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.
