Re: Philosophy and Neuroscience links
by neuro on August 2nd, 2014, 7:10 am
I was wondering that the pair philosophy / neuroscience are linked in at least two different ways.
It is like philosophy and science in general (even apart from the methodological aspects of science that may have important philosophical relevance as to the reliability and value of truth of science):
Take quantum mechanics and relativity, for example:
- on the one hand the philosopher may ask whether the value of science in these fields is ontological or purely epistemological and, if epistemological, whether it has a descriptive, explicative, interpretational or merely metaphorical value.
- on the other hand, relativity undermines the basic reference framework of quite a lot of philosophy, by stating the relativity of time, size and mass. Even more relevant, it denies the most central dichotomy of any previous philosophical approach, that between matter and energy.
The situation is similar for neuroscience:
- on the one side, philosophy may ask whether neuroscientific discoveries actually have any relevance with regard to the crucial themes of existence, consciousness, spirit vs. matter, free will, religious thinking, responsibility, oblativity and love...
- on the other hand, neuroscience seems to be contributing quite extensively to a gradual change in philosophical paradigms. The impression is that - the same way as a number of physical, metereological, chemical processes have been subtracted from metaphysics and spiritual/supernatural explanations - a series of impressive properties of our brain have been gradually clarified in their elementary neurological mechanisms, thereby depriving functions such as associative and generalization capacity, learning and memory, mathematical ability, logics, and even language and emotional dynamics of their metaphysical appearance.
This latter field is the one I am most interested in, and the most striking experience I have had in playing with this is that for every aspect that has emerged from the fog of mistery and spiritual inexplicability, and begun to be reduced to mechanistic biological processes, the overall picture has not lost a bit of its fascination, poetry and overwhelming appearence of complexity and wonder.
This reminds me of a poem by Leopardi:
Infinity
This solitary hill has always been dear to me
And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of
The endless horizon.
But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts,
Endless spaces beyond the hedge,
An all encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet,
To the point that my heart is quite overwhelmed.
And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees
I compare its voice to the infinite silence.
And eternity occurs to me, and all the ages past,
And the present time, and its sound.
Amidst this immensity my thought drowns:
And to flounder in this sea is sweet to me.
Giacomo Leopardi (1798 – 1837)
It is as if, by clarifying any aspect of mind or consciousness, one proved unable to appreciate feeling lost in front of Leopardi’s hedge and the infinity it excludes, to peek in with timid and reverent imagination, as if one feared wasting the charm of uncertainty, vagueness, indefiniteness.
It is as if one were to coldly try and sidestep all hedges to look farther and farther.
The fascinating aspects, instead, is that one can fully enjoy the commotion of the hidden and imagined infinity, but can also confidently try and look over, with no fear of losing the infinity, sure instead that she will find a thousand more new hidden infinities, in front of which she may get moved, and thousand more obstacles to overcome.
Provided one does not lose the capacity of marveling and enjoying the enchant of wonder.
New questions will keep arising, new vague, unexplored infinities will reveal themselves, and the inchant of the quest, the transcendent experience of philosophy, is never reduced.
"e il naufragar mi è dolce in questo mare”