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seminar Neuroscience and freedom
Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya
On Tuesday, December 18, 2007, Professor José Manuel Giménez Amaya (School of Medicine, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) gave a lecture at seminar organized by the CRYF on an interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between Neuroscience and freedom. The main ideas of his intervention are summary .
The thesis of the presentation is articulated by examining whether neuroscience and freedom are directly comparable. To see if this is the case, some aspects of knowledge and (self-)consciousness are analysed. The underlying idea is that if we show that all the terms explored have an absolute and unique relation to neural processes, we will conclude that neuroscience and freedom are comparable.
For the study of knowledge, the new functional organisation of the brain is analysed with modern neuroimaging techniques. It is concluded that with these experimentally powerful techniques, the question of how our brain functions globally or holistically cannot be answered.
The study of sensory perception, especially of faces, emotionally charged places and colour, is also studied at sample . The conclusion is that it is not yet known in detail how the brain coherently and integratively combines sensory perception with emotion and report in a unified way in a cognitive and intentional framework .
The analysis of (self-)consciousness is particularly revealing in terms of a lack of direct causal demonstration between neuroscience and freedom. This point is especially clear in the study of intentionality and subjectivity (John Searle), of finality (David Chalmers) or of the formal structuring of unconditioned truth (Edmund Husserl).
Although neurobiological shaping plays a fundamental role in the development of this binomial analysed, the final conclusion of the exhibition sample is that there is no direct or absolute equivalence between Neuroscience and freedom. It opens a wide door to the need for interdisciplinarity between Neuroscience and Philosophy to jointly address these major problems that affect both sciences.
gradeThe Clinic of the University of Navarra has published a DVD with a 35-minute summary of the contents of this seminar by Prof. Giménez Amaya and Prof. José Ignacio Murillo, exhibition . It can be purchased at this address.