Philosophical Issues in Neuroscience

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Philosophical Issues in Neuroscience

• Dr. Kelley Kline
• FSU

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I. What is Physiological Psychology?

• The study of the biological basis of behavior.
• Behavior is observed the putative mechanisms
  underlying such behavior is examined.
• Most research focuses on brain mechanisms.

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II. Fields related to physiological Psychology

• Neurology study of brain disease
• Neurophysiology study of brain function
• Neuropsychology study treatment of brain
  damage in people
• Psychophysiology study of relationship between
• the ANS
  behavior
• Psychophysics study of sensory stimuli
• behavior

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Physiological Research draws from diverse
paradigms

• 1. Human nonhuman subjects
• 2. Experiments, quasi-experimental studies,
  case studies
• 3. Pure applied research

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III. The Search for the soul

• Since earliest times, humankind has engaged in a
  search for the soul the body part in which it
  is housed.
• A of body parts were thought to house the
  soul liver, blood, heart.

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The Heart vs. The Brain Hypothesis

• Many thought the soul was in the heart.
• Greeks noticed that people died from chest
  wounds, leading them to infer the mind is in
  the heart.

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Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

• Thought the heart is the source of mental
  processes because it is warm active.
• The brain, cool by contrast, was thought to cool
  the blood heart.

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Hippocrates argued for the brain hypothesis
(460-377 B.C.)

• He observed loss of mental functions associated
  with brain injury.
• He concluded all mental processes must be brain
  processes. Hence, the soul or mind must be
  located in the brain.
• Mind brain were one.

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Galen The Roman Physician (129-199 A.D.)

• Romes leading physician surgeon to gladiators,
  noticed link between brain injury loss of
  mental functions.
• Argued that nerves from sense organs go to the
  brain, not the heart.

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IV. The Mind/Body Problem

• What is it???
• The relationship between the mind the brain.
• Two basic views dualism monism

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A. Rene Descartes Dualism

• Argued the mind exists independently of the
  brain, but interacts with the brain through the
  pineal gland to control behavior.
• Pineal gland was seat of soul.
• How can a non-material mind produce movements in
  a material body????

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Dualists try to get around this problem by saying

• 1. The mind body operate in parallel without
  interacting.
• 2. The body can affect the mind, but the mind
  cant affect the body.
• Both offer dualists a loophole to explain
  behavior without considering the mind.

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B. Monism

• Avoids the mind/body problem, because it argues
  that the mind body are the same thing.
• Most popular among scholars
• Monist materialism argues that everything that
  exists is material.
• Psychological experiences are the result of
  physical events taking place in our brains.

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C. Current view

• We really dont know whether mental processes
  come first or brain processes come first?

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V. Phrenology Heads up!!!

• Studied individual differences in mental
  functions by examining the bumps on the skull.
• Theorya well-developed brain region associated
  with a given function (memory) would produce a
  larger bump on the skull, indicating greater
  performance in that area.

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Phrenologists Gull Spurzheim

• Identified a list of traits they could examine
  people for.
• Although Gall gathered an impressive amount of
  data, there were no statistics to examine his
  findings.
• His correct observations can easily be
  explained by confirmation bias.

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Behavioral Neurology Broca

• Paul Broca- found an area of brain damage
  associated with a language disorder.
• Language must be produced by the left frontal
  lobe.
• Method laid foundation for neurology
  neuropsychology.