Materia Mentis: How the Brain Sculpts the Mind

Abstract

The principal problem of cognitive neuroscience is to draw relations between mental processes, constructs, and concepts, on the one hand, and neural processes, structures, and concepts, on the other. The philosophical issues animating this problem are deep, and transcend such things as the nature of explanation or mechanism. In a series of essays, this dissertation cuts straight to these deeper issues. I defend a group of positions characterized by an appreciation for the many different perspectives we can take on human action and psychology. I first argue that, though indeterministic models are essential in neurobiology, we cannot infer that the brain therefore behaves indeterministically. In a second essay, I analyze the concept of a "functional unit" in neuroscience. I show that this concept hides an important ambiguity of meaning, which causes disagreements over the most basic entities we use to explain brain-based physiological and psychological behavior. A third essay argues that the stages of memory formation, such as encoding and consolidation, cannot be cleanly separated from each other. Since this is true at both the psychological and neurobiological levels, I advocate for an instrumentalist interpretation of this aspect of memory research. Finally, in a fourth essay, I turn to the historical development of neuroscience in Emanuel Swedenborg, an early modern natural philosopher. Swedenborg's work showed remarkable foresight in creating conceptual resources for explaining the brain, but many non-scientific factors prevented his view from becoming widely known. I use the case of Swedenborg to draw morals about the proper approach to the history and philosophy of neuroscience. Taken together, these essays lay the groundwork for an empirically-sensitive history and philosophy of neuroscience. Both are necessary to work through the maze of mind-brain relations.