How the Light Gets In is a philosophy festival aimed at the general public, which runs for nine days around the end of May and the beginning of June in the Globe theatre in Hay-on-Wye, and in various tents in the grounds around the theatre, as well as at the new riverside location. There are several themed strands which cover lots of different areas in philosophy.
Neuroscience versus Philosophy
This year (as in other years) there were themed talks around mind, madness and power and speakers included
Steven Rose,
Maggie Boden and
Barry C. Smith who all participated in a discussion entitled 'Neuroscience versus Philosophy'.
Boden advocates first understanding what human traits we are looking for, expressed in computational terms, and then trying to find neuro-scientific correlates. She suggests that, as the philosophical and computational work has not been done yet, this renders the neuroscience almost totally irrelevant. She cites Uta and Chris Frith’s work on neuroscientific correlates for autism (e.g.
Frith & Frith 2009) but questions what use this is to us if we don’t have a fully developed philosophical and computational notion of, say, theory of mind and other differences associated with autism. She is not even sure that having this fully developed picture would help us. If all we are able to see is more or less blood flow to certain areas of the brain in an fMRI scan under certain conditions, how do we use this in practical terms? For Boden neuroscience can’t answer philosophical questions but it might inform them.