Neuroscience: Philosophical perspectives
Lectures and master class
9 December
Studenternes Hus, Mødelokale 2
Lectures 10-13:
Rom Harre:
Hybrid Psychology and how to achieve it
Peter Hacker:
Cognitive Science and the Mereological Fallacy
Master Class 13-17:
Register for master class with [email protected] by December
1st
Event presented by:
-PhD program in Philosophy and the History of Ideas (AU)
-Danish Research Training Programme in Philosophy,
History of Ideas and History of Science
-MindLab
Neuroscience: Philosophical perspectives
- Lecture Abstracts -
Rom Harre:
Hybrid Psychology and how to achieve it
- Director of the Centre for Natural and Social Science at LSE
- Distinguished Research Professor in the Psychology Department of
Georgetown University in Washington DC
Abstract: In recent years psychology has seen the growth of two apparently
antithetic ways of researching and understanding human thinking, feeling, acting
and perceving. On the one had neuroscience has made remarkable progress with
the advent of scanning techniques which enable real time plotting brain activity.
On the other hand, the realisation of the importance of cultural factors, social
environments and linguistic practices in how people actually think and act has
also made remarkable progress. However, it often happens that neuroscientists
believe that cultural/discursive psychology is not a real science, while cultural /
discursive psychologists accuse neuroscientists of eliminating the very subject of
research, the person, from their projects. By careful attention to the way both
forms of psychology are actually practiced the way to develop a hybrid science
can be set out. There are three key ideas in this program,: the priority of cultural
concepts in identifying neural processes, the use of cultural task and neural tool
metaphors., and lately the use of computational modelling linking rule systems in
life with programs in connectionist simulations, leading to hypotheses about the
fine grain of possible neural structures.
Peter Hacker:
Cognitive Science and the Mereological Fallacy
- Emeritus Research fellow, St John's College University of Oxford
Abstract: The lecture will sketch the outline of one of the themes of
"Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" -- namely the fallacy of ascribing to
parts of an organism properties that can be attributed only to an animal as a
whole and not to its parts. In particular, the incoherence of attributing to the
brain properties that can intelligibly be ascribed only to the animal as a whole
will be investigated. This provides the backdrop against which other conceptual
confusions in cognitive neuroscience are exposed. Criticisms of "Philosophical
Foundations of Neuroscience" will be examined and refuted.