In Neuroscience and Philosophy three prominent philosophers and a leading neuroscientist clash over the conceptual presuppositions of cognitive neuroscience. The book begins with an excerpt from Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker’s Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003), which questions the conceptual commitments of cognitive neuroscientists. Their position is then criticized by Daniel Dennett and John Searle, two philosophers who have written extensively on the subject, and Bennett and Hacker in turn respond.
Their impassioned debate encompasses a wide range of central themes: the nature of consciousness, the bearer and location of psychological attributes, the intelligibility of so-called brain maps and representations, the notion of qualia, the coherence of the notion of an intentional stance, and the relationships between mind, brain, and body. Clearly argued and thoroughly engaging, the authors present fundamentally different conceptions of philosophical method, cognitive-neuroscientific explanation, and human nature, and their exchange will appeal to anyone interested in the relation of mind to brain, of psychology to neuroscience, of causal to rational explanation, and of consciousness to self-consciousness.
In his conclusion Daniel Robinson (member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University) explains why this confrontation is so crucial to the understanding of neuroscientific research. The project of cognitive neuroscience, he asserts, depends on the incorporation of human nature into the framework of science itself. In Robinson’s estimation, Dennett and Searle fail to support this undertaking; Bennett and Hacker suggest that the project itself might be based on a conceptual mistake. Exciting and challenging, Neuroscience and Philosophy is an exceptional introduction to the philosophical problems raised by cognitive neuroscience.
Table of Content
Introduction, by Daniel Robinson
The Argument
Selections from Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
Neuroscience and Philosophy, by Maxwell R. Bennett
The Rebuttals
Philosophy as Naive Anthropology: Comment on Bennett and Hacker, by Daniel Dennett
Putting Consciousness Back in the Brain: Reply to Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, by John Searle
Reply to the Rebuttals
The Conceptual Presuppositions of Cognitive Neuroscience: A Reply to Critics, by Maxwell R. Bennett and Peter M. S. Hacker
Epilogue, by Maxwell R. Bennett
Still Looking: Science and Philosophy in Pursuit of Prince Reason, by Daniel Robinson
Notes
About the author
Maxwell Bennett is professor of neuroscience and university chair at the University of Sydney and scientific director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute. His most recent books areHistory of the Synapse,
The Idea of Consciousness, and
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, which he coauthored with Peter Hacker.Daniel Dennett is Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of numerous books including
Freedom Evolves,
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, and
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.Peter Hacker is a fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford. The leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, his seventeen books include, most recently,
Human Nature: The Categorical Framework,
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, which he coauthored with Maxwell Bennett, and
Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies.John Searle is Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of sixteen books, including
Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power,
Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, and
Mind: A Brief Introduction. His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, and in 2004 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal.
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