Plato's camera how the physical brain captures a landscape of abstract universals

A noted philosopher draws on the empirical results and conceptual resources of cognitive neuroscience to address questions about the nature of knowledge. In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation--or "takes a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Churchland, Paul M.
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: MIT Press eBook Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:A noted philosopher draws on the empirical results and conceptual resources of cognitive neuroscience to address questions about the nature of knowledge. In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation--or "takes a picture"--of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures
Physical Description:x, 289 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates illustrations (some color)
ISBN:0262302861
9780262302869