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How Philosophical Reasoning and Neuroscientific Modeling Come Together

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Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology (MBR 2018)

Part of the book series: Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics ((SAPERE,volume 49))

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Abstract

Is there any fruitful interplay between philosophy and neuroscience? In this paper, we provide four case studies showcasing that: (i) Philosophical questions can be tackled by recruiting neuroscientific evidence; (ii) the epistemological reflections of philosophers contribute to tackle some foundational issues of (cognitive) neuroscience. (i) will be supported by the analysis of the literature on picture perception and Molyneux’s question; (ii) will be supported by the analysis of the literature on forward and reverse inferences. We conclude by providing some philosophical reflections on the interpretation of these cases.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The expression is by Dennett (2009).

  2. 2.

    For example, those pertaining to the parieto-premotor circuit AIP-F5, within the ventro-dorsal pathway.

  3. 3.

    There are here computational explanations for this fact, based on the functional activity of the streams, that cannot be analyzed in this venue. (see Ferretti 2016c, 2017c, 2018, 2019b)

  4. 4.

    Vol. 42.

  5. 5.

    http://www.brainmap.org/.

  6. 6.

    Cf. also the theory of lexical competence elaborated by Marconi (1997), originally meant to address some problem in philosophy of language, but subsequently tested in the scanner. (Marconi et al. 2013)

  7. 7.

    We wish to thank the audience of the 2017 Italian Association for Cognitive Science, as well as the audience of the 2017 Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy, for offering several good questions to an earlier draft of this project. We also want to thank those scholars who discussed with us about these topics: Silvano Zipoli Caiani, Giorgia Committeri, Bence Nanay, Andrea Borghini, Brian B. Glenney, Fabrizio Calzavarini, Gustavo Cevolani, Enzo Crupi. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for the comments.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Gabriele Ferretti

  2. Department of Philosophy and Education, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Marco Viola

Authors
  1. Gabriele Ferretti
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  2. Marco Viola
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Correspondence to Gabriele Ferretti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

    Ángel Nepomuceno-Fernández

  2. Department of Humanities, Philosophy Section, and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Lorenzo Magnani

  3. Department of Spanish Language, Linguistics and Theory of Literature, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

    Francisco J. Salguero-Lamillar

  4. Department of Philosophy, Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

    Cristina Barés-Gómez

  5. Centre for Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Matthieu Fontaine

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Ferretti, G., Viola, M. (2019). How Philosophical Reasoning and Neuroscientific Modeling Come Together. In: Nepomuceno-Fernández, Á., Magnani, L., Salguero-Lamillar, F., Barés-Gómez, C., Fontaine, M. (eds) Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. MBR 2018. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 49. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32722-4_11

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