epistemology in neuroscience?

[Saeros]

I've been reading some old philosophical texts about epistemology (particularly Plato's dialogues, and John Locke's essay concerning human understanding), and I was wondering what modern neuroscience has to say about knowledge. Essentially, what I would like to find out about is how we learn, whether there is any innate knowledge, etc. Do those kind of topics get covered in neuroscience? Does anyone know of any good websites about this topic?

 

[Da Blob]

From my POV Piaget has the best epistemological model, as far as philosophy/psychology.
Unlike others it is a recursive model, that can explain pre-verbal human experience...

Most of the neuroscience is dealing with the different forms of memory/dreams/imagination. There is some interesting stuff concerning cerebral hemispheric specialization.

As a suggestion though, any site that cannot post fMRI images as documentation of whatever hypothesis or observation, probably should be discounted. If for no other reason than being obsolete... The investigations of the neurological activity on the cellular level simply is inadequate and will remain so. It is a perspective that is simply too precise to observe the analogy of brain activity to knowledge...

 

[Saeros]

From my POV Piaget has the best epistemological model, as far as philosophy/psychology.
Unlike others it is a recursive model, that can explain pre-verbal human experience...

Thanks for the reply, i'll have a look at some of his work.

Most of the neuroscience is dealing with the different forms of memory/dreams/imagination. There is some interesting stuff concerning cerebral hemispheric specialization.

Is memory not knowledge? In terms of how information is stored in the brain, is there a difference? I would be very interested in hearing (or at least reading) the distinction, if there truly is one.

As a suggestion though, any site that cannot post fMRI images as documentation of whatever hypothesis or observation, probably should be discounted. If for no other reason than being obsolete... The investigations of the neurological activity on the cellular level simply is inadequate and will remain so. It is a perspective that is simply too precise to observe the analogy of brain activity to knowledge...

Thanks, i'll keep that in mind (or, perhaps more accurately, in brain ).

 

[Da Blob]

Piaget has not been taken seriously by non-educators. The few references to his work are found in educational venues and not anything more encompassing. The mention of his "stage theory" is about as deep as most references go. His relationship to Kant is one that bears extrapolation into a postmodern POV (IMO).

Of course, memory defines knowledge - perhaps more than perception, itself. What is interesting is that memory is a figment/function of imagination. The same imagination that fuels dreams and abstract thinking.

That which we 'know' we have to imagine...

 

[Kevin Stratocaster]

Hi there. I am new to this forum so I don't know what kind of credibility I have but Id like to help you out.
To answer your question directly, yes, neuroscience has quite a bit to say about epistemology but in kind of round-about way... It says alot about how we acquire knowledge and our biases about our own knowledge. It also can be used to validate and refine broader theories such as physicalism which, again, has to do with epistemology.

Just out of curiosity have you looked into physicalism? I think it is a better place to start as it deals with epistemology, metaphysics and ontology.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a cool resource for all kinds of philosophy stuff: http://plato.stanford.edu/

 

[Da Blob]

Afterthought: "Is memory knowledge?" I do not see how it possibly could be pure "KNOWLEDGE". Human memory is terribly fallible, except perhaps for those gifted individuals with eidetic memory. If there is such a thing as human knowledge it has to be stored elsewhere than the human brain.

One immediately thinks of books, as the recordings of Knowledge - yet human language may be even more fallible that human memory(?)

It may well be that the only knowledge that humans possess is that recorded by, and stored in, machines

 

[Saeros]

Hi there. I am new to this forum so I don't know what kind of credibility I have but Id like to help you out.
To answer your question directly, yes, neuroscience has quite a bit to say about epistemology but in kind of round-about way... It says alot about how we acquire knowledge and our biases about our own knowledge. It also can be used to validate and refine broader theories such as physicalism which, again, has to do with epistemology.

Just out of curiosity have you looked into physicalism? I think it is a better place to start as it deals with epistemology, metaphysics and ontology.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a cool resource for all kinds of philosophy stuff: http://plato.stanford.edu/

Thanks for the reply, your input is very much appreciated. Yea, i started my studies in philosophy with the differences between dualism and physicalism. I guess there's still a lot more I could learn about physicalism. Do you know of any websites that describe how we acquire knowledge according to neuroscience?

Afterthought: "Is memory knowledge?" I do not see how it possibly could be pure "KNOWLEDGE". Human memory is terribly fallible, except perhaps for those gifted individuals with eidetic memory. If there is such a thing as human knowledge it has to be stored elsewhere than the human brain.

One immediately thinks of books, as the recordings of Knowledge - yet human language may be even more fallible that human memory(?)

It may well be that the only knowledge that humans possess is that recorded by, and stored in, machines

Maybe knowledge, itself, isn't very well defined. In order to know something, we would have to be able to remember it; it would have to be in our memory. Can there, for example, be any knowledge imprinted on the mind which it never yet knew? which it never remembers ere death?
I guess you could say, like Plato, that knowledge is justified true belief. Do you think that the word knowledge implies a certain amount of truth? or just certainty? is knowledge just what we have in our understanding, or is there a requisite of something being considered knowledge that it be a universal truth?

 

[Maverick]

It may well be that the only knowledge that humans possess is that recorded by, and stored in, machines

Yes machines are highly infallible. Man delegates to machines to do many jobs for him though this is not knowledge (we're not discussing AT, I guess). Knowledge is the consequent of abstract thinking.

 

[Da Blob]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

To define the word knowledge would be the logical thing to do. There are at least six types of human memory, so perhaps there are at least six types of knowledge not one all-encompassing type. Memories are sensory, short-term and three kinds of long term: recall, recognition and inaccessible.

The sixth type of memory, of necessity, is Consciousness itself. I have gone on at great lengths to describe the relationship that humans have with that dimension of reality that we have labeled "Time". Time utterly eludes us, we know it exists but we can never directly experience it. Even the much vaunted Existentialism is in error for we can never be Here, Now. Even the state we term, Now, is a memory of the sensory variety...

 

[Saeros]

To define the word knowledge would be the logical thing to do. There are at least six types of human memory, so perhaps there are at least six types of knowledge not one all-encompassing type. Memories are sensory, short-term and three kinds of long term: recall, recognition and inaccessible.

The sixth type of memory, of necessity, is Consciousness itself. I have gone on at great lengths to describe the relationship that humans have with that dimension of reality that we have labeled "Time". Time utterly eludes us, we know it exists but we can never directly experience it. Even the much vaunted Existentialism is in error for we can never be Here, Now. Even the state we term, Now, is a memory of the sensory variety...

If all of these things are to be called knowledge, then they must all have something in common to gain that same description. That thing which they all have in common might be called knowledge, do you disagree? So, the question becomes what do all of these types of memory have in common?
So consciousness, itself, is a type of memory? It's interesting that our conscious experience is based on something so fragile as memory. Do people with anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia have conscious experience even though they have no memory?