discussion of Bechtel and Mundale”, Philosophy of Science, vol. 69, no.4, ppp.606-610.

Bechtel and Mundale (1999) argue that multiple realizability is not plausible. They point out that neuroscientists assume that psychological traits are realized similarly in homologous brain structures and contend that a biological aspect of the brain that is relevant to neuropsychological state individuation provides evidence against multiple realizability. I argue that Bechtel and Mundale adduce the wrong sort of evidence against multiple realizability. Homologous traits do not provide relevant evidence. It is homoplasious traits of brains that can provide evidence for or against multiple realizability. Google Scholar

Klagge, J.C. 1989, "Wittgenstein and Neuroscience", Synthese,vol. 78, pp. 319-343.

I consider Wittgenstein’s claim that science, and particularly neuroscience, is irrelevant to the resolution of philosophical problems. I argue that this position is undermined by Wittgenstein’s own views on criteria and the possibility of conceptual change. Then I address the question whether Wittgenstein has anything positive to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between neuroscience and the philosophy of mind. In particular, I examine the status of folk psychology and the prospects for its displacement by scientific psychology, as predicted by the eliminative materialists. Google Scholar

Kupfermann, I. & Weiss, K.R. 1978, “The Command Neuron Concept”, Behavioral and Brain Science, vol.1, pp. 3-39.

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Landreth, A. & Richardson, R.C. 2004, "Localization and the New Phrenology: A Review Essay on William Uttal's The New Phrenology", Philosophical Psychology, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 107-123.

William Uttal’s The New Phrenology is a broad attack on localization in cognitive neuroscience. He argues that even though the brain is a highly differentiated organ, “high level cognitive functions” should not be localized in specific brain regions. First, he argues that psychological processes are not well-defined. Second, he criticizes the methods used to localize psychological processes, including imaging technology: he argues that variation among individuals compromises localization, and that the statistical methods used to construct activation maps are flawed. Neither criticism is compelling. First, as we illustrate, there are behavioral measures which offer at least weak constraints on psychological attribution. Second, though imaging does face methodological difficulties associated with variation among individuals, these are broadly acknowledged; moreover, his specific criticisms of the imaging work, and in particular of fMRI, misrepresent the methodology. In concluding, we suggest a way of framing the issues that might allow us to resolve differences between localizationist models and more distributed models empirically. Ingenta

Leslie, Julian C. 2000,“Meanings of “Function” in Neuroscience, Cognition, and Behaviour Analysis” (Commentary on Arbib et al 2000), Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.23, pp. 546-547.

Different sciences approach the brain-behaviour system at various levels, but often apparently share terminology. “Function” is used both ontogenetically and phylogenetically. Within the ontogeny it has various meanings; the one adopted by Arbib et al. is that of mainstream cognitive psychology. This usage is relatively imprecise, and the psychologists who are sceptical about the ability of cognitive psychology to predict behavioural outcomes may have the same reservations about Arbib et al.’s cognitive neuroscience. Google Scholar

Lloyd, Dan 2002, “Studying the Mind from the Inside Out”, Brain and Mind vol.3, pp. 243-259.

Good research requires, among other virtues, (i) methods that yield stable experimental observations without arbitrary (post hoc) assumptions, (ii) logical interpretations of the sources of observations, and (iii) sound inferences to general causal mechanisms explaining experimental results by placing them in larger explanatory contexts. In The New Phrenology, William Uttal examines the research tradition of localization, and finds it deficient in all three virtues, whether based on lesion studies or on new technologies for functional brain imaging. In this paper I consider just the arguments concerning brain imaging, especially functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. I think that Uttal is too harsh in his methodological critique, but correct in his assessment of the conceptual limitations of localist evidence. I propose instead a data-driven test for assessing relative modularity in brain images, and show its use in a secondary analysis of fMRI data from the National fMRI Data Center (www.fmridc.org). Although the analysis is a limited pilot study, it offers additional empirical challenge to localism. Google Scholar

Lloyd, Dan 2000, “Terra Cognita: From Functional Neuroimaging to the Map of the Mind”, Brain and Mind, vol.1, pp. 93–116

For more than a century the paradigm inspiring cognitive neuroscience has been modular and localist. Contemporary research in functional brain imaging generally relies on methods favorable to localizing particular functions in one or more specific brain regions. Meanwhile, connectionist cognitive scientists have celebrated the computational powers of distributed processing, and pioneered methods for interpreting distributed representations. This paper takes a connectionist approach to functional neuroimaging. A tabulation of 35 PET (positron emission tomography) experiments strongly indicates distributed function for at least the ‘medium sized’ anatomical units, the cortical Brodmann areas. More important, when these PET experiments were interpreted as distributed representations, multidimensional scaling revealed a ‘brain activation space’ with a salient structure organized primarily by the sensory modality of the stimulus, and secondarily by the type of motor response. These results suggest that current analytical techniques in functional neuroimaging should be augmented by distributed processing analyses, and that these analyses may lead to many discoveries about the structure of ‘inner space.’ Google Scholar

Looren de Jong, H. & van der Steen, W.J. 1998, “Biological thinking in evolutionary psychology: Rockbottom or quicksand?” Philosophical Psychology, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 183-205.

Evolutionary psychology is put forward by its defenders as an extension of evolutionary biology, bringing psychology within the integrated causal chain of the hard sciences. It is extolled as a new paradigm for integrating psychology with the rest of science. We argue that such claims misrepresent the methods and explanations of evolutionary biology, and present a distorted view of the consequences that might be drawn from evolutionary biology for views of human nature. General theses about adaptation in biology are empty schemata, not laws of nature allowing the subsumption of mind under biology. Functional thinking is an indispensable tool for psychology, mostly of value in abstractive unification and as a heuristic, but it gains little from association with evolutionary notions of selection. Google Scholar

Machamer, P.K., Grush, R. & McLaughlin, P. 2001, Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, Univ of Pitt Pr, Pittsburgh.    

Theory and Method in the Neurosciences surveys the nature and structure of theories in contemporary neuroscience, exploring many of its methodological techniques and problems. The essays explore basic questions about how to relate theories of neuroscience and cognition, the multilevel character of such theories, and their experimental bases. Philosophers and scientists (and some who are both) examine the topics of explanation and mechanisms, simulation and computation, imaging and animal models that raise questions about the forefront of research in cognitive neuroscience. Google Scholar

Mandik, Pete 2003, “Varieties of Representation in Evolved and Embodied Neural Networks”, Biology and Philosophy vol.18, pp. 95-130.

In this paper I discuss one of the key issues in the philosophy of neuroscience: neurosemantics. The project of neurosemantics involves explaining what it means for states of neurons and neural systems to have representational contents. Neurosemantics thus involves issues of common concern between the philosophy of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. I discuss a problem that arises for accounts of representational content that I call “the economy problem”: the problem of showing that a candidate theory of mental representation can bear the work required within in the causal economy of a mind and an organism. My approach in the current paper is to explore this and other key themes in neurosemantics through the use of computer models of neural networks embodied and evolved in virtual organisms. The models allow for the laying bare of the causal economies of entire yet simple artificial organisms so that the relations between the neural bases of, for instance, representation in perception and memory can be regarded in the context of an entire organism. On the basis of these simulations, I argue for an account of neurosemantics adequate for the solution of the economy problem. Google Scholar

Maxwell, N. 1985, "Methodological Problems of Neuroscience" in Models of the Visual Cortex, ed. Rose, David & Dobson,Vernon G., John Wiley and Sons, New York.

The paper argues that in order to tackle the problem of the relationship between consciousness and the brain it is essential to follow the evolutionary path of the emergence of consciousness. One needs to begin with the simplest nervous systems, and work gradually towards an understanding of vastly more complex sentient and conscious brains. Relevant brain sciences have failed to implement this methodology. The paper concludes with a speculation concerning the location of consciousness in the brain. Google Scholar

Mundale, Jennifer 2002, “Concepts of Localization: Balkanization in the Brain”, Brain and Mind, vol.3, pp.313–330.

A spate of recent anti-localizationist publications have re-ignited the old debate about the localization of function. Many of the recent attacks on localization, however, are directed at what I will argue to be a narrow and outmoded view of localization, and thus have little conceptual or empirical impact. What I hope to present here is an analysis of functional localization that more adequately reflects the sophistication and complexity of its use in neuroscientific research, both historically and recently. Proceeding first by way of contrast, I examine the anti-localizationist positions of holism and equipotentiationism. Then, I present a four-fold analysis of localization according to physical scope, physical kind, functional scope, and functional kind. Next, I turn to a discussion of the heuristic value of localization in deciphering structure-function relationships. Finally, I hope to show that the overall view of functional localization that emerges from these considerations constitutes a much more elusive target than its critics assume. It serves to mitigate, and in some instances even defeat, some forms of anti-localizationist criticisms. Google Scholar

Munz, P. 1999, Critique of Impure Reason: An Essay on Neurons, Somatic Markers, and Consciousness, Praeger, Westport

This volume exposes neuroscience and cognitive science to philosophical analysis and proposes that we think of our conscious states of mind as a composite phenomenon consisting of three layers: Neuronal events, somatic markers, and explicit consciousness. while physics and chemistry can and have been successfully employed to describe the causal relation between the first two layers, the further step to articulate consciousness is purely interpretative and points to the preponderant importance of language. (publisher, edited). Google Scholar

Nagel, S. & Neubauer, N. 2005, "A Framework to Systematize Positions in Neuroethics", Essays in Philosophy, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1-13.

Progress in Neuroscience advances rapidly and promises to change some of the basic concepts we have about ourselves. The field of Neuroethics is concerned with the resulting ethical implications. In this paper, we propose a framework to systematize the questions and positions in this context. We start with the discussion of three concrete cases around the topics of treatment/enhancement, personhood and privacy. For each case, we get a set of axes along which standpoints may vary. Finally, we generalize the particular axes of each case and arrive at a three-dimensional coordinate system spanned by the axes of “Liberty of Denial”, “Liberty of Use” and “Scepticism”. With this, we hope to provide a common language simplifying interdisciplinary dialogue and communication with the public. HTML

Northoff, G. 2004, Philosophy of the Brain: The Brain Problem, J Benjamins, Amsterdam

In this book, georg northoff demonstrates that there is in fact a "brain problem". He argues that our brain can only be understood when its empirical functions are directly related to the modes of acquiring knowledge, our epistemic abilities and inabilities. Drawing on the latest neuroscientific data and philosophical theories, he provides an empirical-epistemic definition of the brain. northoff reveals the basic conceptual confusion about the relationship between mind and brain that has so obstinately been lingering in both neuroscience and philosophy. (Publisher, edited). Google Scholar

Northoff, G. 2001, “‘Brain-Paradox’ and ‘Embeddment’ – Do We Need a ‘Philosophy of the Brain’?”, Brain and Mind, vol. 2, pp.195–211.

Present discussions in philosophy of mind focus on ontological and epistemic characteristics of mind and on mind-brain relations. In contrast, ontological and epistemic characteristics of the brain have rarely been thematized. Rather, philosophy seems to rely upon an implicit definition of the brain as “neuronal object” and “object of recognition”: hence ontologically and epistemically distinct from the mind, characterized as “mental subject” and “subject of recognition”. This leads to the “brain-paradox”. Within the context of ‘embeddment’, brain and bodily/environmental context seem mutually to determine each other, and hence be reciprocally dependent on each other. We can describe this as an intrinsic relationship between brain, body and environment. Defining the brain as “embedded” undermines the epistemic and ontological dissociation between brain and mind and consequently resolves the “brain-paradox”. This resolution sheds novel light on problems of mind and mind-brain relations by relativizing both. It is therefore concluded that philosophy should thematize ontological and epistemic characteristics of the brain, thereby taking into account the “brain problem” and developing a “philosophy of the brain”. This approach not only opens a new field in philosophy but also extends the focus of empirical investigation in the neurosciences to take into account the intrinsic relationship between brain, body and environment.  Google Scholar

Northoff, G. 1999a, " Psychomotor Phenomena, Functional Brain Organization, and the Mind-Body Relationship”, Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 199-215.

Psychomotor phenomena such as catatonia or Parkinson's disease are shown to be paradigmatic examples of functional brain organization and mind-brain relationship. First psycho-motor relationships in both diseases are described on a phenomenological level, emphasizing motor similarities and mental differences. The next section, relying on various results in recent neuroimaging and on the concept of functional systems, elucidates various principles of functional brain organization (parallel-distributed, serial-hierachical, context-dependence, functional knots, functional circuitry) by means of psychological and physiological alterations in both diseases. The final section discusses the neurophilosophical implications of functional brain organization for the question of the mind-brain relationship. The ontological neutrality of the different ways of description of mental states (phenomenal, psychological, functional, physiological) is pointed out. Furthermore the various kinds of potential fallacies (conditional, ontological, epistemological), which should be avoided, are discussed. It is concluded that for a deeper understanding of the mind-brain relationship, further elaboration and definition of the terms brain and brain function with the consecutive development of a "philosophy of the brain" is warranted. Google Scholar

Northoff, G. 1999b, "Neuropsychiatry, Epistemology, and Ontology of the Brain: A Response to the Commentaries", Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 231-235.

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O'Keefe, John & Nadel, Lynn 1978, The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map, Oxford University Press. [esp. chaps 1, 5 &14]

This book is concerned with three topics which, at first glance, do not appear to be related: (1) a part of the brain known as the hippocampus; (2) the psychological representation of space; (3) context-dependent memory. We shall argue that the hippocampus is the core of a neural memory system providing an objective spatial framework within which the items and events of an organism's experience are located and interrelated. HTML Google Scholar

Overgaard, M. 2004, "Confounding Factors in Contrastive Analysis", Synthese: An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, vol. 141, no. 2, pp. 217-231.

Several authors within psychology, neuroscience and philosophy take for granted that standard empirical research techniques are applicable when studying consciousness. In this article, it is discussed whether one of the key methods in cognitive neuroscience--the contrastive analysis--suffers from any serious confounding when applied to the field of consciousness studies; that is to say, if there are any systematic difficulties when studying consciousness with this method that make the results untrustworthy. Through an analysis of theoretical arguments in favor of using contrastive analysis, combined with analyses of empirical findings, I conclude by arguing for three factors that currently are confounding of research using contrastive analysis. These are (1) unconscious processes, (2) introspective reports, and (3) attention. Google Scholar

Pereira, A.,Jr 2001, "Coexisting Spatio-Temporal Scales In Neuroscience", Minds and Machines, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 457-465.

In this study I propose an epistemological discussion of multiple spatio-temporal scales in neuroscience. Beginning with an empirical criterion--the necessity of different experimental methodologies for the measurement of different phenomena in the same system--I summarize spatial and temporal scales currently used in neuroscience and discuss the possibility of a more general theoretical criterion. I conclude that multiscaling should be recognized as a central concept in the epistemology of neuroscience. Google Scholar

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The notion of continuity of dynamic representations serves as a beacon for an integrative neuroscience to emerge. Google Scholar

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The philosophical innateness debate has long relied on psychological evidence. For a century, however, a parallel debate has taken place within neuroscience. In this paper, I consider the implications of this neuroscience debate for the philosophical innateness debate. By combining the tools of theoretical neurobiology and learning theory, I introduce the “problem of development” that all adaptive systems must solve, and suggest how responses to this problem can demarcate a number of innateness proposals. From this perspective, I suggest that the majority of natural systems are in fact innate. Lastly, I consider the acquisition strategies implemented by the human brain and suggest that there is a rigorous way of characterizing these “neural constructivist” strategies as not being strongly innate. Alternatives to innateness are thus both rigorously definable and empirically supported. Google Scholar

Revonsuo, A. 2001, "On the Nature of Explanation in the Neurosciences" in Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, ed. P.K. Machamer, Univ of Pitt Pr, Pittsburgh, pp. 45-69.

Basic and cognitive neuroscience include fundamental explanatory problems, exposed and examined in this article. Basic neuroscience employs mechanistic explanations across multiple levels of description. This explanatory strategy includes the problematic assumptions that the brain is decomposable to relatively independent parts and levels and that our research instruments give adequate access to them. Cognitive neuroscience attempts to combine both the mechanistic program of basic neuroscience and the functionalistic program of cognitive science. This leads to explanatory confusions at the interface between the mental and the neural levels of description. Google Scholar

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The representation of objects and faces by neurons in the temporal lobe visual cortical areas of primates has the property that the neurons encode relatively independent information in their firing rates. This means that the number of stimuli that can be encoded increases exponentially with the number of neurons in an ensemble. Moreover, the information can be read by receiving neurons that perform just a synaptically weighted sum of the firing rates being received. Some ways in which these representations become grounded in the world are described. The issue of syntactic binding in representations, and of its value for a higher order thought system, is discussed. Google Scholar

Roskies, A.L. (forthcoming) "New approaches in visualizing human brain function" in The Big Science.

Several recently developed techniques enable the investigation of the neural basis of cognitive function in the human brain. This article reviews the capabilities and limitations of these techniques, focusing on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which yields whole-brain images reflecting regional neural activity associated with the performance of specific tasks. Technical, biological, and cognitive issues relevant to understanding the goals and methods of neuroimaging studies are discussed, and the types of advances in understanding cognitive and brain function made possible with these methods are illustrated with examples from the neuroimaging literature. Google

Ryder, D. 2004, "Meditations on First Neuroscience: Critical Notice of Mark Changizi's The Brain from 25,000 Feet", Synthese, vol. 141, no. 2, pp. 277-285.

In The Brain from 25,000 Feet, Mark Changizi argues that the average neuroscientist has it all bass-ackwards, or at least that this methodology is bound to miss something essential for understanding the brain. The mechanistic details, he suggests, won’t make any sense in the absence of a ‘‘high-level’’ understanding of the brain, by which he means an understanding of the principles and constraints that must apply to any brain-like object, i.e., any thinking thing. It would be lovely if Changizi could, in neo-Cartesian form, derive the function and structure of the fundamental cortical circuit from a priori mathematical truths. Of course, he does nothing of the sort, but I think he is successful in demonstrating how high-level understanding can enrich the sciences of the mind, often in surprising ways. I think he is less successful in illuminating neuroscience in particular, but that is perhaps the minor failing of a misleading title rather than a serious failure to support his main thesis.  Google Scholar

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The relevance of Wolfgang Kohler's psychoneural isomorphism principle to contemporary cognitive neuroscience is explored. Kohler's approach to the mind-body problem is interpreted as a response to the foundational crisis of psychology at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some aspects of his isomorphism doctrine are discussed, with a view to reaching an interpretation that is both historically accurate and pertinent to issues currently debated in the philosophy of psychology. The principle was meant to be empirically verifiable. Accordingly, some similarities between Kohler's approach and current neural network modeling are pointed out, and it is shown that some recent trends in the neurosciences are broadly compatible with Kohler's views on cortical functioning. Isomorphism is interpreted as a form of neuroreductionism constrained by bridging laws relating mental phenomena to macroscopic parameters of neural function. While isomorphism is probably valid for perceptual phenomena, its applicability to higher mental processes remains doubtful. Google Scholar

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We argue in this paper that so-called new wave reductionism fails to capture the nature of the interlevel relations between psychology and neuroscience. Bickle (1995, Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: some accomplished facts, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 265–285; 1998, Psychoneural reduction: the new wave, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) has claimed that a (bottom–up) reduction of the psychological concepts of learning and memory to the concepts of neuroscience has in fact already been accomplished. An investigation of current research on the phenomenon of long-term potentiation reveals that this claim overstates the facts. Both the psychological and the neural concepts involved have not yet stabilized and face further correction under the influence of both bottom–up and top–down selection pressures. In addition, psychological concepts often refer to functions, and functions are indispensable and irreducible. Function ascriptions pick out objective patterns involving historical factors and distal goals. This view of functions implies that psychological facts cannot be simply read off from the neurophysiological facts. Although psychological theorizing is constrained by neurophysiology (and vice versa), psychology remains distinct at least to some degree. Google Scholar

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Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a method capable of transiently modulating neural excitability. The aim of the present paper is to argue that TMS with its ability to draw causal inferences on function and its neural representations is a valuable neurophysiological tool for investigating the causal basis of neuronal functions and can provide substantive insight into the modern interdisciplinary and (anti)reductionist neuro-philosophical debates concerning the relationships between brain functions and mental abilities. Thus, TMS can serve as a heuristic method for resolving causal issues in an arena where only correlative tools have traditionally been available. Google Scholar

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