The Physical Signature of Computation (PSC) builds on previous publications by Gualtiero Piccinini that have shaped the debate over the nature of information processing in the brain. I will focus on this topic, the subject of Chapter 9, and discuss how PSC inherits some of the flaws embedded in the …
Post 5 of 5 from Mazviita Chirimuuta on The Brain Abstracted (Open Access: MIT Press). The last of this series of posts summarises the conclusions regarding philosophy of science more generally that emerge from this study of simplification in neuroscience. The question of realism may have already occurred to you. …
Post 4 of 5 from Mazviita Chirimuuta on The Brain Abstracted (Open Access: MIT Press). A central claim of the book is that recognition of the challenge of brain complexity — how it places pressure on scientists to devise experimental methods, theories and models, which drastically cut down the apparent …
Post 3 of 5 from Mazviita Chirimuuta on The Brain Abstracted (Open Access: MIT Press). In the previous post I described how the literal interpretation of neurocomputational models encourages us to attend only to the perceived commonalities between brains and computers and to relegate the differences to the periphery of …
Post 2 of 5 from Mazviita Chirimuuta on The Brain Abstracted (Open Access: MIT Press). The idea in my project to foreground the question of interpretation is loosely inspired by work in the philosophy of physics which takes the empirical success of e.g. quantum field theory for granted but debates …
This week the Brains Blog is hosting a symposium on Mazviita Chirimuuta’s new book The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (Open Access: MIT Press). Today’s post from Chirimuuta provides a precis and overview of the content of the book. Through this week, we will have …
It is a terrifying thing to finish a book and then think of all the points that should’ve been made, all the topics that should have had an airing. I comfort myself with the thought that Outside Color turned out to be quite a slim volume, and I will be …
