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The 558th "Brain Science and Philosophy"

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22 Jan 2022
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The 558th Thursday Philosophy Humanities Forum



Brain Science and Philosophy

By Ahn, Se-gwon 

(Department of Philosophy at 

Keimyung University)


1. Problems of brain science and consciousness;

 

The human brain has approximately 100,000 neurons per square centimeter of the cortex, and 14 billion neurons throughout the cerebral cortex. The brain weighs only 1,500 grams, but the network of neurons connected through more than 1,000 trillion synapses process various information faster than computers. The neurons in the brain are curiously controlling our perceptions, learning, memory, imagination, reasoning, body movement, and sleep activity, and accept a great deal of information throughout our lives. How could this matter, a little gray mass, be minded or conscious? No one would deny that what we call the ‘spirit’ has any way to do with the brain we have

 

Neuroscientist Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize in 1962 with James D. Watson for the discovery of DNA molecular structure, one of the most wanted to solve the consciousness problem in front of him. According to Crick, all our mental activity is due to the substance in the brain, and brain activity is the same as neurons and molecules.

 

2. Problems with the presupposition of brain science;

 

Crick's argument, however, seems to have some problems to be explained from a philosophical point of view. First, Crick suggests a kind of causal explanation of the phenomenon of consciousness by claiming that consciousness occurs through interactions in the main parts of the brain. This explanation is a reductionist position that replaces consciousness phenomena with the function of neuronal activity. But it is a logical error to think that neuron activity causes some consciousness, such as pain, that the pain itself is neuron activity.

 

Second, Crick describes the causal relationship between neuronal activity and consciousness as a term called correlation, but this expression has a logical difficulty. The fact that A and B are correlated already presupposes that the two are different things. Therefore, the fact that A and B are correlated does not explain the relationship between the two yet.

 

Third, when we see an object with our eyes, we experience it as a single object. How can this experience be explained in terms of neuronal activity? The more complex my experience, the more likely it is to speed up my brain activity. What correlations will my consciousness and brain have? Crick’s neuroscience theory, as he himself reveals, is not yet a fully established theory, and it is only a limited conscious activity of vision, so it will be possible to develop through many experimental studies in the future.

 

Chalmers D. Chalmers, who is studying cognitive science and philosophy at the National University of Australia, is identifying this situation by distinguishing consciousness problems into 'easy problems' and 'difficult problems'. According to him, the problems that brain scientists are dealing with are only easy problems, and the real difficult problems have not been touched. Easy problems with consciousness are problems under the direct influence of typical methods of cognitive science that explain specific phenomena by computational or neurological mechanisms. The difficult problems are the ones that oppose these methods.

 

3. Disputes over the “difficult problem”:

 

The distinction between easy and difficult problems is largely based on imagination (). Just because you can think of the possibility of a situation through imagination does not guarantee that it can actually happen. The possibility of imagination is not evidence of practical possibilities. Second, where is the basis for defining neuroscientific problems as “easy”? Scientists have not yet understood any of the so-called 'easy' problems. We do not have important conceptual and theoretical ideas about how the human nervous system performs basic functions such as time management, motion control, learning, and memory. Third, the mysticism of consciousness that some philosophers say is not due to the attributes of the problem itself, but because of our human and epistemological limitations.

 

4. The conclusion:

 

Modern psychological philosophy has recently come to a new era when neuroscience challenges the problem of consciousness, which seeks to solve the problem of consciousness by identifying the mechanisms of the brain that perform its unique functions. If neuroscience is to be done, the mental lifestyle of humans will undergo a great change.

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