Philosophy of Neuroscience Seminar

Philosophy 167D/267D Symbolic Systems 206 Winter Quarter 2013 Instructor: Paul Skokowski Stanford University Tuesdays, Thursdays 11am-12:15pm Room: Encina 202B Office Hours: Weds 2-3 pm Office: Cordura 127 This is a preliminary schedule and will change. Some General Neuroscience Books: Purves, Brains: How They Seem to Work Rose, The Future of the Brain LeDoux, Synaptic Self Recommended Philosophy Books: Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness

Can philosophers talk with neuroscientists? We'll attempt to find out in this course.

Historical Approaches to Philosophy of Neuroscience Week 1, Tuesday Jan 8th:

Course Overview Hobbes, Of Sense Descartes, Passions of the Soul, Sections 17-19 and 30-36 Further Suggested Reading: Skokowski, One Philosopher is Correct (Maybe). Australasian Journal of Logic, 2010, 9(1).

Week 1, Thursday Jan 10th:

Place, Is Consciousness a Brain Process?, British Journal of Psychology 47:44-50, 1956. Smart, Sensations and Brain Processes, Philosophical Review 68:141-56, 1959. Further Suggested Reading: Putnam, The Nature of Mental States (or: Psychological Predicates, Art, Mind, and Religion, 1965.) - here.

Week 2, Tuesday Jan 15th:

Paul Churchland, Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, also here. Gold and Stoljar, A neuron doctrine in the philosophy of neuroscience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22(5), 1999, and here. Patricia Churchland, Can Neurobiology Teach Us Anything About Consciousness? Further Suggested Reading: Paul and Patricia Churchland, Intertheoretic Reduction: A Neuroscientist's Field Guide Jerry Fodor, Special Sciences, Synthese, 28(2), 1974, and in Ned Block (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1

Zombie Interlude

Week 2, Thursday Jan 17th:

Guest Speaker: Steve Schlozman, Harvard Medical School. Also, at 5pm: CEC Talk: Steve Schlozman, Is it OK to shoot that Zombie if it isn't Consciously Human? Is it OK to shoot that Zombie if it isn't Humanly Conscious? And How Can I tell the Difference?

Pain

Week 3, Tuesday Jan 22nd:

Guest Speaker: Howard Fields, UCSF Neuroscience Fields, H., Setting the Stage for Pain. Suggested Further Reading: Fields, H., Pain: An Unpleasant Topic. Fields, H., State-Dependent Opioid Control of Pain.

Week 3, Thursday Jan 24th:

M. Aydede, Pain Fields, H., Pain: An Unpleasant Topic. Fields, H., State-Dependent Opioid Control of Pain.

Brain and the Hard Problem of Consciousness

Week 4, Tuesday Jan 29th:

Putnam, The Nature of Mental States (or: Psychological Predicates, Art, Mind, and Religion, 1965.) - here. Block, Troubles with Functionalism, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 9:261-325 (1978), and in Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1, Ned Block (ed.) Harvard, 1980 - and here.

Week 4, Thursday Jan 31st:

Chalmers, The Puzzle of Conscious Experience, Scientific American 273(6):80-6, 1995. Chalmers, Facing up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3): 200-219, 1995.

Week 5, Tuesday Feb 5th:

Guest: David Chalmers, Philosophy, Australian National University and NYU David Chalmers, How Can We Construct A Science of Consciousness? in Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences III. MIT Press, 2004. David Chalmers, What is a Neural Correlate of Consciousness? in Metzinger (ed.), The Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness, MIT, 2000. Also, at 5pm: CEC Talk: David Chalmers, Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism.

Week 5, Thursday Feb 7th:

Nagel, What is it Like to be a Bat?, The Philosophical Review, LXXXIII(4), 435-450. Another version here. Ned Block, Comparing Theories of Consciousness, Forthcoming in Gazzaniga (ed.) The Cognitive Neurosciences IV, MIT Press.

Week 6, Tuesday Feb 12th:

M. Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness, Ch. 1-3, p. 3-92 F. Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind, Ch. 1, 2; p. 1-64 Skokowski, Review of 'Naturalizing the Mind', Mind and Language, 11(4), 1996. [Penultimate Draft - PDF] Further Suggested Reading: G.E. Moore, The Refutation of Idealism, Mind, 12, (1903).

Week 6, Thursday Feb 14th:

Guest Speaker: Bill Newsome, Neuroscience, Stanford Desmurget et al., Movement Intention After Parietal Cortex Stimulation in Humans, Science 324, 2009. Here, after free registration. Newsome, W., Neuroscience, Explanation and the Problem of Free Will, in Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences IV. Here Salzman et al., Cortical microstimulation influences perceptual judgements of motion direction, Nature 346(6280), 1990. Here

Week 7, Tuesday Feb 19th:

M. Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness, Ch. 4-5. F. Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind, Ch. 3-4.

Week 7, Thursday Feb 21st:

Class and BBQ at Skokowski House, Palo Alto, 5pm-7:30pm. * Note Different Location and Time! * Guest Speaker: Josef Parvizi, Neurology, Stanford Medical School Read the papers and watch the video: Parvizi et al., Electrical Stimulation of Human Fusiform Face-Selective Regions Distorts Face Perception, Journal of Neuroscience, 32(43), 2012. Parvizi et al., Corticocentric myopia: old bias in new cognitive sciences, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(8), 2009. Also, come to the class with your proposal for how to measure consciousness in the brain (or elsewhere!)

Week 8, Tuesday Feb 26th:

* No Class Today * - See Feb 21st.

Week 8, Thursday Feb 28th:

Tye, Pains, Sec. 4.5 of Ten Problems of Consciousness. Tye, Another Look at Representationalism about Pain Skokowski, Is the Pain in Jane Felt Mainly in her Brain? Further suggested readings: Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Lecture III, 144-155. (Search for 'Descartes'. Read from the previous paragraph through the last paragraph before the Addendum.)

Week 9, Tuesday March 5th:

Jackson, Epiphenomenal Qualia, Philosophical Quarterly 32:127-36, 1982. Further suggested reading: M. Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness, Ch. 6, 7.

Week 9, Thursday March 7th:

Guest Speaker: John Campbell, UC Berkeley Philosophy Block, Attention and Mental Paint, Philosophical Issues (20), 2010. Here Carrasco, Attention Alters Appearance, Nature Neuroscience, 2004. Here

Molyneux's Problem

Week 10, Tuesday March 12th:

Locke, 1693, Letter to William Molyneux, 28 March, in The Correspondence of John Locke (9 vols.), E.S. de Beer (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, vol. 4, no. 1620. Molyneux, W., 1688, Letter to John Locke, 7 July, in The Correspondence of John Locke (9 vols.), E.S. de Beer (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978, vol. 3, no. 1064. Molyneux, 1693, Letter to John Locke, 2 March, in The Correspondence of John Locke (9 vols.), E.S. de Beer (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, vol. 4, no. 1609. Locke, 1690, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, London, printed by Eliz. Holt, for Thomas Basset. Second edition 1694. Fourth edition 1700, edited with an Introduction by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Book II, Ch. IX "Of Perception." Sinha and Held, F1000 Medicine Reports, 4:17, September, 2012. Sight Restoration. Held et al., Nature Neuroscience, 14:5, May 2011. The newly sighted fail to match seen with felt. Further suggested readings: Held, R., Visual-Haptic Mapping and the Origin of Cross-Modal Identity, Optometry and Vision Sciences, 86(6) 2009. Wiesel TN, and Hubel DH. (1965). Comparison of the effects of unilateral and bilateral eye closure on cortical unit responses in kittens. J Neurophysiol. 28:1029-1040.

Week 10, Thursday March 14th:

Guest Speaker: Pawan Sinha, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT Sinha and Held, F1000 Medicine Reports, 4:17, September, 2012. Sight Restoration. Held et al., Nature Neuroscience, 14:5, May 2011. The newly sighted fail to match seen with felt. Also, at 5pm: CEC Talk: Pawan Sinha, Learning to see late in life.

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