Brain Hammer

Last week’s Churchlandpalooza was way cool. I met a bunch of new excellent people (AKA Brain Hammer readers) and hung out with a bunch of excellent old ones. Thanks, all of you who came up and said “hi”. Now it’s time to turn the talk into a journal article. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here’s my gianormous (10 mb) PowerPoint file, chock-full of more Swamp Marys, pre-frontal cortices, and conceptualized guava-tastings than you can shake a laser pointer at: Consciousness Without Subjectivity

Fig. 1. Proud Mary keeps on burnin’. And Blind Mary knows what it’s like to see red.

Ruthlessly reductionistic John Bickle has the website up for Churchlandpalooza, AKA the University of Cincinnati 44th Annual Philosophy Colloquium: The Churchlands (May 15-17, 2008). The website has links to abstracts of the talks and photographic evidence that I may have the largest head in all of neurophilosophy.

Sufficiently many people have written on neurosemantics in the past decade or so that it seems worthwhile to try to review the field as a whole. As preliminary work toward such an end, I’ve cooked up a bibliography containing abstracts and links to online works, linked here: [link]. It’s likely that I’ve accidentally left out relevant work, so recommendations for additions are highly appreciated.

Flip Phillips, director of neuroscience at Skidmore, sends the following email:

The Neuroscience Program at Skidmore College invites applications for a post doctoral position beginning Summer 2008. This position will run for two-years with the possibility of renewal for an additional two. Skidmore College seeks candidates who are firmly committed to undergraduate education and to faculty/student collaborative research. Excellent teaching and research facilities support many opportunities for faculty/student collaborative work in the classroom, lab, and field. This position will provide a unique opportunity to work with the Skidmore Scholars in Science and Mathematics (S3M), an NSF sponsored program to increase the number of science students from traditionally under-represented groups.

For this position we seek a neuroscientist, broadly defined, but are particularly interested in applicants with specialization in neurochemistry, neurobiology, neurophilosophy and/or modeling. The successful candidate will be expected to teach three courses per year, including Introduction to Neuroscience and an advanced special topics seminar in their area of specialty. This position also includes the supervision of the S3M students as well as direction of the Sophomore Summer Transitional Program. The SSTP takes place over five-weeks in the summer and is designed to facilitate the intellectual development of the S3M students as they begin to understand methods of scientific inquiry and further explore their interests in the sciences and mathematics.

The review process begins immediately.

Skidmore College is a liberal arts institution of approximately 2,200 students and 200 full-time faculty, located in upstate New York. We seek to attract an academically and culturally diverse faculty, welcoming applications from women and men of diverse background. Preference will be given to candidates with a Ph.D. in neuroscience or a related field, and teaching experience. ABD candidates will be considered only if they will complete their degree by Fall 2008. Candidates should send a vita, evidence of excellence in teaching, selected reprints, and three letters of recommendation to: Prof. Flip Phillips, Director, Neuroscience Program, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866

John Bickle is organizing a philosophy colloquium on Pat and Paul Churchland at the University of Cincinnati this May. Pat and Paul are giving keynote addresses. I’ll be speaking too. Here’s a tentative schedule

Thursday, May 15
5:00-7:30 pm KEYNOTE ADDRESS; CHARLES P. TAFT MEMORIAL LECTURE
Paul Churchland, Valtz Chair of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego
8:00pm- : Speakers buffet dinner with Philosophy graduate students

Friday, May 16
10:00am-12:00noon: Pete Mandik, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, William Paterson University of New Jersey
12:00noon-1:30pm: Lunch (buffet)
1:30-3:30pm: Jackie Sullivan, Philosophy and Neurobiology, University of Alabama, Birmingham
3:30-4:00pm: Coffee Break
4:00-6:30pm: KEYNOTE ADDRESS; CHARLES P. TAFT MEMORIAL LECTURE
Patricia Churchland, University of California President’s Professor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego; Adjunct Professor, Salk Institute
7:30- : Colloquium Banquet (Location TBA)

Saturday, May 17
10:00am-12noon: William Casebeer
12:00noon-2:00pm: Lunch (on your own—local restaurant guide provided)
2:00-4:00pm: Adina Roskies, Dartmouth College
4:00-4:30pm: Coffee Break
4:30-6:30pm: Peggy DesAutels, Philosophy, University of Dayton
7:00- : Colloquium Closing Reception, all colloquium attendees invited

From an email by Andrea Scarantino:

The Master’s program of the Philosophy Department at Georgia State
University in Atlanta, Georgia is accepting applications from
qualified students for its two Neurophilosophy Fellowships, its Legal/Political
Philosophy Scholarship, and its German Philosophy Scholarship. Fellowships and Scholarships cover tuition, provide $15,000/year for living expenses and up to $500/year for travel to conferences, for two years. Fellowships have no duties. Scholarships have no duties in the
first year but do require teaching in the second year.

Application deadline: February 15, 2008.

Our M.A. program has had great success recently in placing its
students
in highly-regarded Ph.D. programs. More information about the
department
and on application procedures can be found at
http://www.gsu.edu/philosophy .

Thank you very much for your help.

Best,

Andrea Scarantino

Department of Philosophy
Brains & Behavior Program
Georgia State University

Much of the recent discussion on “Your Brain is Reading This” has focused on what sorts of substantive conclusions (if any) can be drawn about cognitive neuroscience based on reflections on ordinary language. One contributor to that thread is neuroscientist Eric Thompson and I’m reminded of remarks he’s made over at the Brains blog about the relative poverty of natural language (as opposed to mathematical theories) in capturing neural and mental phenomena.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot more recently and want to link to these past comments of Eric’s. For starters, there’s his dream curriculum for a cognitive science program here. But for real food for thought, there are his remarks here on the differences between two groups of researchers who don’t collect their own data. Here’s an excerpt:

Unfortunately, philosophy training is not very helpful for thinking about data or coming up with precise theories of how brains work. Many philosophers I talk to think that theoretical neuroscience is just philosophical neuroscience, but there are really two groups of people that don’t collect their own data. The theoretical neuroscientists (Sejnowski, Abbott, Hopfield, etc) who are trained in lots of mathematics (typically they come from physics) on one hand, and the philosophers who typically use natural language to think about brains. I think the philosophical branch of the armchair neuroscientists have done, and will do, very little to push neuroscience in fruitful directions. The mathematical branch of the armchair dwellers, though, will continue to bear fruit.

While it is possible, I just don’t see neuroscience becoming data rich and theory poor: theoretical neuroscience is exploding, especially as theoretical physicists are realizing that it is much easier to find jobs in biophysics than string theory. Theories to explain given data are a dime a dozen. While the amount of data is quite daunting, if you ask an experimentalist for their speculations about their data, you typically won’t find any shortage. However, they will tend to be quite cautious, journal editors tend to cut such speculations out of papers, and experimentalists don’t want to come off as mushy theorists in their presentation of data. There is a strong selection effect to make it look like there lots of theories. Also, in practice, it is typically experimentalists who come up with predictions that can actually be tested: this is very hard to do even if you are an experimentalist with an understanding of the nuances of the techniques.

Also, while I don’t think philosophical naturalists should necessarily be doing experiments, as I mentioned above, they would be better served by learning more mathematics and actually analyzing some data.

What Bennett and Hacker call “the mereological fallacy” is the view that psychological predicates attributable to whole organisms may also be attributed to proper parts of organisms. It’s consistent with such a view that my cat may remember where the litter-box is in virtue of his brain’s remembering where the litter-box is. Bennett and Hacker’s hostility toward this view goes beyond merely thinking it false: they reject it as incoherent and nonsensical.

In contrast, I regard it as at worst mostly harmless, probably true, and thus far from incoherent. A lot of the difference between us likely hinges on differing views regarding the mutability of concepts and the scientific worth of conceptual analysis.

Let’s, however, indulge in a little analysis, especially of the concept of a fallacy. I regard fallacies as invalid arguments, and if there is an invalid argument form deserving of the title “mereological fallacy” it goes something like this.

1. a is F
2. b is a proper part of a
3. Therefore, b is F

You can’t plug just any old predicate in for “F” and expect 1, 2, and 3 to come out true. However, it’s fully consistent with this that there are some substitution instances whereby 1, 2, and 3 do come out true. Let a = Mandik, b = Mandik’s left foot, and F = in the Earth’s gravitational field.

There are lots of occasions in which 1, 2, & 3 come out true. Why not, then, regard occasions in which F is a psychological predicate as such occasions?

Consider some relevant analogies. If my computer crashes and investigation reveals that all of its parts are in working order except for the hard-drive, then no confusion ensues in saying that the hard-drive crashed. If my cat digests a meal and investigation of all his parts reveals that his stomach did most of the work, then no confusion ensues in saying that his stomach digests the meal. Medieval philosophers, concerned with the doctrine of bodily resurrection, used to engage in a priori speculations about how digestion worked. It seems silly to engage in such practices now.

It should, at a minimum, be regarded as an open question, not something ruled out a priori, that further investigation will uncover facts we may summarize as that the brain remembers, is conscious, has beliefs, etc.

Bennett, M.R. and P.M.S. Hacker (2003). Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Berlin, Blackwell Publishing.

Bennett, M.R., D. Dennett, P.M.S. Hacker, J. Searle. (2007). Neuroscience and Philosophy. Brain, Mind and Language. N.Y., Columbia University Press.

I haven’t entirely uploaded my mind to PowerPoint since my necktop’s USB port has a glitch, namely, total existence failure. In the meantime I offer the following tidbits to current students and others whose brains burn with the question: where can we get the slides that go along with lectures on chapters 7 & 9 of The Subjective Brain? Right here, dudes and ladies, right here.

Reductive and Representational Explanation in Synthetic Neuroethology [link to download]

| View | Upload your own

The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity [link to download]

| View | Upload your own

Numbers of people (more than one) have asked for the following, perhaps because they are students in a class soon to be examined on the topics contained within. Others may be interested as well. Below are PowerPoint slides for talks closely associated with Chapter 5 & 6 of The Subjective Brain.

Transcending Zombies [link to download]

| View | Upload your own

Phenomenal Consciousness and the Allocentric-Egocentric Interface [link to download]

| View | Upload your own