Maxwell Bennett (Sydney) is a neuroscientist. Daniel Dennett (Tufts), Peter Hacker (Oxford) and John Searle (Berkeley) are philosophers. Daniel Robinson is both. This book is a “four-sided” debate that Robinson introduces and provides a superb critical summary. The same friend who loaned me book 325 by Robinson lent me this book.

Robinson’s Introduction begins with: “Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience [PFN], by Max Bennett and Peter Hacker, was published by Blackwell in 2003. It attracted attention straightaway because it was the first systematic evaluation of the conceptual foundations of neuroscience, as these foundations had been laid by scientists and philosophers. What added to the attraction of the work were two appendices devoted specifically and critically to the influential writings of John Searle and Daniel Dennett. Max Bennett, an accomplished neuroscientist, correctly identified Searle and Dennett as the philosophers most widely read within the neuroscience community and was eager to make clear to readers why he and Hacker disagreed with their views.” At a 2004 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, the authors of PFN (B&H) and the critics (D&S) agreed to do book 326. It has three parts: The Argument by B&H, The Rebuttals by D&S, and Reply to the Rebuttals by B&H and the last words by Daniel Robinson. Had this debate been oral, it could have been a heated one.

The Argument consists of RFN excerpts. I give some key points. “Empirical questions about the nervous system are the province of neuroscience. “…conceptual questions are the proper province of philosophy.” …”Cognitive neuroscience operates across the boundary between two fields, neurophysiology and psychology, the respective concepts of which are categorically dissimilar.” …”The relations between the mind and the brain, and between the psychological and the behavioral are bewildering.” …”We have written this book [PFN] in admiration for the achievements of twentieth-century neuroscience, and out of a desire to assist the subject.” …”The question we are confronting is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. It calls for conceptual clarification, not for experimental investigation.” …”Mereology is the logic of part/whole relations. The neuroscientists’ mistake of ascribing to the constituent parts of an animal attributes that logically apply only to the whole animal we shall call ‘the mereological fallacy’ in neuroscience.” …”It is not semantic inertia that motivates our claim that neuroscientists are involved in various forms of conceptual incoherence. It is rather the acknowledgment of the requirements of the logic of psychological expressions.”

”The temptation to extend the concept of consciousness to encompass the whole domain of ‘experience’ was greatly strengthened by philosophers’ misconceived introduction of the notion of qualia.” ...”Qualia, then, are conceived to be the qualitative characteristics of ‘mental states’ or of ‘experiences’, the latter pair of categories being construed to include not only perception, sensation, and affection, but also desire, thought and belief.” They view qualia as a bad concept. ”Our concern has not been with the design of the next experiment, but rather with the understanding of the last experiment.” …”We have, throughout this book, tried to show that clarity concerning conceptual structures is as important for cognitive neuroscience as clarity about experimental methods. Its great contributions to our understanding of the biological roots of human capacities and their exercise are illuminated, not hindered, by such clarification.” Maxwell Bennett, in highly technical chapter he wrote, says near the end “Although it does not follow logically, the slow and painstaking progress made by neuroscience in using the engineering approach to illuminate synaptic networks did not engender in me much hope that claims for their possessing psychological attributes could be sustained. I therefore sought help for conceptual clarification from those scholars that are professionally trained in such matters, namely, philosophers.”

Daniel Dennett’s rebuttal begins with: B&H’s PFN “is an ambitious attempt to reformulate the research agenda of cognitive neuroscience by demonstrating that cognitive scientists and other theorists, myself among them, have been bewitching one another by misusing language in a systematically ‘incoherent’ and conceptually ‘confused’ way.” Dennett denies and denies this many times, but without adding anything useful in his 23 pages. On his last page, he says “In conclusion, what I am telling my colleagues in the neurosciences is that there is no case to answer here.” John Searle’s rebuttal first clarifies what he agrees with in PFN. He decides to focus on consciousness: “Consciousness, by definition, consists of states that are qualitative and subjective.” It’s all about ‘what it feels like’. “‘Consciousness’ and ‘qualia’ are simply ‘coextensive terms’.” …”The best way to understand their book is to see it as an application of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind to contemporary neuroscience.” Searle ends with: B&H “have written a significant and in many ways useful book. They put a lot of work into it. I do not wish my objections to obscure its merits. However I believe that the vision they present of neurobiology and the mind is profoundly mistaken and potentially harmful.” Neither Dennett’s nor Searle’s rebuttals provided convincing arguments to me.

In their Reply to the Rebuttals, B&H hold firm to what they said in PFN. “The central theme of our book was to demonstrate the incoherence of brain/body dualism and to disclose its crypto-Cartesian character.” …”Our concern was with the use, by cognitive neuroscientists, of the common or garden psychology…” They make this point with eight quotes. Maxwell Bennett’s Epilogue adds ”I believe that this [his preceding] brief description of neuroscientific research and its interpretation concerning visual perceptions during binocular rivalry reveals an urgent need for critical clarification from analytical philosophers.” …”Affective consciousness, consciousness of one’s motives, reflective consciousness of one’s actions, and self-consciousness require importantly different forms of analysis.”

The best chapter of this book is its last – Still Looking – by Daniel Robinson. ”Especially interesting among the cautions B & H announce to otherwise unsuspecting neuroscientists is one that has to do with the claim that we are not always aware of what we perceived.” Robinson’s critiques of PFN are “minor scruples, especially when weighed against those set forth by John Searle.” …”In discussing the mereological fallacy, Searle rejects that there is a fallacy at all.” …”It would seem that the ultimate status of physicalism will depend on just how mental life is best and most fully explained, but it is surely far too early to take a firm position on the matter. The right place to begin is with our very terms of choice, making sure that we do not adopt modes of speech that virtually foreclose opportunities for unearthing our systematic ignorance.” As for Dennett: ”Dennett defends himself against the charge of committing the mereological fallacy by citing his own earlier works in which he makes the distinction between personal and subpersonal levels of explanation.” Dennett defends his language, but to say that the ‘brain’ may know of a danger before it or we know what it is can be no more of a corruption of language and, at the level of scientific explanation, a woeful blunting of Occam’s razor.” …”Dennett insists on fitting any number and variety of facts into a conceptual container too elastic to have shape and too thin for the weight of the real problems.”

Robinson asks: “What of B&H, and H especially? I reviewed their book most favorably …nothing in the replies of John Searle or Daniel Dennett would cause me to reconsider my earlier judgment. I regarded the aims of the authors to be precisely those that constitute the very mission of philosophy.” In speaking of Descartes, “Knowing what he did about matter, he was satisfied that the essential character of rational and perceptual life could not be derived from matter in any combination. Is there something really ridiculous about a dualistic ontology that contrasts extended and unextended entities? I don’t think so; in point of fact, no one thinks so, for thinking itself rules it out.” Robinson’s last words are splendid: “It is the philosopher, however, who must put the brakes on the enthusiasms of the storytellers, for, left to their own devices, they might conjure up a future that vindicates only our current confusions.” Hacker is the only philosopher in this ‘debate’ that Robinson called ‘careful’, so he is not one of the storytellers. So, who won the debate? It seems to me Robinson (the referee?) clearly favors B & H. But I would also call Robinson a winner, for his chapter ‘Still Looking’ is the best in the book. In rating this book, I find too much repetition and too many defensive words for such a book-length word debate. But with Robinson’s final chapter, my overall rating is notched up a star to four stars.