Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals (The MIT Press)

In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation -- or "takes a picture" -- of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures. Review Paul Churchland delivers a measured and engaging account of the activation-vector-space framework for understanding the brain as an organ of thought, imagination, and reason. This delightful treatment takes us further, however, addressing in significant detail the impact of cultural and linguistic practice on learning and thought. Plato's Camera is a must-read for those interested in the nature and possibility of human epistemic contact with the world. (Andy Clark, FRSE, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, University of Edinburgh) This is Paul Churchland's definitive account of how sentient creatures structure and acquire knowledge of the world. It will positively engage all those for whom developments in the cognitive sciences are crucial for epistemology. It also poses a thoroughgoing challenge to those who hold that the practice of giving linguistically formulated reasons to support beliefs is fundamental for all knowing. (Ronald N. Giere, Former Director, Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science; Past President, The Philosophy of Science Association) In Plato's Camera, Paul Churchland advances a compelling philosophy that is both naturalistic and humane. Inspired by the structures and dynamics of neural representation and looking behind and beyond conceptions whose principal credential is their language-like forms or their entrenchment, it is wonderfully accessible, elegantly written, and brilliantly argued. Plato's Camera delivers powerful insights about nearly every major topic of metaphysics and epistemology. (Robert McCauley, William Rand Kenan Jr. University Professor and Director, Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture, Emory University) Plato's Camera is a startlingly original and deeply scientifically informed work that provides answers to the most fundamental questions of epistemology and philosophy of mind. How do action-oriented beings-in-time learn to negotiate reality? How do humans and other animals come to know the world, and what is it that we know? Paul M. Churchland is a Platonist and a pragmatist -- in the lineage of Peirce, Quine, Sellars, and Rorty -- and philosophy's foremost critic of the paradigm that models thought on language. We learn to negotiate reality by building n-dimensional maps that encode information about what in the world is 'timeless, changeless, and still.' Getting the universals right allows quick real-time adjustments to the particulars of experience. Hold on for the exciting and unexpected story of how the brain gets these jobs done. There are very few books in philosophy that deserve to be called 'deep.' Plato's Camera is deep. (Owen Flanagan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University; author of The Bodhisattva's Brain) Paul Churchland continues, quite successfully, his bit to persuade the reader that the classical conception of the workings of the brain should be substituted by a construal of the brain as a dynamic neural network.... If a book's success is judged both by the scope of its material and by the amount of novelty it brings, then Churchland's book is an unqualified success. (Metascience) Passionately argued and inspirational.... Churchland's book spans several seldom-bridged topics in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science, and does so with wit and intelligence from its provocative neurocomputational perspective. (Minds & Machines) Readers already somewhat familiar with... and intrigued by his quest to constrain computational modeling of the brain based on knowledge of its structural, kinematical, and dynamical properties will find much to relish in this rigorous work.... Churchland's prose is direct, concise and clear.... [an] impressive and provocative account. (Essays in Philosophy) Contents 6 Preface 8 Chapter 1. Introduction: A Fast Overview 12 1. Some Parallels and Contrasts with Kant 12 2. Representations in the Brain: Ephemeral versus Enduring 15 3. Individual Learning: Slow and Structural 22 4. Individual Learning: Fast and Dynamical 27 5. Collective Learning and Cultural Transmission 36 6. Knowledge: Is It True, Justified Belief? 41 Chapter 2. First-Level Learning, Part 1: Structural Changes in the Brain and the Development of Lasting Conceptual Frameworks 46 1. The Basic Organization of the Information-Processing Brain 46 2. Some Lessons from Artificial Neural Networks 49 3. Motor Coordination 56 4. More on Colors: Constancy and Compression 61 5. More on Faces: Vector Completion, Abduction, and the Capacity for ‘Globally Sensitive Inference’ 73 6. Neurosemantics: How the Brain Represents the World 85 7. How the Brain Does Not Represent: First-Order Resemblance 89 8. How the Brain Does Not Represent: Indicator Semantics 101 9. On the Identity/Similarity of Conceptual Frameworks across Distinct Individuals 115 Chapter 3. First-Level Learning, Part 2: On the Evaluation of Maps and Their Generation by Hebbian Learning 134 1. On the Evaluation of Conceptual Frameworks: A First Pass 134 2. The Neuronal Representation of Structures Unfolding in Time 150 3. Concept Formation via Hebbian Learning: Spatial Structures 168 4. Concept Formation via Hebbian Learning: The Special Case ofTemporal Structures 176 5. A Slightly More Realistic Case 181 6. In Search of Still Greater Realism 185 7. Ascending from Several Egocentric Spaces to One Allocentric Space 191 Chapter 4. Second-Level Learning: Dynamical Changes in the Brain and Domain-Shifted Redeployments of Existing Concepts 198 1. The Achievement of Explanatory Understanding 198 2. On the Evaluation of Conceptual Frameworks: A Second Pass (Conceptual Redeployments) 207 3. On the Evaluation of Conceptual Frameworks: A Third Pass (Intertheoretic Reductions) 215 4. Scientific Realism and the Underdetermination of Theory by Evidence 226 5. Underdetermination Reconceived 234 Chapter 5. Third-Level Learning: The Regulation and Amplification of First- and Second-Level Learning through a Growing Network of Cultural Institutions 262 1. The Role of Language in the Business of Human Cognition 262 2. The Emergence and Significance of Regulatory Mechanisms 266 3. Some Prior Takes on This Epicerebral Process 272 4. How Social-Level Institutions Steer Second-Level Learning 279 5. Situated Cognition and Cognitive Theory 285 Appendix 290 References 292 Index 298

In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation—or 'takes a picture'—of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth,yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book.

His account draws on the best of the recent philosophical literature on semantic theory, and on the most recent results from cognitive neurobiology. The resulting story throws immediate light on issues that have been at the center of philosophy for at least two millennia,such as how the mind represents reality, both in its ephemeral and in its timeless dimensions.

Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.

In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation--or 'takes a picture'--of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. His account draws on the best of the recent philosophical literature on semantic theory, and on the most recent results from cognitive neurobiology. The resulting story throws immediate light on issues that have been at the center of philosophy for at least two millennia, such as how the mind represents reality, both in its ephemeral and in its timeless dimensions. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures A noted philosopher draws on the empirical results and conceptual resources of cognitive neuroscience to address questions about the nature of knowledge. In Plato's Camera , eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation—or "takes a picture"—of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.