Neurophilosophy

Neurophilosophy or philosophy of neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy that explores the relevance of neuroscientific studies to the arguments traditionally categorized as philosophy of mind. The philosophy of neuroscience attempts to clarify neuroscientific methods and results using the conceptual rigor and methods of philosophy of science. Below is a list of specific issues important to philosophy of neuroscience: "The indirectness of studies of mind and brain" "Computational or representational analysis of brain processing" "Relations between psychological and neuroscientific inquiries" Modularity of mind What constitutes adequate explanation in neuroscience? "Location of cognitive function" Many of the methods and techniques central to neuroscientific discovery rely on assumptions that can limit the interpretation of the data. Philosophers of neuroscience have discussed such assumptions in the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, dissociation in cognitive neuropsychology, single unit recording, and computational neuroscience. Following are descriptions of many of the current controversies and debates about the methods employed in neuroscience. Many fMRI studies rely heavily on the assumption of "localization of function" (same as functional specialization). Localization of function means that many cognitive functions can be localized to specific brain regions. A good example of functional localization comes from studies of the motor cortex. There seem to be different groups of cells in the motor cortex responsible for controlling different groups of muscles. Many philosophers of neuroscience criticize fMRI for relying too heavily on this assumption. Michael Anderson points out that subtraction-method fMRI misses a lot of brain information that is important to the cognitive processes. Subtraction fMRI only shows the differences between the task activation and the control activation, but many of the brain areas activated in the control are obviously important for the task as well.

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Related concepts (2)

Mind–body problem

The mind–body problem is a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and the body. The issue is this. Though it is obvious that mental events and physical events are somehow related, it is not obvious what the nature of this relation is. For example, it is obvious that feelings of sadness (which are mental events) will cause people to cry (which is a physical state of the body), or that finding a joke funny (a mental event) will cause one to laugh (another bodily state), or that feelings of pain (in the mind) will cause avoidance behaviours (in the body), and so on.

Neurophilosophy