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Under the assumption that nervous systems form a distinct category among the objects in Nature, applying metaphors of psychological and behavioral science disciplines is flawed and invites confusion. Moreover, such practices obscure and detract from the primary task of Neurophysiology: to investigate the intrinsic properties of nervous systems, uncontaminated with concepts borrowed from other disciplines. A comprehensive fundamental theory of nervous systems is expected to have the character of high dimensional nonlinear systems in which state space transitions, set in motion by external influences, self-organize to dynamic state space configuration with consequences for behavior. Key words: attractors, brain state space, cognitive neurophysiology, conditioned motor behavior, naturalism, metaphor Introduction The rise of Naturalism in Philosophy since the 1980s shifted its traditional task of establishing and questioning the foundational assumptions of the Sciences largely to the disciplines themselves. For the Philosopher N. W. Quine [29] Naturalism is “the recognition that it is within Science itself , and not in some prior Philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described”. This charter requires each empirical discipline to define explicitly to which objects in Nature its concepts refer: in the terminology inherited from pre-naturalistic Philosophy, what its “natural kind terms” designate in distinction from other discipline’s classes of objects, at least in practices of inquiry [5]. Based on insights gained in experimental investigations [42], Freeman [10] emphasized the distinctiveness of the “tissue formed by neurons in animal brains“ . Accordingly, he rejected the Machine Metaphor of brain function (and the various “crypto-Cartesian” forms it had taken since Descartes) as a “category error” in Ryle’s [32] definition: to construe objects of inquiry that belong to one category in terms of concepts of another. For the human brain, Edelman [9] affirmed emphatically its specials status in the world, “like nothing Science has yet encountered”. Though not stated by these authors in these terms, their opinions accord with granting nervous systems the status of a ‘natural kind’ in the material world. Disregard of this distinctiveness is prone to surface as conceptual confusion in the discourse practices of Neuroscientists when terms such as ‘coding’, ‘representation’, ‘information’ etc. are applied across category boundaries, and without consistent and uniformly adhered-to semantics: sometimes rooted in the one or the other category, or some ill-defined hybrid [45,46,47]. Bennett and Hacker [4] have recently conducted a thoughtful and penetrating analysis of the conceptual entanglements of this kind. In this , I will focus on problems that arise from the ascription of mental and psychological attributes to neurophysiological observations in Cognitive Neuroscience, often under the guise of metaphorical language. I contend that such practices obscure and derail the proper task of Neuroscience to elucidate neural systems as a distinct category of physical systems, within its own conceptual and theoretical boundaries. Conclusion The case of conditioned motor behavior was intended to serve as an illustrative example. However, the thrust of my argument is more general. There are two ways of viewing the brain’s activity in interactive commerce with its environment. One, as an observer of transactions in the brain environment system: here, the observer looking the at the organism-environment interactions from the outside, as it were, to apply his/her own linguistic and descriptive categories drawn from the repertoire of the Behavioral Sciences and Psychology. The other way is in terms of the brain’s working in the form of neuronal transactions within its own domain: from the inside of the brain, as it were. In the former, one may be speak of “decisions”, “stimulus salience” or to use locutions like “…how brains think…” [16]. However, these are locutions in the observer’s vocabulary, and not intrinsic to the brain’s activity. Neglecting those distinctions reflects conceptual confusion. The tools of Theoretical Physics hold some important concepts for addressing these questions in brain theory. Much work is also required on experimental methodology: what are appropriate measures of neuronal activity? Is the traditional reliance on sampling neuronal spike discharges, individually or in clusters, adequate? Having established accounts of the brain’s internal processes, we may then be able to say that such-and-such configuration in brain state space can be interpreted as corresponding to certain categories in the vocabulary of behavior or, perhaps, even introspection. But applying the Psychologist’s concepts to neurophysiological observation without the intermediate step of a genuine, mechanistic Neurophysiology is an unwarranted shortcut, under the aegis of metaphor. Metaphors detract from situating Nervous Systems squarely in the “Natural Kinds” of basic Physics and its investigative practices. 网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文作品权归所有；未经官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯作品权现象，英语毕业论文，保留一切法学追诉权。()，英语论文题目 |
