A neuroscientist looks at philosophy: Response to Beedle (1999)

✍ Scribed by Paul F. Smith

• Book ID: 101245666
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 40 KB
• Volume: 60
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0360-4012
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4547(20000501)60:3<281::aid-jnr1>3.0.co;2-4

✦ Synopsis

In a recent mini-review (Beedle, 1999), Andrew Beedle raised some interesting points regarding the branch of philosophy that deals with neuroscientific issues ("neurophilosophy") and how it relates to neuroscience itself. I would like to respond to some of the viewpoints expressed, from the perspective of a neuroscientist whose relationship to philosophy is similar to Beedle's relationship to neuroscience.

The first part of Beedle's article provided a brief history of the development of network models of the nervous system and the use of parallel connectionist models to represent complex neural operations. This led into a discussion of the concept of "mind" as an emergent property of a complex system and the status of the concept of "self" or "I" in such a context. From here, Beedle considered the problem of consciousness as a "seamlessly integrated phenomenon," given current evidence from neurology, and analysed in detail the problem of the visual system "filling in" to create a complete visual perception in cases where the visual information transmitted to the brain is incomplete or degraded in some way.