Date:
Tuesday, May 21, 2013 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Abstract:
Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to subscribe to a dichotomy between so-called empirical and so-called analytic or a priori methods of philosophical research, which, in their view, leads to a current chasm: Armchair versus Empirical philosophy of mind. I argue that this is a false dichotomy and the idea of a chasm is misplaced. I will base my argument on the early history (19th and early 20th Century) of neuroscience, namely, the birth experimental neurophysiology, where we can identify an essential a priori component in scientific reasoning. I then apply those pieces of reasoning to some extant problems in the philosophy of mind, thus offering some elegant solutions to them.