Synopses & Reviews
From its beginnings until the present day, neuroscience has always had a special relationship to philosophy. And philosophy has long puzzled over the relation between mind and brain (and by extension, the relation of cerebral processes to freedom, morals, and justice, but also to perception and art). This volume presents some of the state-of-the-art reflections on philosophical efforts to 'make sense' of neuroscience, as regards issues including neuroaesthetics, neuroethics and neurolaw, but also more critical, evaluative perspectives on topics such as the social neuroscience of race, neurofeminism, embodiment and collaboration, memory and pain, and more directly empirical topics such as neuroconstructivism and embodied robotics. Brain theory as presented here is neither mere commentary on the state of the sciences, nor armchair philosophical reflection on traditional topics. It is more pluralistic than current philosophy of neuroscience (or neurophenomenology), yet more directly engaged with empirical, indeed experimental matters than socio-cultural discussions of 'brainhood' or representations of the brain.
Synopsis
Philosophy has long puzzled over the relation between mind and brain. This volume presents some of the state-of-the-art reflections on philosophical efforts to 'make sense' of neuroscience, as regards issue including neuroaesthetics, brain science and the law, neurofeminism, embodiment, race, memory and pain.
About the Author
Charles T. Wolfe is a researcher in the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. He works primarily in history and philosophy of the early modern life sciences, with a particular interest in materialism and vitalism. Edited volumes include Monsters and Philosophy (2005), The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge (2010, with O. Gal) and Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life-Science (2013, with S. Normandin). His current project is a monograph on the conceptual foundations of Enlightenment vitalism.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction; Charles Wolfe
PART I
2. Memory Traces Between Brain Theory and Philosophy; Jean-Claude Dupont
3. Pain and the Nature of Psychological Attributes; Stephen Gaukroger
4. Is the Next Frontier in Neuroscience a 'Decade of the Mind'?; Jackie Sullivan
5. Neuroconstructivism: A Developmental Turn in Cognitive Neuroscience?; Denis Forest
PART II
6. Computing with Bodies: Morphology, Function, and Computational Theory; John Symons and Paco Calvo
7. Embodied Collaboration in Small Groups; Kellie Williamson and John Sutton
8. Little-E Eliminativism in Mainstream Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience: Tensions for Neuro-Normativity; John Bickle
9. Ethics and the Brains of Psychopaths: The Significance of Psychopaths for Ethical and Legal Reasoning; William Hirstein and Katrina Sifferd
10. Memory Traces, Memory Errors,and the Possibility of Neural Lie Detection; Sarah K. Robins
PART III
11. Feminist Approaches to Neurocultures; Sigrid Schmitz
12. Non-Reductive Integration in Social Cognitive Neuroscience: Multiple Systems Model and Situated Concepts; Luc Faucher
13. History, Causal Information, and the Neuroscience of Art: Toward a Psycho-Historical Theory; Nicolas Bullot
14. The Architectonics of the Mind's Eye in the Age of Cognitive Capitalism; Warren Neidich