Nicole Pernat, Graduate Studies, Controversy in Neurophilosophy, and Philosophical Assumptions
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/09
Nicole Pernat is a friend and colleague, who worked with me in the Lifespan Cognition Lab. Here we talk about her research and interest in psychology, part 2. (Part 1 here)
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why did you choose it for graduate studies?
Nicole Pernat: Because it is sexy. I wanted to get at the root of consciousness—specifically the neural correlates– and felt as though cognitive and perceptual psychology mostly tap around the periphery. I wanted to get at the heart, and figured that it would be either cognitive neuroscience or philosophy that would get me there.
Anyhow, I emailed Dr. Christoff Koch (Biology department, but famous for his work on the neural correlates of consciousness with Dr. Francis Crick) for advice on what was required to get into CalTech program. He was very amiable and responded soon after, advising a strong background in math, physics, chemistry, and/or bio. At least a minor in one of them would be preferable. Bummer. I was at the time, willing to go back and get the requisite background, but my lack of quantitative aptitude would continue to be a hindrance (I did well in psychological stats, but struggled horribly with calculus). I didn’t feel like I would thrive in the hard sciences environment. That’s certainly not to say that philosophers don’t make good quantitative people! Often it’s quite the opposite—for example, many physics undergrads with a thirst for the nature of reality (metaphysics) end up in philosophy. This comes from a professor of mine, Dr. Holly Anderson, who has a BA in physics.
Aside from the quant conundrum, I still loved philosophy. A previous PHIL professor, Dr. Colin Ruloff, finally helped convince me that philosophy was a sweet route. He had been telling me for years that I should go into philosophy, but I kept saying, “No, I like philosophy, but I want to do Psychology. I want the empirical side of things.” Well, in neurophilosophy, you get both. Colin pointed out that Dennett and Churchland (both prominent neurophilosophers) visit neuro labs and talk to the scientists. That sounded good to me. I mulled everything over and decided that I would go philosophy.
Jacobsen: What topic(s) seem unsettled and controversial in neurophilosophy? If any, how do you analyze the topic(s)?
Pernat: Take your pick. The nature of representations, unity of self, colour vision, inverted spectrum, sensory modalities, perception of time, emotions, social cognition… Neurophilosophy is still a toddler—a really smart toddler, mind you. It’s an open field out there. (Ha, stupid pun.)
Analyzing the topics is a challenge, at least for someone who’s not used to coming at a problem from two different disciplines. Take the following illustration: I am taking this fall (2012), appropriately called “Neurophilosophy.” For our projects, we pick a topic that traverses both philosophy of mind and neuroscience (surprise!). We look at the literature in both fields, and then synthesize them. So there are two components in neurophilosophy; analyzing the issue from both sides, and then synthesizing the sides. I do not know if it is all like this, but looking at some other pieces of neurophilosophy (e.g., the Churchlands, Akins), it seems to be a similar sort of process. I would recommend the piece, “What is it like to be boring and myopic?” where Kathleen describes in detail a bats echolocation system and surmises that through bat physiology and neuroscience we can indeed know what it’s like for a bat to be a bat (Akins, 1993).
Jacobsen: You probably had philosophical assumptions prior to entering university. How have your philosophical views changed over time to the present?
Pernat: I would say so. I now realize that philosophers can (and often do) object to assumptions that I’ve carried over from psychology. For example, I thought that it was a pretty easy answer as to whether there are moral truths; namely, “no, there aren’t any.” After all, moralityevolved. If it evolved, then it’s superfluous to posit moral truths that exist objectively and independently of moral/social creatures. Now I realize, after working on the third version of a final paper for a meta-ethics class, that this question is not so easy to answer. There are many smart people arguing for moral realism, and they can make quite convincing cases. I was questioning my view (as I should be). Now, my view on morality is basically the same as it was (I don’t think there are moral truths), but it took more reasoning than I expected. In sum, I am slowly learning that sometimes what seems most obvious actually takes a good solid argument to establish.
In addition, I thought that science could answer every question, though now I am not so sure. Science can’t tell us what we should do; it only describes how things are. Science doesn’t tell us exactly what an explanation is, or how much you must explain for an adequate explanation. For example, if a 4-year-old asks, “Why does that thing float?” Their parent could answer “because it’s a boat and boats float.” In other words, for a child, learning that something belongs to a category with a particular property is sufficient for an explanation. Obviously, the same is not true for a physicist. They probably want a detailed causal story. But are laws sufficient? They seem rather empty, merely describing rules. And what exactly is causation? Is it a mechanism with consistent, identifiable parts? Is it what you get when you intervening on variables to control them? Again, it comes down to defining what exactly an explanation is. That is where philosophy comes in.
Lastly, I used to assume that the scientific method was independent of philosophy, thank you very much. Now I’ve changed my mind. The “artful” component of experimental design seems to be a philosophical exercise, for example. It’s the juice that gets the scientific method up and running. Or consider that when we construct operational definitions, we’re stipulating them. We’re picking out things in the world and identifying them. For example, perhaps “happiness” is X amount of endorphins or being paid more than $60 K a year. Of course we draw on past empirical work to help us along, but how and why we choose particular operational definitions, I argue, are at least partly philosophical. Reason marries science and philosophy.
In short, my previous assumption that science was all and Everything Forever has been overturned. Philosophy, it seems, helps us address questions that science, strictly speaking, cannot—what we should do, what explanations are, or how to design an experiment.
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