Quote for today: Churchland on neurophilosophy
While I may not agree with the Churchlands on everything, I do appreciate their interdisciplinary approach to philosophy. I think these quotes, taken from Patricia Churchland’s book, Neurophilosophy, get at why:
“A theoretical value derived from studying neurological cases, therefore, is their potential for dislodging conventional assumptions…Such data seem to me crucially relevant in coming to understand how deficient folk psychology really is and how little we know of the deeper capacities underlying the known cognitive capacities of the brain…”
At the very least, neurological cases ought to be part and parcel of the thought experiments in philosophy of mind (and they are, much more, since the publication of her text). She talks about blindness denial and one philosopher’s argument that if one is conscious, it is impossible to fail to know you are blind. If empirical data seems to contradict this, then we should be perhaps a bit skeptical about arguments from a priori features, even while we continue to examine the data to be sure it’s represented properly.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Hello,
Was there much info on this “blindness denial” business? I was watching youtube videos of Mike Tyson (as you do), and there was a post-fight interview with Mike, still wearing his gloves, and the first thing that he says is “I broke my back”. I dont think he had a broken back, but he kept on saying he had a broken back and how he went to the doctor etc. etc.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:12 am
Oh yeah, Churchland had a section on it. There are other kinds of denials, like paralysis as well–people who claim they aren’t paralyzed. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, Oliver Sacks has a whole bunch of books about various neurological afflictions, like “The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”, for starters. (Some think he plays down the existential impact of these problems, making them more like interesting case studies.)
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Re: Sacks… I only knew my great grandmother for a few years, the Alzheimers ones, where she called me Chris, and my brother Julie, oddly consistently…
Just a thought, regarding neurotheology… For Post-mils, theology emphasizes using ‘means’, so if neurotechnology can produce a reduction in gluttony, lust, anger, sloth, anxiety… etc, would it be sinful not to use them? (hypothetical scariness).
On the other hand, I have a friend, who contends that if we’re hardwired for dopamine, then the route to which we get there is inconsequential. So, healthy eating, nuclear family, and all that are one route and cocaine, sex, and clubbing another.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Julie, your friend seems to ignore the fact that we’re not just hard-wired for dopamine. Cocaine, sex and healthy eating have wider ramifications than just dopamine…
I am not sure about postmils and neurotechnology. I think that there’s still rampant dualism in Christian circles, so I don’t think that they’d necessarily think that neurotechnology gets at the sin itself.