Neurophilosophy or philosophy of neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

 and philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

. Work in this field is often separated into two distinct methods. The first method attempts to solve problems in philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

 with empirical information from the neurosciences. The second method attempts to clarify neuroscientific results using the conceptual rigor and methods of philosophy of science

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

.

Neurophilosophy explores the relevance of neuroscientific studies to arguments in philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

. Theories in neurophilosophy tend to stand in opposition to those of idealism

Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

 and dualism

Dualism

Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...

, which seek to explain the mental with reference to minds and ideas, rather than the structure and function of the brain.

The foremost proponents of neurophilosophy are Patricia

Patricia Churchland

Patricia Smith Churchland is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She has been a Professor at the University of California, San Diego since 1984...

 and Paul Churchland

Paul Churchland

Paul Churchland is a philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. He is currently a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he holds the Valtz Chair of Philosophy. Churchland holds a joint appointment with the Cognitive Science Faculty and...

.

Specific issues

Four issues that are characteristic to neurophilosophy are:

• "The indirectness of studies of mind and brain"
• "Relations between psychological and neuroscientific inquiries"
• "Modularity"
• "Computational or representational analysis of brain processing"

List of neurophilosophers

• William Bechtel
  William Bechtel
  William Bechtel is a professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. He was a Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis from 1994 until 2002...
  
  
• Patricia Churchland
  Patricia Churchland
  Patricia Smith Churchland is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She has been a Professor at the University of California, San Diego since 1984...
  
  
• Paul Churchland
  Paul Churchland
  Paul Churchland is a philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. He is currently a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he holds the Valtz Chair of Philosophy. Churchland holds a joint appointment with the Cognitive Science Faculty and...
  
  
• Francis Crick
  Francis Crick
  Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...
  
  
• Christof Koch
  Christof Koch
  Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist working on the neural basis of consciousness. He is the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology at California Institute of Technology, where he has been since 1986...
  
  
• Gerhard Roth
  Gerhard Roth
  Gerhard Roth is an Austrian writer.-Life:The son of a medical practitioner, Roth originally also wanted to study medicine himself, but soon focussed on literature. Initially, he earned his living as a computer programmer; he has been a freelance writer since 1976...
  
  
• Torsten de Winkel
  Torsten de Winkel
  Torsten de Winkel is a German musician and composer primarily active in the jazz and world music genres...
  
  
• Humberto Maturana
  Humberto Maturana
  Humberto Maturana is a Chilean biologist and philosopher. He is considered a member of the second wave of cybernetics, known for developing a theory of autopoiesis about the nature of reflexive feedback control in living systems.- Biography :After completing secondary school at the Liceo Manuel de...
  
  
• Jesse Prinz
  Jesse Prinz
  Jesse J. Prinz is currently a Distinguished Professor of philosophy at the City University of New York and an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he taught until January 2009. He works primarily in the philosophy of psychology and has produced...
  
  
• Francisco Varela
  Francisco Varela
  Francisco Javier Varela García , was a Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology.-Biography:...
  
  
• William Hirstein
  William Hirstein
  William Hirstein is an American philosopher primarily interested in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, cognitive science, and analytic philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy, director of the Cognitive Science Lab, and the current chair of the Philosophy Department at...
  
  
• Ian Gold
  Ian Gold
  Ian Maurice Gold is a former American football linebacker of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the second round of the 2000 NFL Draft. He played college football at Michigan....
  
  

See also

• Biophilosophy
• Cognitive neuroscience
  Cognitive neuroscience
  Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...
  
  
• Eliminative Materialism
  Eliminative materialism
  Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist...
  
  
• Functionalism
  Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
  Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...
  
  
• Multiple realisability
• Neuroethics
  Neuroethics
  Neuroethics is the ethics of neuroscience, and the neuroscience of ethics.The ethics of neuroscience deals with matters as a subclass of bioethics...
  
  
• Neurophenomenology
  Neurophenomenology
  Neurophenomenology refers to a scientific research program aimed to address the hard problem of consciousness in a pragmatic way. It combines neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study experience, mind, and consciousness with an emphasis on the embodied condition of the human mind...
  
  
• Neuropsychology
  Neuropsychology
  Neuropsychology studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and behaviors. The term neuropsychology has been applied to lesion studies in humans and animals. It has also been applied to efforts to record electrical activity from individual cells in...
  
  
• Philosophy of psychology
  Philosophy of psychology
  Philosophy of psychology refers to issues at the theoretical foundations of modern psychology. Some of these issues are epistemological concerns about the methodology of psychological investigation...
  
  
• Reduction
  Reduction (philosophy)
  In philosophy, reduction is the process by which one object, property, concept, theory, etc., is shown to be explicable in terms of another, lower level, entity...
  
  

External links

• Neuroscience. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Philosophy and the Neurosciences Online Resources
• Immagini della Mente: annual interdisciplinary meeting on Neurophilosophy at the University of Milan
• Neurophilosophy: Research in Philosophy of Neuroscience - University of Milan