Philosophy and Neuroscience

Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account is the first book-length treatment of philosophical issues and implications in current cellular and molecular neuroscience. John Bickle articulates a philosophical justification for investigating "lower level" neuroscientific research and describes a set of experimental details that have recently yielded the reduction of memory consolidation to the molecular mechanisms of long-term potentiation (LTP). These empirical details suggest answers to recent philosophical disputes over the nature and possibility of psycho-neural scientific reduction, including the multiple realization challenge, mental causation, and relations across explanatory levels. Bickle concludes by examining recent work in cellular neuroscience pertaining to features of conscious experience, including the cellular basis of working memory, the effects of explicit selective attention on single-cell activity in visual cortex, and sensory experiences induced by cortical microstimulation.

Contenu

Preface. One: From New Wave Reduction to New Wave Metascience. 1. Why Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience? 2. Background: The Intertheortic Reduction Reformulation of the Mind-Body Problem. 3. Revolts against Nagel's Account. 4. Extending Hooker's Insight: New Wave Reduction. 5. WWSD? (What Would Socrates Do?). Two: Reduction-in-Practice in Current Mainstream Neuroscience. 1. A Proposed 'Psychoneural Link'. 2. Two Psychological Features of Memory Consolidation. 3. LTP is Discovered. 4. Molecular Mechanisms of LTP: One Current Model. 5. But is this Really Memory (Consolidation)? 6. The Nature of 'Psychoneural Reduction' at Work in Current Mainstream (Cellular and Molecular) Neuroscience. Three: Mental Causation, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Multiple Realization. 1. The Problem of Mental Causation. 2. Letting Neuroscientific Practice be Our Guide. 3. What about Cognitive Neuroscience? 4. Putnam's Challenge and the Multiple Realization Orthodoxy. 5. Molecular Mechanisms of Nondeclarative Memory Consolidation in Invertebrates. 6. Evolutionary Conservatism at the Molecular Level: The Expected Scope of Shared Molecular Mechanisms. 7. Consequences For Current Philosophy of Mind. Four: Consciousness. 1. Prefrontal Neurons Possess Working Memory Fields. 2. Construction and Modulation of Memory Fields: From Circuit Connectivities to Receptor Proteins. 3. Explicit Attention and its Unremarkable Effects on Individual Neuron Activity. 4. Single-Cell Neurophysiology and the 'Hard Problem'. 5. Inducing Phenomenology from Visual Motion to Somatosensory Flutter ... and Beyond? 6. The Strange Case of Phenomenal Externalism. 7. The 'Hard Problem' and the Society for Neuroscience Crowd. Bibliography. Index.