The journal “Philosophy and the Mind Sciences” (PhiMiSci) invites abstracts for commentaries on Prof. Mazviita Chirimuuta’s new book “The Brain Abstracted. Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience” (MIT Press, 2024). A précis can be found here:
https://philosophyofbrains.com/2024/05/13/the-brain-abstracted-overview-and-precis.aspx
Chirimuuta’s book offers a novel and groundbreaking philosophical study of the brain sciences. Starting from the assumption that the brain is massively heterogeneous and dynamically changing, Chirimuuta argues that neuroscientific practice always constructs simplifications of the brain. This is obviously true for mathematical models, but also holds for experimental practice, in which neuroscientists manipulate and intervene into reduced preparations such as model organisms. The book combines a form of haptic realism (which holds that we learn about the brain by manipulating such simplified material and mathematical models) with formal idealism (which warns us that the patterns we discover in the models should not be attributed to an ontological reality).
In The Brain Abstracted, this framework is applied in detail to various cases from the history of neuroscience (reflex theory, simple cells in the visual system, population vector views of the motor cortex, etc.) which illustrates how simplification enables the neuroscientific study of the brain but can also mislead. In addition, the book also offers a fresh perspective on various debates in the philosophy of neuroscience and general philosophy of science, such as realism, functionalism, and multiple realizability as well as reductionism, representation, computation, consciousness, and artificial intelligence.
Interested commentators should send abstracts (max. 500 words, excluding references) for commentaries by the 15th of April 2025 to philipp.haueis@philos.uni-hannover.de.
The journal may invite up to 3 authors to submit full-length commentaries, which will appear alongside three commentaries invited by the author. Invitations for full manuscripts will be sent out shortly after; full manuscripts (2.000 to 5.000 words) are due until the 1st of July 2025; each author commits to review another commentary within 4 weeks; revision must be done by September 2025. The estimated publication date is the 4th quarter of 2025.
Potential topics for the commentaries are:
- The nature and role of simplification, idealization, and abstraction in neuroscientific practice
- The relationship between neuroscientific models and the brain
- Debates over realism and idealism in brain and mind sciences
- Debates over computation and representation in neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind
- Reductionism and explanation in philosophy of the brain and of the cognitive sciences
- Scientific understanding, especially with regard to the use of artificial intelligence to model the brain
For targeted inquiries, please email the guest editor Philipp Haueis at philipp.haueis@philos.uni-hannover.de.