Abstract
The intrinsic relationship between computer science and brain research fuels a number of philosophically interesting questions. The present essay focuses on two major aspects of this relationship: the enabling role of computer science for brain research on the one hand and the use of computational means to simulate or re-build the brain on the other hand. Even though these two streams of thought are distinct their combination helps to elucidate a deeper problem (or so I hope), namely the question what it is exactly that we can find out by rebuilding the brain.
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- 1.
See for example: a) Erhard Oeser, Geschichte der Hirnforschung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2002. b) Michael Hagner, Homo Cerebralis – Der Wandel vom Seelenorgan zum Gehirn. Frankfurt/Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag 2000.
- 2.
Compare René Descartes, de Homine (1622); Traité de l’homme (1664).
- 3.
Compare Oeser, Geschichte der Hirnforschung, op.cit., pp. 58-101.
- 4.
Compare Oeser, Geschichte der Hirnforschung, op.cit., pp. 110-130.
- 5.
Compare Oeser, Geschichte der Hirnforschung, op.cit., pp. 157-165; also: Brian Kolb and Ian Q. Wishaw, Neuropsychologie. Heidelberg: Spektrum Verlag 1996.
- 6.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner, About Behaviorism. Vintage 1974.
- 7.
Richard E. Brown and Peter M. Milner, “The legacy of Donald O. Hebb: More than the Hebb Synapse”, in: Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4, 2003, pp. 1013-1019.
- 8.
Warren S. McCulloch and Walter H. Pitts, “A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity”, in: Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 5, 1943, pp. 115-133.
- 9.
Alan L. Hodgkin and Andrew F. Huxley, “A Quantitative Description of Membrane Current and its Application to Conduction and Excitation in Nerve”, in: Journal of Physiology, 117, 1952, pp. 500-544.
- 10.
Alan Turing, “On Computable Numbers, With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”, in: Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2, 42, 1936; reprinted in M. David (Ed.), The Undecidable, Hewlett, NY: Raven Press 1965.
- 11.
Frank Rosenblatt, “The Perceptron: A Probabilistic Model for Information Storage and Organization in the Brain”, in: Psychological Review, 65, 1958, pp. 386-408.
- 12.
Thomas P. Trappenberg, Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005, p. 7.
- 13.
Henry Markram, “The Blue Brain Project”, in: Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7, 2006, pp. 153-160.
- 14.
Markram, “The Blue Brain Project”, op.cit., p. 153.
- 15.
Wilfrid Rall, “Branching Dendritic Trees and Motoneuron Membrane Resistivity”, in: Experimental Neurology, 1, 1959, pp. 491-527.
- 16.
Compare Markram, “The Blue Brain Project”, op.cit., Ref. 14-32.
- 17.
Markram, “The Blue Brain Project”, op.cit., p. 156.
- 18.
Markram, “The Blue Brain Project”, op.cit., p. 159.
- 19.
Jonathan Fildes (22 July 2009). “Artificial brain ‘10 years away’ ”. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8164060.stm.
- 20.
Compare Markram, “The Blue Brain Project”, op.cit., p. 153.
- 21.
Markram, “The Blue Brain Project”, op.cit., p. 153.
- 22.
For an interesting discussion on the (im)possibility to define concepts, see Edouard Machery, “Why I stopped worrying about the definition of life … and why you should as well”, in: Synthese, 185, 2012, pp. 145-164. My view is compatible with Machery’s, since the argument does not hinge on a specific definition of the concept of intelligence, or a definition which is valid in both scientific and ordinary speech, rather, the argument pleads for a categorical difference between kinds of behavior (e.g. intelligent behavior vs. merely reflexive reactions) and scales of matter, such as atoms, molecules and organized units of these basic entities such as cells and organs.
- 23.
See among others: a) Susan Hurley, Consciousness in Action. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 1998. b) Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006. c) Alva Noë, Action in Perception. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press 2006. d) Andy Clark and David Chalmers, “The Extended Mind”, in: Analysis, 58, 1, 1998, pp. 7-19.
- 24.
Kevin Adams and Ken Aizawa, “Embodied Cognition and the Extended Mind”, in: P. Garzon and J. Symons, (Eds.), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology. New York: Routledge 2009, pp. 193-213.
- 25.
Compare footnote 22.
- 26.
Mark Sprevak, “Introduction to the Special Issue Computation and Cognitive Science”, in: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 41, 2010, pp. 223-226, here cited p. 223.
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Pompe, U. (2013). The Value of Computer Science for Brain Research. In: Andersen, H., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Uebel, T., Wheeler, G. (eds) New Challenges to Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_8
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