Neuroscience and Philosophy

Neuroscience and Philosophy begins with an excerpt from Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, in which Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker question the conceptual commitments of cognitive neuroscientists. Daniel Dennett and John Searle then criticize their position, and Bennett and Hacker respond. Their impassioned exchange encompasses a wide range of central themes: the nature of consciousness, the bearer and location of psychological attributes, the intelligibility of so-called brain maps and representations, the notion of qualia, and the relationships between mind, brain, and body. Pulling all of these strands together, Daniel Robinson then explains why this confrontation is so crucial to the understanding of neuroscientific research. Clearly argued and thoroughly engaging, the authors present fundamentally different conceptions of philosophical method, cognitive-neuroscientific explanation, and human nature, and their debate will appeal to anyone interested in the relation of mind to brain, of psychology to neuroscience, of causal to rational explanation, and of consciousness to self-consciousness.