Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language

On the question of how it will affect the next experiment We can imagine a scientist reading our analytical discussions with some bafflement. He might be mildly interested in some of our connective analyses, yet nevertheless puzzled at what seems to be endless logic chopping. ‘Does all this really matter?’, he might query when he has read our opening discussions. ‘After all’, he might continue, ‘how is this going to affect the next experiment?’ We hope that any reader who has followed us thus far will not be tempted to ask this question. For it displays incomprehension.

Whether our analytic reflections do or do not affect the next experiments is not our concern. They may or may not—that depends on what experiment is in view, and what the neuroscientist’s presuppositions are. It should be obvious, from our foregoing discussions, that, if our arguments are cogent, some experiments might best be abandoned.¹ Others would need to be redesigned.² Most may well be unaffected, although the questions addressed might well need to be rephrased, and the results would need to be described in quite different ways than hitherto.³

Our concern is with understanding the last experiment Our concern has not been with the design of the next experiment, but rather with the understanding of the last experiment. More generally, conceptual investigations contribute primarily to understanding what is known, and to clarity in the formulation of questions concerning what is not known. It would not matter in the least if our reflections have no effect on the next experiment. But they do have considerable effect on the interpretation of the results of previous experiments. And they surely have something to contribute to the asking of questions, to the formulation of questions, and to distinguishing between significant and confused questions. (If we are right, then questions about ‘the binding problem’, understood as the problem of how the brain forms images, are largely expressions of confusion⁴, and much of the debate about mental imagery is misconceived.⁵)

Does it matter? If understanding matters, then it matters Does all this apparent logic chopping, all this detailed discussion of words and their use, matter? Does neuroscience really need this sort of thing? If the moving spirit behind the neuroscientific endeavour is the desire to understand neural phenomena and their relation to psychological capacities and their exercise, then it matters greatly. For irrespective of the brilliance of the neuroscientist’s experiments and the refinement of his techniques, if there is conceptual confusion about his questions or conceptual error in the descriptions of the results of his investigations, then he will not have understood what he set out to understand.

Most contemporary neuroscientists working in the domain of cognitive neuroscience agree that Sir John Eccles’s advocacy of a form of dualism was a mistake⁶—and it is a conceptual confusion that lies at the heart of Eccles’s error. We have tried to demonstrate, by reference to a variety of theories of distinguished contemporary cognitive neuroscientists, that conceptual error, far from being eradicated by a superficial rejection of various forms Cartesian dualism, is widespread. It affects and infects the cogency of the questions addressed, the character of the experiments devised to answer them, the intelligibility of the descriptions of the results of these experiments and the coherence of the conclusions derived from them. And this surely matters both to the understanding of what current neuroscientists have achieved, and to the further progress of cognitive neuroscience.

Why it matters to the educated public It also matters greatly to the educated public. For irrespective of whether certain neuroscientists are confused, there is no question but that the forms of description they employ confuse the lay public. Neuroscientists are understandably eager to communicate the knowledge they have attained over the past decades about the functioning of the brain and to share with the educated public some of the excitement they feel about their subject. That is evident from the flood of books written by numerous distinguished members of the profession. But by speaking about the brain’s thinking and reasoning, about one hemisphere’s knowing something and not informing the other, about the brain’s making decisions without the person’s knowing, about rotating mental images in mental space, and so forth, neuroscientists are fostering a form of mystification and cultivating a neuro-mythology that are altogether deplorable. For, first, this does anything but engender the understanding on behalf of the lay public that is aimed at. Secondly, the lay public will look to neuroscience for answers to pseudo-questions that it should not ask and that neuroscience cannot answer. Once the public become disillusioned, they will ignore the important genuine questions neuroscience can both ask and answer. And this surely matters.

On the need for conceptual clarity We have, throughout this book, tried to show that clarity concerning conceptual structures is as important for cognitive neuroscience as clarity about experimental methods. Its great contributions to our understanding of the biological roots of human capacities and their exercise are illuminated, not hindered, by such clarification. For only when the long shadows cast by conceptual confusions are chased away can the achievements of neuroscience be seen aright.