Saturday, November 06, 2004
On the nature of science and cultural Polemics
Working Notes
Paul Churchland is a philosopher of science, and as such I do not enjoy reading his works. But the primary point of his 1988 book, A Neurocomputational Perspective, was that the way the common man views reality is a theory, like science is a theory. His point is that folk psychology, his term for the common view of things, constitutes a radically false theory, particularly in the context of the emergence of a “complete” theory of neuroscience. He argues that the common person’s understanding of reality inhibits and opposes the development of a correct science of mind.
Paul Churchland then makes profound errors in the development of a new polemic that sets connectionism up as the correct view. The complete neuroscience needs not simply a two layer paradigm, but a paradigm that fully accounts for the constraints that a system environment places on the emergence of coherence. What the BCNGroup founding committee seeks is a proper and complete treatment of Pribram’s holonomic brain theory, a treatment that takes into account the arguments of Hameroff and Penrose on the self-orchestrated collapse of quantum states into a macro-event involved with the connectivity of neuronal groups in the real time process of signal by dendritic field interactions. (See Chapter 4, Knowledge Foundations).
Paul Churchland’s wife’s errors are even more profound in that she specifically claims that the neuron’s axon hillock is the digital processor of the brain, in the PBS series on the Brain and in Pat Churchland’s book: “Neurophilosophy, towards a unified science of Mind-Brain. As I have argued at conferences, with Pat Churchland and Pribram present, this is simply a mistake that comes from Pat’s aligning her work with federal funding mechanisms that expect to continue this illusion caused by AI and Hilbert mathematics approach to modeling brain function. Paul Churchland’s book disappoints me deeply because the problem of an influence on science by a folk psychology is correct. But then Paul Churchland goes into “philosophy land” and then simply pisses in the wind. He misses the mark. He does so without thinking about the social mechanisms that he is so clear in pointing out in the beginning of this thesis.
Paul Churchland creates a new polemic that now has to be over come as the funding mechanisms find and enhance the social and economic status of this polemic. Since it does not solve any of the problems that have become the reason for the funding stream, the funding of false science can continue unabated.
Pat
Churchland, on the other hand simply misrepresents the science, and then acts
as if one should be offended by anyone pointing out that this is a popular view
of what funding mechanism want to fund.
The funding and the academic status that she enjoys allows her to be
dismissive of my discussions with her.
A complete neuroscience will not look reasonable to those in our society who have developed a simple view of the world.