|
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. Specific issues 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" The indirectness of studies of mind and brain 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 discuss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patricia Churchland
Patricia Smith Churchland (born 16 July 1943) is a Canadian-American analytic philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has taught since 1984. She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989. She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, Moscow State University. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and Somerville College, Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984 and is married to the philosopher Paul Churchland. Larissa MacFarquhar, writing for ''The New Yorker,'' observed of the philosophical couple that: "Their work is so similar that they are sometimes disc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Churchland
Paul Montgomery Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh under Wilfrid Sellars (1969), Churchland rose to the rank of full professor at the University of Manitoba before accepting the Valtz Family Endowed Chair in Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a joint appointments in that institution's Institute for Neural Computation and on its Cognitive Science Faculty. As of February 2017, Churchland is recognised as Professor Emeritus at the UCSD, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Moscow State University. Churchland is the husband of philosopher Patricia Churchland, with whom he collaborates, and ''The New Yorker'' has reported the similarity of their views, e.g., on the mind-body problem, are such that the two are often discussed as if they are one person. E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. Crick and Watson's paper in ''Nature'' in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions. Together with Maurice Wilkins, they were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA. He is widely known for the use of the term " central dogma" to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids. In other words ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Science
Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and truth. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of science. Ethical issues such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are often considered ethics or science studies rather than the philosophy of science. There is no consensus among philosophers about many of the central problems concerned with the philosophy of science, including whether science can reveal the truth about unobservable things and whether scientific reasoning can be justified at all. In addition to these general questions about science as a whole, philosophers of science consi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann-Sophie Barwich
Ann-Sophie Barwich is a cognitive scientist, an empirical philosopher, and a historian of science. She is an Assistant Professor with joint positions in the Cognitive Science Program and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Barwich is best known for her interdisciplinary work on the history, philosophy, and neuroscience of olfaction. Her book, ''Smellosophy: What the Nose tells the Mind'', highlights the importance of thinking about the sense of smell as a model for neuroscience and the senses. She is also noted for her analyses on methodological issues in molecular biology and neuroscience. Biography Ann-Sophie Barwich, originally from Weimar, East Germany, received her ''Magister Artium'' (M.A.) in German Literature Studies and Philosophy in 2009 at the Humboldt University of Berlin with her thesis on causality in Leibniz and its relevance for theories of biological classification. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2013 at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nayef Al-Rodhan
Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan ( ar, نايف الروضان; born 1959) is a Saudi philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author. He is an honorary fellow of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom, and senior fellow and head of thGeneva Centre for Security PolicyGeopolitics and Global Futures Programme SwitzerlandSenior Research Fellow, Institute of Philosophy School of Advanced Study, University of London, United Kingdom, and Member of the Global Future Council on Frontier Risks at the World Economic Forum. His research focuses on the interplay between: Analytic Neurophilosophy, Geopolitics, Global Futures, Outer space security, Cultural discourse and synergies, Disruptive technologies, International Relations and Policy. Biography Professor Nayef Al-Rodhan began his career as a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist. As a medical student at Newcastle University, he was mentored and influenced by the renowned neurologist, Lord Walton. He trained in neu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Von Neumann
John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time and was said to have been "the last representative of the great mathematicians who were equally at home in both pure and applied mathematics". He integrated pure and applied sciences. Von Neumann made major contributions to many fields, including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, measure theory, functional analysis, ergodic theory, group theory, lattice theory, representation theory, operator algebras, matrix theory, geometry, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, ballistics, nuclear physics and quantum statistical mechanics), economics ( game theory and general equilibrium theory), computing ( Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, numerical meteo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andy Clark
Andy Clark, (born 1957) is a British philosopher who is Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex. Prior to this, he was at professor of philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Clark is one of the founding members of the CONTACT collaborative research project whose aim is to investigate the role environment plays in shaping the nature of conscious experience. Clark's papers and books deal with the philosophy of mind and he is considered a leading scholar on the subject of mind extension. He has also written extensively on connectionism, robotics and the role and nature of mental representation. Philosophical work Clark's work explores a number of disparate but interrelated themes. Many of these themes run against established wisdom in cognitive pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Bechtel
William Bechtel (born 1951) is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. He was a professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis from 1994 until 200 Bechtel was also the chair of the Philosophy Department from 1999 until 2002 and was heavily involved with thPhilosophy-Psychology-Neuroscienceprogram, serving at different times as Assistant Director and Director. Before that, he was at Georgia State. Bechtel earned his PhD from the University of Chicago and his BA from Kenyon College. Bechtel's work in philosophy has focused on the philosophy of the life sciences. In particular, he has worked on cell biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Bechtel advocates a mechanistic approach to philosophy of science, taking the view that phenomena are often explained by specifying mechanisms. He argues that although this is more naturally in accordance with the actual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kathleen Akins
Kathleen Akins is Professor of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University. She is James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellow in Philosophy of Science and a Burnaby Mountain Endowed Research Professor. Her primary area of research is Neurophilosophy, with her research goal as of 1999 being fostering better exchange between philosophy and neuroscience to see what can be revealed about "the nature of mind and its relation to the world." She is particularly famous for two articles: "Of Sensory Systems and the "Aboutness" of Mental States" and "What is it like to be boring and myopic", a response to Nagel's " What is it like to be a bat?". In that article, Akins delves into bat physiology, arguing that much about bat subjectivity, such as the function of cortical activity profiles of the bat's brain, remains to be fleshed out in neuroscientific detail, and Nagel is too quick in ruling these out as answers to his central question. In 2011, Akins wrote an essay for "Disabled Philosophers" detai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gualtiero Piccinini
Gualtiero Piccinini (born 1970) is an Italian–American philosopher known for his work on the nature of mind and computation as well as on how to integrate psychology and neuroscience. He is Curators' Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy Department and Associate Director of the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Background Piccinini was born and raised in Italy, and studied philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Turin, from which he earned a Bachelor of Arts, and graduated ''cum laude.'' He then went to graduate school at University of Pittsburgh, specializing in the history and philosophy of science. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 2003, he held the position of "James S. McDonnell Post Doctoral Research Fellow" at the PNP (Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology) program at Washington University in St. Louis. He started as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, in 2005 and received early tenure and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pancomputationalism
Digital physics is a speculative idea that the universe can be conceived of as a vast, digital computation device, or as the output of a deterministic or probabilistic computer program. The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was proposed by Konrad Zuse in his 1969 book '' Rechnender Raum'' ("''Calculating Space''"). The term ''digital physics'' was coined by Edward Fredkin in 1978, who later came to prefer the term digital philosophy. Fredkin encouraged the creation of a digital physics group at what was then MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science, with Tommaso Toffoli and Norman Margolus as primary figures. ''Digital physics'' suggests that there exists, at least in principle, a program for a universal computer that computes the evolution of the universe. The computer could be, for example, a huge cellular automaton. Extant models of digital physics are incompatible with the existence of several continuous characters of physical symmetries, e.g., r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
