Plato's camera : how the physical brain captures a landscape of abstract universals / Paul M. Churchland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Churchland, Paul M., 1942-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cognitive neuroscience--Philosophy.

Cognitive neuroscience.

Philosophy of mind.

Universals (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 289 p., [12] p. of plates :) ill. (some col.) ;

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2012]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A noted philosopher draws on the empirical results and conceptual resources of cognitive neuroscience to address questions about the nature of knowledge. In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation--or "takes a picture"--of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [281]-285) and index.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

0-262-30082-6

0-262-30286-1

OCLC:

857961017