The point he's trying to make is that science can only solve problems that are accessible to investigation by the scientific method. Some problems don't meet those criteria, but that doesn't stop neuroscientists, and popsci fans from imagining that everything can be explained by the almighty neuron. It's a fascinating but sad new chapter in science. Read anything by John Searle or Daniel Dennett (probably the two most famous philosophers who think in this way) to get a sense of what I'm talking about. When you and your spouse are in an argument, or a relative dies, or you're trying to create a new piece of art, the last thing you need is for someone to tell you that you lack agency. Yet that's where we find ourselves in modern neuroscience. It's banal and pedantic.
I am against dualism. Determinism is moot, and IMO probably not correct. Anyway, arguing over it is as silly as arguing over whether God exists. Person A says yes, and person B says no, but neither has any evidence aside from their personal feeling.
I'm curious what you mean by that. Are you referring to the structure of neural connections being the magic insight into cognition? Neural networks being the one true solution to intelligence? Or something altogether different?Some problems don't meet those criteria, but that doesn't stop neuroscientists, and popsci fans from imagining that everything can be explained by the almighty neuron
I'll keep that in mind for future neuro-y conferences. Most of what I care about is the biochemistry / medical angle of neurons, but it's hard not to wonder how exactly the brain is working through those processes. I had a teacher describe cognitive neuroscience last week as pre-paradigmatic last week. I think he hopes the BRAIN initiative has enough success to transform neuroscience is a similar manner to how the HGP did genetics -> genomics. But I'm not sure how much any of that can play into cracking the philosophy of cognition. I've kinda just taken to the "consciousness is an illusion" school of thought and otherwise neglected that world of questions.
Yeah, the two things I'm keeping my eye on there are in situ proteomics / transcriptomics and expansion microscopy. Both I know have gotten a lot of funding from the initiative and have a lot of potential to change unrelated fields. Maybe it'll be like the moon and we'll brag about all the other tech that fell out of the concentrated funding / innovation. But I also am pretty curious how much information people will be able to extract if / when the real connectomic datasets start rolling out.
Can you state what one of these problems are? What is something that exists, that is unable to be investigated? There is a lot more than imagining going on. There are lots of studies, research, and so on, about how neurons, and neural networks emulated in computers, produce very life-like behavior. Absolutely irrelevant to what is true or not. Neuroscience is concerned with what is true, not how a person who lost a family member feels.problems that are accessible to investigation by the scientific method.
that doesn't stop neuroscientists, and popsci fans from imagining that everything can be explained by the almighty neuron.
When you and your spouse are in an argument, or a relative dies, or you're trying to create a new piece of art, the last thing you need is for someone to tell you that you lack agency.