Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted in Philosophy of the Mind Sciences
Philipp Haueis, Department of Philosophy and Institute for Studies of Science (ISOS), Bielefeld University, Germany
The journal Philosophy of the Mind Sciences has just published a book symposium (LINK) of The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience, by Mazviita Chirimuuta. The book has received both the 2024 Nayef Al-Rodhan International Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy and the 2025 Lakatos Award for Philosophy of Science and has been discussed in previous posts on the Brains Blog.
The book offers a novel and groundbreaking philosophical study of the brain sciences. Starting from the assumption that the brain is massively heterogeneous and dynamically changing, Chirimuuta argues that neuroscientific practice always constructs simplifications of the brain. This is obviously true for mathematical models, but also holds for experimental practice, in which neuroscientists manipulate and intervene into reduced preparations such as model organisms. The book combines a form of haptic realism, which holds that we learn about the brain by manipulating simplified such material and mathematical models, with formal idealism, warning us that the patterns we discover in the models should not be attributed an ontological reality.
The commentaries in the new special issue fall into three thematic clusters. The first cluster focuses on questions about scientific realism raised by The Brain Abstracted. In her commentary Zoe Drayson raises challenges for two of Chirimuuta’s arguments against realism. The first argument is that the brain is too complex, dynamic and irregular for our simplified, regularity-focused models of it to be true. Against this Drayson argues that that the “scientific realist can accommodate highly convoluted theories and irregular models as long as they provide us with knowledge of the mind-independent world.” The second argument against realism is that neuroscientific knowledge is the product of active interaction with the brain as an object of research, a process which is bound up with practical goals. Drayson comments that this may be true of the process of acquiring knowledge (context of discovery), but does not speak against a realist interpretation of its epistemic status (context of justification).
The commentary by Alexandros Constantinou and colleagues points to a challenge in the notion of ideal pattern in Chirimuuta’s haptic realism. Ideal patterns, such as the “simple cell” in visual cortex are simplified analogies to brain processes constructed by scientists active interaction with brains in the lab. We should be agnostic about whether they represent anything in reality itself. Constantinou et al. challenge this metaphysical neutrality: haptic realism employs causal notions like interaction with the brain, which require metaphysical interpretation: either they are mind-dependent or they are not. This highlights a tension between the claim that brains (literally) have neurons in one sense, but that neurons are ideal patterns in another.
The second cluster concerns questions about computation in biological and artificial systems. Chirimuuta argues that a literal interpretation of computational models poses two metaphysical issues: how to implement computational descriptions in brains in a non-trivial manner, and whether computation is multiply realizable in biological and artificial systems. Danielle Williams argues for a version of computationalism (the claim that part of cognition is computation) that avoids the two challenges. Mechanistic or analogical accounts claim that cognitive systems compute without the computational descriptions of models being literally implemented in the brain. One may also accept multiple realizability but reject that AI computes and realizes cognition in a strong sense.
The Brain Abstracted also defends biologism – the claim that only biological systems have minds. Zed Adams and Jake Browning explicate two ways of arguing for this position. The too messy argument points out that biological complexity is required for minds. For example: subneuronal processes, such as neurochemical modulation, make a difference to information processing, attention, and action guidance. These processes are intertwined in ways that makes it impossible to emulate them in digital systems. The too neat strategy points out that the energy efficiency of biological systems massively outperforms our best artificial computers. The authors ask which of the strategies does Chirimuuta endorse, and whether they are compatible with one another.
The third cluster of commentaries explores practical implications of The Brain Abstracted for practices of neuroscience and adjacent fields. The commentary by Nedah Nemati asks what distinguishes productive and unproductive simplifications, and suggests that answers will depend on the experimental structure and psychological affordances of the research project at hand. Nemati’s constructive proposal is that material properties make simplifications like Skinner boxes or data processing tools productive, since they allow neuroscientists to proceed efficiently.
The commentary by Ida Momennejad argues that Chirimuuta underestimates the entanglement of philosophy and science. Paradigmatic topics of philosophy, such as personhood, are equally studied by neuroscience, including Momennejad’s own work on memory and intersubjectivity. Conversely ideas about control in neuroscience stem from philosophers like Hobbes and Bentham, whose ideas shaped science over the longue durée of history of Western thought. Computational neuroscience thus risks ontological reversal, where optimization-based models of intelligence are taken as biological facts rather than simplifications of the actual processes the brain as a homeostatic dynamic system is engaged in.
This risk of “misplaced concreteness” is addressed by Nicolás Hinrichs, who applies critical ideas of The Brain Abstracted to the practice of hyperscanning in psychotherapy. Hyperscanning involves simultaneous recording of a patient’s and therapist’s brain activity, and synchrony is taken as indicator for therapeutic success. Hinrichs warns other practitioners in this field to not mistake a seemingly simple metric as answer, while avoiding harder interpretative questions, such as “what happened during the synchronous event in the therapeutic session?” His positive proposal proposes several guardrails to safeguard against the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Together, the commentaries demonstrate that The Brain Abstracted not only offers fresh perspectives in philosophy of the mind sciences, but also provides inspiration of how to change and improve scientific and therapeutic practices surrounding the brain. For the full articles and Mazviita Chirimuuta’s response to the commentaries, please go to https://philosophymindscience.org/index.php/phimisci/issue/view/385. All texts of Philosophy of the Mind Sciences are diamond open access.