Journal of NeuroPhilosophy

Crucial Philosophical Implications of Neuroplasticity

Lucas Peluffo — 2024-03-23

This article briefly reviews neuroplasticity's basic terms and mechanisms and then emphasizes three crucial philosophical implications. (1) Considering the relationship of epistemology with the brain, the main organ of human intelligence is now proven to have the capacity to reorganize itself structurally. (2) Neuroplasticity has startled metaphysicians by embodying a mechanism that appears to challenge any strict—non-interactive—interpretations of the controversial term mind-body dualism. (3) Within morality and ethics, many neuroscientific studies performed on Buddhist meditators of Indic meditative traditions have linked positive neuroplasticity with empathy, compassion, and loving-kindness, indicating that these qualities can be developed consciously and suggesting that they may be intrinsic to human beings.

Posthuman Views of Mind in Life

Tongwei Liu — 2024-03-23

In this article, we provide a book review on Hengwei Li’s new book, "The Biotic View of Mind and Issues of Posthuman Society." The author presents a groundbreaking perspective, the biotic view of mind, which is known as the strong continuity view within the life-mind continuity thesis, resonating with pragmatism and predictive processing theory. Furthermore, this viewpoint is extended to the real-life context on intelligent technology and the forms of posthuman society, offering valuable insights for navigating the development of future society. Lastly, the author addresses the opposition and conflicts between the "two cultures" in cognitive science and proposes three potential solutions to this existing predicament. Given that this book spans philosophy, biology, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, we believe it can inspire researchers and advanced students alike.

Neurowaves and the Nature of Temporality

Ye Hu — 2024-03-23

In this article, we provide a book review on Georg Northoff’s “Neurowaves: Exploring the Dynamic Nature of Time in the Brain.” It is a groundbreaking exploration of the intricate relationship between the brain and time. Drawing on spatiotemporal neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and contemporary physics, Northoff metaphorizes time as waves, unraveling the complex interplay between duration and moments in time. The book extends these time waves to elucidate state transitions in brain and mind dynamics, emphasizing the holistic connection between the brain, environment, and mindfulness. Northoff argues that understanding how the brain operates in its environment is essential for comprehending the impact of brain-world-time relationships on the mind. Notably, Northoff underscores the significance of the brain’s internal sense of time in shaping psychological traits, emphasizing the pivotal role of spontaneous brain activity in bridging brain functions and the mind

Hegel’s Wasteland: Situating T.S. Eliot’s Representations of History in Conversation with Hegel

Virginia Moscetti — 2024-03-23

In this paper, I argue that T.S. Eliot’s whirlpool motif and characterization of the prophet Tiresias in his poem “The Waste Land” engage with and problematize Hegel’s teleological conception of human history. As I suggest, Tiresias, through his sexual plasticity and historical moveability, undermines both prongs of Hegel’s dialectic, Spirit and Nature, while the whirlpool motif subverts the idea that history’s temporal progression can be subordinated to a dialectical logic. Since Hegel’s teleological doctrine situates Europe at the apex of humanity’s rational development, I ultimately conclude that Eliot’s whirlpool and Tiresias reveal Europe’s post-war anxiety about its exceptionalist self-image.

Integrated Information Theory 4.0 is both Weakly Panpsychist and Strongly Dualist, but many Theories of Consciousness are also Prone to It

Sergey B. Yurchenko — 2024-03-23

Since its first formulation the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) has recently been updated to the version 4.0. Unlike the previous versions where the problem of free will was completely neglected, IIT 4.0 claims to suggest a full neuroscientific account of this oldest problem in the philosophy of mind. The aim of this opinion paper is to show that IIT’s account of free will is apparently dualist and reminiscent of the conventional free will in folk psychology, where mental constructs such as beliefs and desires are regarded as actual causes of human actions. On the other hand, these mental constructs can have high predictive power, compared to that provided by neuroscience. Thus, while rejecting ontological dualism, one can accept methodological dualism, compatible with eliminative physicalism, by virtue of its predictive power and descriptive parsimony.

Rhythm in Music, Encoded in Neural Networks, and in the Mind

Peter von Domburg — 2024-03-23

Rhythm is ubiquitous in nature and has fascinated scholars from times immemorial. Rhythmic activity also underlies many forms of communicative interaction both in biology and in artificial computational systems. A rapidly growing issue, both in technology and philosophy, is whether this kind of communicative interaction from the most sophisticated applications of artificial intelligence (AI) is comparable to the interaction of human beings and their minds. A now historic debate on this quickly suffers from exceeding the limits that must be imposed on the use of terms from different reference domains, like the concept of intentionality and the emergence of conscious representations in a mental world. In this paper rhythm in music, with its characteristic roots in a culture, is explored as a representation of encoded information with particular Gestalt character, but meanwhile, in the composition of modulated frequencies, also comparable to the oscillatory activity in neural networks. Rhythm in music is a complex phenomenon and the carrier or “medium” of meaningful representations, while it can ultimately be traced back to modulated oscillations in sound waves, the auditory system and related sensorimotor and information supporting networks in the brain. The phenomenon of rhythm in music is explored, in such a way that it becomes clear why it can serve as an illustrative representation for the comparison of “intelligence” in the living brain and that in AI.

Acting on What You are Perceiving: The Two-Visual-Systems Hypothesis Revisited

Bin Zhao — 2024-03-23

The two-visual-systems hypothesis proposed by Goodale and Milner is a radical one. If it were to be true, then our common sense such as we are acting on what we are perceiving should be completely abandoned. In this paper, I argue that the hypothesis over-generalizes what happens in simple tasks to what happens in complex tasks. By contrast, I demonstrate that what happens in complex tasks is compatible with our common sense. In a word, though what we are acting on may come apart from what we are perceiving in some cases, that is not the whole story.

The Brain is within the Self and Not Our Entire Self

Hamid Zand — 2024-03-23

This article explores the true nature of the "self" by excusing the human fear of death and historical attempts to uncover immortality. The human desire for immortality motivates us to study the nature of the self in order to keep it as much as possible. However, the factors that influence self and self-awareness are very complex, and some of them vary each time. Therefore, self-perception changes over time, and recreating it without considering these factors through newly proposed approaches, such as mind uploading or copying the mind into a new brain, may be a challenging endeavor. It seems that despite the complexity and importance of neural networks, the brain cannot fully explain self-awareness. Self-awareness is an emergent property of the brain that arises from its interaction with a set of variable factors that form each moment.

Model of the Neuronal World as a Complete Explanation of Empirical Reality

Vladislav Kondrat — 2024-03-23

The brain has been the subject of scientific inquiry for centuries, yet we continue to unravel its mysteries. One of the most intriguing questions is how the brain creates a perception of reality. The Neurophilosophical model of the Neuronal World (NWM) is a scientific theory that explains how the brain makes a neural model of the world and a self-model through wave synchronization of neurons in the connectome. The NWM includes illusionism, which explains that the phenomenal character of consciousness is an illusion. The NWM proposes two basic models of the neuronal world: a model of the world and a self-model created by any brain. Understanding the self-model is crucial to gaining insight into the brain's workings. The NWM refutes the notion of the existence of consciousness, explaining that this concept does not reflect the accurate picture of how the brain creates a virtual model of reality. By exploring the NWM, we can gain insight into the workings of the brain and its role in creating perception of reality, which can have an impact on various fields, including neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy.

Cosmological Neuroscience on the Relationship Between the Evolutionary Levels of Consciousness and the Multidimensional Nature of Soul

Nandor Ludvig — 2024-03-23

While the nature of Consciousness is one of the most intensely debated subjects of current neuroscience, the nature of Soul is hardly represented in the textbooks of the field, if represented at all. As a consequence, the relationship between the two phenomena remains unclear. This work took a look into that relationship from the vantage point of cosmological neuroscience. The following concept emerged: Consciousness seems to be the evolutionary product of a cosmic blueprint for animal central nervous systems allowed to become neural environments sensing the host’s body and surrounding world to such extent that these neural environments once could house the distinct cellular network of the Animal Soul, which, evolving further, gave rise to the leap of the Human Soul with its prefrontal cortical neural supercircuitry now creating the digitized Noospheric Soul with its potential to sense its cosmic origin.