An old philosophical problem, the mind-body problem, has not been yet solved by philosophers or scientists. Even if in cognitive neuroscience has been a stunning development in the last 20 years, the mind-body problem remained unsolved. Even if the majority of researchers in this domain accept the identity theory from an ontological viewpoint, many of them reject this position from an epistemological viewpoint. In this context, I consider that it is quite possible the framework of this problem to be wrong and this is the main reason the problem could not be solved. I offer an alternative, the epistemologically different worlds perspective, that replace the world or the universe. In this new context, the mind-body problem becomes a pseudo-problem.
KeywordsCognitive NeuroscienceMindBrainEpistemologically Different Worlds
Baars, J. B. (2002). The conscious access hypothesis: Origins and recent evidence. Trends in Cognitive Science, 6, 47-52. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01819-2
Baars, J. B., & Franklin, S. (2007). An architectural model of conscious and unconscious brain functions: Global workspace theory and IDA. Neural Networks, 20, 955-961. doi:10.1016/j.neunet.2007.09.013
Bartels, A. (2009). Visual Perception: Converging mechanisms of attention, binding, and segmentation?. Current Biology, 19, R300-R302. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.02.014
Bechtel, W. (2009). Explanation: Mechanism, modularity, and situated cognition. In P. Robbins and M. Aydede (Eds.), Cambridge hand book of situated cognition (pp. 155-170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bechtel, W. (2008). Mental mechanisms, philosophical perspectives of cognitive neuroscience. London: Rutledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Bechtel, W. (2002). Decomposing the mind-brain: A long-term pursuit. Brain and Mind, 3, 229-242. doi:10.1023/A:1019980423053
Chemero, A., & Silberstein, M. (2007). After the Philosophy of Mind: Replacing Scholasticism with Science. URL (last checked 20 August 2010) http://philsciarchive.pitt.edu/archive/00003200
Crick, F., & Koch, C. (1997). Towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness. In N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Guzeldere (Eds.), The nature of consciousness (pp. 277-292). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Crick, F., & Koch, C. (2003). A framework for consciousness. Nature, 6, 119-126.
Damasio, A. R., & Damasio, H. (1996). Making images and creating subjectivity. In R. Llinas and P. S. Churchland (Eds.), The mind- brain continuum: Sensory processes (pp. 19-28). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Descartes, R. (1994). J. Veitch (Translate) A Discourse on method; meditations on first philosophy, principles of philosophy. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.
Downing, P. E. (2009). Visual neuroscience: A hat-trick for modularity. Current Biology, 19, R160-R162. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.12.037
Edelman, G. M., & Tononi, G. (2000). Universe of consciousness: How matter becomes imagination. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Frith, C. (2007). How the brain creates our mental world. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Fodor, J. A. (2008). LOT2—The language of thought revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fodor, J. A., & Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1988). Connectionism and cognitive architecture. Cognition, 28, 3-71. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(88)90031-5
Fowler, C. F. (1999). Descartes on the human soul: Philosophy and the demands of Christian Doctrine. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Georgopoulos, A. P. (1988). Neural integration of movement: The role of motor cortex in reaching. The FASEB Journal, 2, 2849-2857.
Grush, R. (2003). In defense of some ‘Cartesian’ assumptions concerning the brain and its operation. Biology and Philosophy, 18, 53-93. doi:10.1023/A:1023344808741
Grush, R. (2004). The emulation theory of representation: Motor control, imagery, and perception. Brain and behavioral Science, 27, 77-442.
Hanna, R. (2001). Kant and the foundations of analytic philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haynes, J.-D. (2009). Decoding visual consciousness from human brain signals. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 194-202. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.02.004
Holcombe, A. O. (2009). The Binding problem. In E. Bruce Goldstein (Ed.), The sage encyclopedia of perception (preprint). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Kanwisher, N. (2001). Neural events and perceptual awareness. Cognition, 79, 89-113. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00125-6
Klein, S. B. (2004). The cognitive neuroscience of knowing one’s self. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences (pp. 1077- 1089). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kossylyn, M. S., & Keonig, O. (1992). Wet mind—The new cognitive Neuroscience. Columbus, OH: The Free Press.
LaBerge, D. (2002). Networks of attention. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), Cognitive neuroscience, second edition (pp. 711-724). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Llinás, R. (2001). I of the vortex: From neurons to self. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Llinás, R., & Pare, D. (1996). The brain as a closed system modulated by the senses. In R. Llinas and P. S. Churchland (Eds.), The mind-brain continuum: Sensory processes (pp. 1-18). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Libet, B. (2006). Reflections on the interaction of the mind and brain. Progress in Neurobiology, 78, 322-326. doi:10.1016/j.pneurobio.2006.02.003
Lorenz, K. (1941). Kant’s doctrine of the a priori in the light of contemporary biology. In H. Plotkin (Ed.), Learning, development and culture (pp. 121-143). Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.
Lungarella, M. & Sporns, O. (2006). Mapping information flow in sensorimotor networks. Public Library of Science Computational Biology, 2, 1301-1312.
Macrae, N. C., Heatherton, T. F., & Kelley, M. W. (2004). A self less ordinary: The medial prefrontal cortex and you. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The Cognitive neurosciences (3rd ed.) (pp. 1067-1076). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mandler, J. (1998). Representation. In W. Damon, D. Kuhn and R. S. Siegler (Eds.), Cognition, perception, and language volume 2, Handbook of child psychology (5th ed.) (pp. 255-308). London: John Wiley.
Merzenich, M. M., & De Charms, C. R. (1996). Neural representations, experience and change. In R. Llinas and P. S. Churchland (Eds.), The mind-brain continuum: Sensory processes (pp. 61-82). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Milner, P. M. (1974) A model for visual shape recognition. Psychological Review, 81, 521-535.
Pylyshyn, Z. (1999). Is vision continuous with cognition? The case for cognitive impenetrability of visual perception. Behavioral and Brain Science, 22, 341-365. doi:10.1017/S0140525X99002022
Pylyshyn, Z. (2003). Return of the mental image: Are there really pictures in the brain?. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 113-118. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00003-2
Pylyshyn, Z. (2006). Imagery. In R. L. Gregory (ed.), The Oxford companion to the mind (2nd ed.) (pp. 586-587). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Robertson, L. C. (2003). Binding, spatial attention, and perceptual awareness, Nature Reviews, Neuroscience, 4, 93-102. doi:10.1038/nrn1030
Rolls, E. T. (2001). Representations in the brain. Synthese, 129, 153- 171. doi:10.1023/A:1013059525140
Searle, J. R. (1992). The rediscovery of the mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Singer, W. (2007). Binding by synchrony. Scholarpedia, 2, 1657.
Sevush, S. (2006). Single-neuron theory of consciousness. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 238, 704-725. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.06.018
Sporns, O. (2006). Good Information? It’s not all about the Brain. URL (last checked 27 October 2006) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061027081145.htm
Treisman, A. (1998). Feature binding, attention, and object perception. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 353, 1295-1306. doi:10.1098/rstb.1998.0284
Treisman, A. (1999). Solutions to the binding problem: Progress through controversy and convergence. Neuron, 24, 105-110. doi:10.1016/S0896-6273(00)80826-0
Uttal, W. R. (2002). Response to Bechtel and Lloyd. Brain and Mind, 3, 261-273. doi:10.1023/A:1019944825779
Vacariu, G. (2011). Being and the hyperverse (in English). Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press.
Vacariu, G., & Vacariu, M. (2010). Mind, life and matter in the hyperverse (in English). Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press.
Vacariu, G. (2008). Epistemologically different worlds. Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press.
Vacariu, G. (2005). Mind, brain and epistemologically different worlds. Synthese Review, 147, 515-548. doi:10.1007/s11229-005-8366-4
Vacariu, G., Terhesiu, D., & Vacariu, M. (2001). Towards a very idea of representation. Synthese, 129, 275-295. doi:10.1023/A:1013019621505
Von Der Malsburg, C. (1981) The correlation theory of brain function. Internal Report 81-2. G?ttingen: Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry.
Yi, D., Mihalas, S., Qiu, F., Von Der Heydt, R., & Niebur, E. (2008). Synchrony and the binding problem in macaque, Journal of Vision, 8, 1-16, 30