From Aristotle to Cognitive Neuroscience

172 Pages·2018·2.06 MB·English

by  Grant Gillett

FROM
ARISTOTLE TO
COGNITIVE
NEUROSCIENCE
Grant Gillett
From Aristotle to Cognitive Neuroscience
Grant Gillett
From Aristotle to
Cognitive
Neuroscience
Grant Gillett
Dunedin School of Medicine
University of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealand
ISBN 978-3-319-93634-5 ISBN 978-3-319-93635-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93635-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948151
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P
reface
This book examines the nature of the human soul from an Aristotelian
perspective by accepting that human beings have souls as part of their
nature (which includes second nature or social and ontogenetic proper-
ties). I was persuaded to a form of Aristotelianism by my D.Phil supervisor
at Oxford University—Cathy Wilkes and have found it a convincing
framework within which to approach ethical and philosophical issues
focused on human cognition and ethics. It is no accident that forms of
Aristotelianism provide a philosophical foundation for developed biologi-
cal, psychological, and medical science and also for certain strands of the-
ology, and this book seeks to unpack why that is so. Many people have
helped me to develop the manuscript as colleagues and mentors: Rom
Harre, Derek Bolton, Carl Elliot, Hilde Lindemann, Jamie Nelson, John
McMillan, Carl Mika, Charlotte Paul, David Green, Dirk De Ridder,
Elana Brief, Alan Torrance, Giles Newton-Howes, the philosophy depart-
ment at Otago University, colleagues in the Bioethics centre at Otago
Medical School and elsewhere, and the many excellent students with
whom I have had the privilege to work; some of whom have become
notable scholars in their own right: Drew Donnelly, Lynne Bowyer, Claire
Amos, Brent Hyslop, Deborah Lambie, Deb Stephens, Katherine Hall,
Kati Taghavi, Simon Walker, and Jeanette Wikaira.
Scholarship is a joint endeavour, and like any human enterprise, it has
its tensions, rivalries, friendships, collaborations, and collegiality, but a
book such as this enables one to honour the many who have impinged on
one’s life path in a way that makes the academy what it is. It is they whom
v
vi PREFACE
this preface seeks to acknowledge along with those notable forebears with-
out which any scholarly endeavour can have no substance. …
Dunedin, New Zealand Grant Gillett
c
ontents
1 I ntroduction: Second Nature and Naturalism 1
2 From Aristotle to Consciousness and Intentionality 11
3 Evolutionary Neurology and the Human Soul 45
4 Diverse Dissolutions of Consciousness 73
5 Consciousness, Value, and Human Nature 107
6 Second Nature, the Will, and Human Neuroscience 123
7 Consciousness: Metaphysical Speculations and Supposed
Distinctions 135
References and Bibliography 151
Index 165
vii
L f
ist of igures
Fig. 3.1 The connectivity of brain neurones. Source: http://
neurosciencenews.com/files/2014/10/neuron-diagram.jpg 47
Fig. 3.2 The connectivity of motor neurones. Source: http://
brainmind.com/images/PyramidalNeurons.jpg 63
Fig. 3.3 Weighted mutual symbolic information (wSMI) increases with
consciousness, primarily over centroposterior regions. (A) The
median wSMI that each EEG channel shares with all other
channels is depicted for each state of consciousness. (B) 120
pairs formed by 16 clusters of EEG channels are depicted as 3D
arcs whose height is proportional to the Euclidian distance
separating the two clusters. Line colour and thickness are
proportional to the mean wSMI shared by the corresponding
cluster pair 63
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Second Nature and Naturalism
Abstract Aristotle’s account of the soul differs from Cartesianism; while
it holds that the soul denotes a conception of a human being as not merely
a physical or material thing, the division is conceptual and not in terms of
a different metaphysical substance and it concerns the form of human life
as self-organised, rational, and moral beings in a shared world using shared
cognitive tools. The human soul animates and gives coherence to our lives
and it develops, in part, through education to create a second nature
developed out of the (first) nature human beings are born with. The
account is extended by Kant and the phenomenologists who examine how
human beings train their children as cognitive apprentices.
Keywords The human soul • soul and psyche • Neural adaptation •
Human uniqueness
Then he stood before the fire, and looked me over in his singular,
introspective fashion.
“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think Watson that you have put on
seven and a half pounds since I saw you.”
“Seven,” I answered.
“Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy,
Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you
intended to go into harness.”
“Then how do you know?”
© The Author(s) 2018 1
G. Gillett, From Aristotle to Cognitive Neuroscience,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93635-2_1
2 G. GILLETT
“I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself
very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant
girl?”
“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have
been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago.”
The human soul, a concept that indicates the uniqueness and moral sig-
nificance of each human being, is a topic that philosophy has struggled
with since Descartes. The Cartesian solution was radical: to posit two
metaphysical types of substance, one of which was extended, mechanistic,
and causal in its workings and one of which was immaterial, and the source
of distinctly human nature. But there was always an alternative which
located human beings squarely in the natural world but gave them a
unique role as co-constructors of that world. That added complexity to
their natural adaptation because, in part they were world-makers and self-
makers unable to be studied like other objective phenomena. As self-
organising and self-making systems, human beings imposed on the world
and themselves certain meanings and values which transformed morally
inert mechanism and an exploration of wheels within wheels into a differ-
ent kind of enterprise—a moral science. The present work lies within the
alternative strand of thought that originates with Aristotle. It traces human
growth, development, and adaptation in a way parallel to that of a natural
organism and is therefore broadly naturalistic. It ties that understanding
to an evolutionary neurology that acknowledges our co-construction of
the world; within that account, it looks at neurocognitive disruptions in
what we make of ourselves. It locates value in that complex moral project
and espouses an account of human freedom that avoids the metaphysical
extravagance of dualism. Within such an Aristotelian enterprise one can
argue for the reality of the moral community and even for a robust and
natural conception of human spirituality.
Aristotle notes that human beings develop, in part, through education
and argument and create in themselves a second nature based on the attri-
butes they are born with. Sherlock Holmes is a case in point. Inference
and causal reasoning, broadly human characteristics elaborated from our
animal cognitive equipment through practice and argument, exploit a
body of knowledge that is dynamic and in perceptuo-motor engagement
with the world informed by shared learning and communication about a
domain of interest. Being the world’s greatest detective requires extensive
self-formation using both types of experience.