Neuroscience is a field for philistines. It’s based on the crudest form of physicalism: the mind is the brain, a hypothesis of a crudity that physics itself lost centuries ago, similar to saying “light is created in the sun.” At some level that’s true, for the sun is (locally) distal source of light, but one would learn almost nothing about physics by trying to do solar anatomy without knowing anything about chemistry or quantum physics. One simply doesn’t learn about matter by going about one’s business that way. Materialism of the neuroscientific kind is a poor theory of matter, let alone of mind. Materialism is a bad philosophy for practical purposes as well. There are some situations where crude localization helps: if someone suddenly starts slurring their speech, we know where they might have had a stroke.
The Sun Theory of Light
The Sun Theory of Light
The Sun Theory of Light
Neuroscience is a field for philistines. It’s based on the crudest form of physicalism: the mind is the brain, a hypothesis of a crudity that physics itself lost centuries ago, similar to saying “light is created in the sun.” At some level that’s true, for the sun is (locally) distal source of light, but one would learn almost nothing about physics by trying to do solar anatomy without knowing anything about chemistry or quantum physics. One simply doesn’t learn about matter by going about one’s business that way. Materialism of the neuroscientific kind is a poor theory of matter, let alone of mind. Materialism is a bad philosophy for practical purposes as well. There are some situations where crude localization helps: if someone suddenly starts slurring their speech, we know where they might have had a stroke.