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Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience

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Undoubtedly this book contains both excellence in terms of its review thoroughness and controversey by virtue of its conclusions. It is quite clear from the beginning that Hacker's philosophical stance drives most of the conceptual critique in the book. It is a complicated book, given the vast variety of themes and attendant analyses, and a short review will do it little justice. However, Hacker is a later Wittgensteinian, and to appreciate most of the philosophical input the reader should have reasonable knowledge of the contrast between early and later Wittgenstein, and what exactly characterises the core components of the latter.

The primary criticism leveled at neuroscience is that it is a conceptual shambles due to repeatedly confusing functions of 'selves' with functions of organs (the brain of course). Neursoscience is identified with Cartesian dualism by clumsily shifting talk of properties of persons to talk of brain phenomena and assuming them equivalent. The anvil upon which neuroscience is being philosophically temepered is termed the mereological principle (or fallacy - and you can buy the book for an explanation).

Part of the criticism echoes Wittgenstein's 'if a lion could talk we wouldn't understand him', and most significantly recalls previous critiques of private langage arguments (with a nod to Kripke). It turns out, according to Bennet and Hacker, that neuroscience has been secretly keeping private mental objects alive - presumably in ignorance of philosophical canons.

The book concludes with a well argued and welcome broadside against Dennett's intentional stance (a sacred tenet among cognitve neuroscientists) and, unfortunately, a more toothless critique of Searle on intentionality.

Is this a good book? As an exercise in conceptual analysis this is an excellent text to study - and disagree with. However, implicit in the text is a philosophical backcloth that will not be accessible to many readers outside philosophy (e.g. the presentation of neuroscientific concepts as neo-platonic). It is an immensely scholarly work, but personally I believe that readers with an informed understanding of Wittgenstein will follow the threads more easily than others. Nevertheless, I heartily recommend it.

What are you, a ghost in a machine or a living human being? In this excellent book, the authors, a neuroscientist and a philosopher, answer the question.

They say that Rene Descartes' ideas still cause many muddles. He thought that we were all ghosts in machines, two things in one. This was because he believed that there were two basic kinds of thing, mind and matter (a theory called dualism), and that what we are depends on what our minds do (idealism).

The authors show that commonsense clears up the muddles. We are all living human beings. "The person ... is a psychophysical entity, not a duality of two conjoined substances, a mind and a body."

The authors show that dualism - the ghost in the machine - can never explain how our minds relate to our bodies. Our minds are not things, so they cannot cause changes by acting on our brains.

Often neuroscientists wrongly ascribe to our brains the activities that Descartes and his followers like John Locke ascribed to our minds. But human beings - not our brains or minds - think, see, decide and feel. "The brain and its activities make it possible for us - not for it - to perceive and think, to feel emotions, and to form and pursue projects."

Too many neuroscientists trap themselves in idealism. For example, Francis Crick wrote, "What we see appears to be located outside our body. ... What you see is not what is really there. ... In fact we have no direct knowledge of the objects in the world."

But the authors reply, "What we see does not appear to be located outside us. What we see is necessarily located outside our body, unless we are looking at ourselves in a mirror, or at our limbs or thorax." We see what is really there, the real world, and we directly know objects in the world, which exist whether we see them or not.

This is materialism, which "in its simplest and warranted form amounts to a denial that there are mental or spiritual substances." Materialism does not mean that our minds are our brains. It does not mean that we explain things, even material things, by studying the matter of which they are made. Materialism does not reduce everything to physics, or reduce our minds to our nervous systems.

Colin Blakemore was wrong to write, "We are machines", Crick wrong to write, "You ... are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Our goals, motives and reasons - not our cells or molecules - explain our behaviour.

The authors show that scientists and philosophers do two different, useful jobs. Scientists analyse what's true and what's false. They create theories to explain and hypotheses to predict.

Philosophers analyse concepts and the rules for the use of words. They clarify what makes sense and what does not. And these authors have done this job superbly.

*disclaimer: I am writing this as a philosopher of mind so any parts of the book or chapters not related to this are not what I am addressing.*

I do not mean to say that Bennett and Hacker have all the answers, but their "ordinary language" approach, along with their debt to Wittgenstein, Ryle, Kenny and Strawson, says something about their book. Most contemporary philosophers of mind (Sprague, Strawson and Hacker, among others, excluded) have rightly dismissed the soul, but have decided that there is something "mysterious" about consciousness, or perception or emotion, or what have you. In response, Bennett and Hacker have shown what "consciousness" really is: the conscious acts of people existing in the world. This is why we know that other people are conscious actors: they do conscious things such as watch birds, or play chess, or eat ham sandwiches.

If Michael Tye's or David Chalmers' or Colin McGinn's problems of consiousness (e.g. that I can know that you feel the same pain that I feel, or that you see the same color that I see) are indeed problems for you, you should read this book; if it doesn't prove to you that they are not problems at all, at least it will give you a new way of looking at the problems so that you may come to your own interesting conclusions.

I claim that with language we are nothing-but jabbering naked apes!

Seriously though, this is the best-written exposition of the Anglo-American analytical philosophical view of the current status of conceptualizing going on surrounding the new sciences of "mind and brain." It is written with extreme clarity. It is very readable in that one can start almost anywhere using the table of contents and the annotations throughout to find points of interest. You can almost read it as if it were web enabled after putting away the first chapter or two. The authors succeed in their goal in making the book very easy to use and understand. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in philosophy of mind, or philosophy of neuroscience. All the arguments are up-to-date. All the major polarizing issues in the field are covered, and all the major players are given coverage. The footnotes and appendices are also well done. The clarity of exposition and good grammar is admirable.

The only problem with the book is that they are completely wrong. The authors' point of view is built almost entirely on a view of meaning that has outlived its usefulness. Ludwig Wittgenstein has the unique distinction of having lead two, going on three, generations of philosophers on two continents into semantic oblivion TWICE in one career, and the authors are bent on continuing that tradition. They criticize neuroscientists (and those philosophers who are tagging along for the ride) primarily for misusing concepts. They have nothing bad to say about the quality of research or the scientific achievements except where the wrong kinds of experiments get done or where results are misconstrued due to continuing conceptual confusion. Nevertheless, they exemplify the extreme unquestioning dedication to a rationalism based on how words are or should be used according to public linguistic norms. (A rule is a rule, right?) The book then amounts to 400 some odd pages of hand-slapping as the philosophers, like English teachers, take it upon themselves to discipline all those unruly slang laden neuroscientists. No wonder analytical philosophers are characterized as pompous or irrelevant all too often. (They give philosophy majors like me a bad name.)

I likewise do not have much enthusiasm for the naïve reductionist views that are prevalent among neuroscientists and the "eliminative" views that support them. I held both views myself some 35 years ago. But I finally outgrew it with good reason upon realizing how badly reductionism was doing explaining our natural world, particularly its failings in accounting for emergent behavior in systems, quantum phenomena and the relationship between them. Another reason was being turned off by all the uncritical go-go-science cheerleading from the sidelines. I worry for what the public will make of all the mind-brain breakthrough bragging going on. Reading this book provided me with a much needed philosophical tune-up and the realization that I'd better be more careful of what I say and how I say it. But it did not convince me that a blind allegiance to the "meaning is use" view will get us any closer to resolution of these issues. This is only going to lead to a stalemate, or worse - the winner will unfortunately be the guy with the most government funding and press time - not the one with the most sensible and meaningful philosophical outlook. The main contribution of the book is to accidently demonstrate how badly a new approach is needed.

To solve these problems and get philosophers and neuroscientists on the same page will require a new view of meaning, what it is, where it comes from, how it evolves, and what exactly it has to do with usage norms. Such a view is, I think, not too far off. Read this book, and then go read everything you can about cognitive semantics and cognitive linguistics by folks like Lakoff, Johnson, Turner, Fauconnier, Elman, Bates, etc, etc. Once the full implications of what this area of research has to say about concepts, language, language games and philosophy itself are known, some new ways of approaching these stale philosophical problems will surface. [OOPs, guess I blew it, areas of research cannot talk, sorry Hacker.] When that happens, I am sure we will all find the words to express it.

In my opinion, this book places the present knowledge of "the mind", in the right perspective.
It tells us about the limitations of neurobiological approaches, and the contribution of an independent philosophy. It seems that the latter should not be a simple philosophical approach to the neurobiological knowledge of the field, but a knowledge in its own right.

The best way to summarize this book is that it vastly overstates the problem of ascribing mental phenomena to the brain. The main theme of my response is this: The nervous system is the most important organ system for producing mental phenomena. Therefore, as long as we admit that the neural substrates of mental phenomena are not the WHOLE of mental phenomena, then there is no problem with ascribing mental phenomena to systems in the brain.

I suspect that this book is the result of a fundamental disagreement about the role of modern philosophy. Modern philosophy is broadly divided into two categories: analytic and continental. Analytic philosophy views itself as continuous with and subordinate to science. It takes the position that there are no specifically philosophical truths and that the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. On this view, philosophy by itself would be useless and at sea. This is why philosophical problems tend to stagnate. Philosophy independent of science would make no progress, and to the extent that philosophy does make progress, it often depends on progress made by science. This happens for several reasons: scientists ask questions which can be empirically verified or falsified, they operationally define their terms, and they make falsifiable conclusions.

Continental philosophy, on the other hand, opposes all of the above. It views itself as a subject entirely independent of and unaffected by science. It is this line of thinking, I suppose, that produces books like Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience.

The primary argument in this book is that mental phenomena should not be ascribed to the brain, but they should be ascribed to the "whole human being." I find this claim extremely problematic. The repeated reference to the "human being" is ambiguous and unscientific. What exactly do the authors mean by the "human being"? Are they aware that a "human being" is just an abstraction? In reality, the "human being" can only be described by the component systems in the organism and its environment. Anyhow, it seems to me that there are only four possibilities for what they could mean by this. Perhaps they mean the whole nervous system. If they mean the nervous system, then there is no problem because neuroscience is the study of the whole nervous system. Perhaps they mean the whole body, including other systems. If they mean the whole body, then this claim is not at all damaging to cognitive neuroscience because obviously the nervous system is the part of the body MOST INVOLVED in mental phenomena. Perhaps they mean the interaction between the person and the environment. If they mean this, then this claim is also not at all damaging to cognitive neuroscience because 1) all neuroscientists accept that the environment plays a role in mental states, and 2) environmental conditions actually alter the nervous system, thereby validating the importance of studying the nervous system and mental phenomena. Finally, perhaps they mean something beyond nature, something metaphysical. If they mean this, then their argument is based on dualism, an old and archaic philosophy riddled with its own problems. So it seems to me that whatever the authors mean by the "human being," their central argument is empty.

My primary response is this. Even if the nervous system is not the WHOLE of mental phenomena, it is obviously the most involved part of the body in producing mental phenomena. The authors repeatedly ignore this fact. They ask a series of useless questions: "Do we know what it is for a brain to see or hear, for a brain to have experiences, to know or believe something? Do we have any conception of what it would be for a brain to make a decision? Do we grasp what it is for a brain to reason, to estimate probabilities, to present arguments, to interpret data and to form hypotheses on the basis of its interpretations?" My response: Yes, we are gaining a very good understanding of what it means for a brain to do all of these things. Even if you insist that the brain alone cannot do these things, that is irrelevant because it is a fact that the brain is the most important organ for seeing, hearing, experiencing, knowing, believing, decision making, reasoning, estimating, arguing, interpreting, and hypothesizing. So what exactly was their point?

One thing I dislike about this book is that it tries to compartmentalize different subjects. It tries to say, "Neuroscientists should stop meddling in philosophy," and vice versa. I completely disagree with this approach. I think it is always a good thing when different disciplines come together to work on a common problem. I am a proponent of the interdisciplinary approach to academics. I view philosophy as a compliment to science and as a very important tool for scientists. I will concede one point: I think more scientists should take the time to learn the intricacies of philosophy. Perhaps too many scientists have a condescending view of philosophy. Nevertheless, Bennett and Hacker are too harsh on scientists in this book. They seem to have this view of scientists as terribly ignorant people about philosophy. I think this is a harsh and wrong assumption. And I want to emphasize that philosophy is most useful when it is subordinate to science.

Not only do the authors compartmentalize subjects, but they do it wrongly. They seem to place psychology and philosophy in one bubble, and they place neuroscience in another bubble. This is completely wrong. If anything, psychology is much closer to neuroscience in the academic world. But the fact is that all of these subjects are interrelated and overlapping. They do not exist in bubbles.

Another major problem with the book is that the authors fail to present a coherent theory of mind. We get it, you hate modern philosophy of mind, and you disagree with every current theory of mind. But what exactly do you think the mind is? Until the authors answer this question, they have a very weak argument. All they offer is this vague statement: "The mind, we argue, is neither a substance distinct from the brain nor a substance identical with the brain." That's perfectly fine, and there are many philosophers (e.g. John Searle) who agree with that statement. But it is not enough to say what the mind is NOT. They still need to define what the mind IS.

It seems to me that this book consists mostly of Hacker defending his domain of work (philosophy) from being invaded by scientific research. It's as if he is waving a big stick at neuroscientists while saying, "Don't come any closer to my philosophy with your neuroscience!" This reaction is understandable, but it is not justifiable. I'm sorry, Mr. Hacker, but neuroscience is making progress to connect research about the mind and brain, and there is nothing you can do to change that fact. (I understand that Bennett is a neuroscientist, but I suspect Bennett is more interested in clarifying the nature of neuroscience, while Hacker is more interested in criticizing it.)

That leads to my final point: This book has had no effect on the progress of cognitive neuroscience or neurophilosophy. Quite the opposite! Cognitive neuroscience has exploded with research over the past decade. Every major university is involved in research in cognitive neuroscience. Clearly, scientists have not taken this book to heart. Instead, they have responded with more research about the mind and brain. By that measure, this book is a failure.

Philosophical Foundations Of Neuroscience is the collaboration and brainchild of both neuroscientist M. R. Bennett (Professor of Physiology and University Chair, University of Sydney) and philosopher P. M. S. Hacker (Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, England), surveying numerous theories including those of Blakemore, Crick, Damasio, Edelman, Gazzniga, Weiskrantz, and others. Written as a conceptual handbook for both students and researchers, Philosophical Foundations Of Neuroscience is a scholarly, college-level text covering the history of this intersection between disciplines, cognitive powers, emotion, conscious experience, reductionism and more. Philosophical Foundations Of Neuroscience is highly recommended as an excellent general foundation resource for academic Philosophy collections and reading lists.

One of the things, maybe what I liked most, about academic philosophy when I was in my twenties was the aggressive ("hostile" is a very appropriate word here)argumentation by which we made our bones. Always supplemented, of course, by citations of the chapter and verse of this or that one to show our scholarly credentials. It is what I find most repellent now. Most people in the industry can hardly be unaware how it colors the picture of the discipline for everyone else, in and out of school.

I bought this book rather than the abridged edition because I really wanted to see Wittgensteinianism (?) at work on the mind-body problem...and yes, I fear it is still a problem for me despite all the old wine in new bottles now on the shelves. I didn't buy it to agree or disagree with it. I'm lucky to know a brain oriented psychiatrist who actually maintains many of the theses under attack and so I've got a tennis partner here, though he's limited from "our" point of view by not knowing most of our academic jargon.. I have got him to see that the brain is not the person, that the person has schizophrenia, not her brain.

I'm also trying to suggest that to him its not the brain or even just the person which "thinks". Skinner remarked we think with our stomachs as well as with our brains and that wasn't a simple remark. I.e., it doesn't mean that our stomach sends signals to the brain which make us hungry. As a beekeeper I've often mused on the totally different reality a bee lives in due to it's eye structure, various sensory hairs of different types layered on her body and on and on. A bee thinks differently than us not JUST because of her brain, but because of her body. A bee's physics text would be nearly incomprehensible to us; neither her text nor ours, I think, would be a better picture of an external world. Physics is in that sense pragmatic. That's a problem.

In fact, I'd like to solve my puzzlement about consciousness and external reality by becoming a convinced diciple of W, but I can't. If you ARE interested in giving this kind of analysis its best shot, in finally convincing yourself that 'nothing is hidden' and that there is no problem of consciousness, in getting some rest,you really should read this book. Lots of time it's easy to fall into the slipstream while doing so. But Bishop Berkley keeps shaking me awake. Or I'm just stuck in the tarbaby. Can't figure out which. Anyway, this book is a very good excersize.

In undergraduate school, a teacher who had studied with W, said to me you don't solve philosophical problems, you outgrow them. When?

This book is an anachronistic attempt to police the language used by neuroscientists. Don't waste your money.

While neuroscientists let data drive their models of the world, these authors, as is typical of those entranced by early 20th century Oxbridge navalgazing, get it backwards. They consider "our" (that is, their) concepts of mind and use these concepts to tell the neuroscientists how they should be modelling and talking about the brain. Scientists are world-focused, trying to understand the phenomena, while these authors are language-focused, and try to turn their armchair musings into prescriptions about how neuroscience should operate. Thankfully, this book has had, and will have, no effect on practicing neuroscientists.

One of their arguments, for instance, is that the term 'discrimination' is only appropriately applied to persons, that it is used to describe their behavioral dispositions. It is a mistake, these Quixotic language police aver, to import this language into the brain and describe brain processes as discriminating something. This is an inane argument. Let's say the authors are right that neuroscientists have extended the term 'discriminate' to something beyond which it originally applied. Big deal. Is it really helpful to arbitrarily sanctify certain linguistic conventions? You might as well say it is not appropriate to call something a computer because originally the word computer only applied to people like accountants who computed things for a living. I want to understand how the brain works, and I'm perfectly happy adapting preexisting words to do this. They need to go back to the drawing board and come back when they have something useful to say.

You will like this book only if you don't know anything about systems neuroscience, you like the linguocentric perspective of the analytic philosophers, and if you fetishize Wittgenstein (they use him as an authority in matters of linguistic overbearance).

The best thing about this book is its title, which is actually a misnomer. If you want to learn about the conceptual foundations of neuroscience, read a neuroscience text like Kandel and Schwartz (Principles of Neural Science), Purves (Neuroscience), or Kristoph Koch (Biophysics of Computation).

I give it two stars rather than one because it is such a clear example of philosophy that is completely irrelevant. I would never recommend that someone spend money on it.