Abstract
In “Mind, matter and metabolism,” Godfrey-Smith’s objective is to “develop a picture” in which, first, the basis of living activity in physical processes “makes sense,” second, the basis of proto-cognitive activity in living activity “makes sense” and third, “the basis of subjective experience in metabolically situated cognitive processes also makes sense.” show that he fails to attain all three of these objectives, largely owing to the nature and modularization of metabolism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Journal of Philosophy, CXIII, no. 10, October 2016, pp. 481–506. Page references below are to this paper.
These details still invoke the TCA cycle. See Schousboe, A, Westergaard, N, Waagepetersen, H.S., Larsson, O.M., Bakken, I.J., Sonnewald, U.,“Trafficking between glia and neurons of TCA cycle intermediates and related metabolites,” Glia, 21(1) 1997:99–105.
Godfrey-Smith repeatedly and approvingly cites Peter Hoffman Life’s Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos, New York, Basic Books, 2012. Hoffman’s title implicitly endorses the observation that molecular processes are not so different from mechanical ones.
Other intra and intercellular regulatory processes, including cell to cell signaling, such as first and second messenger processes, are also conserved and modularized, as the processes in differentiated tissues of metazoans under the control of somatic gene-regulation reflect. Unlike these differentiated processes metabolism is ubiquitous.
For a discussion see Oliver Kann, Richard Kovács, “Mitochondria and neuronal activity,” American Journal of Physiology—Cell Physiology 2007, Vol. 292 no. 2, p. 641–657.
John O’Keefe, “Spatial cells in the hippocampal formation,” https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2014/okeefe-lecture.pdf.
Edvard I. Moser, “Grid cells and the entorhinal map of space,” https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2014/edvard-moser-lecture.pdf, May-Britt Moser, “Grid cells, place cells and memory,” https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2014/may-britt-moser-lecture.pdf.
Katharina Henke, “A model for memory systems based on processing rather than consciousness,” Nature reviews—neuroscience, 2010, 11(7), pp. 523–532. London: Nature Publishing Group. Godfrey-Smith accepts that much cognition is non-conscious. Subjectivity and points of view are presumably not among the consciousness-free cognitive processes.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rosenberg, A. Can we make sense of subjective experience in metabolically situated cognitive processes?. Biol Philos 33, 13 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9624-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9624-4