• SunLoki
    4
    Dear All,
    This is my first post here, so I’d really appreciate any feedback you might have!

    There’s something I’ve been reflecting on for a while, and it’s about the way we, as philosophers, typically approach our discipline, especially in light of the rapidly changing technological landscape we’re living in. I’ve noticed that some discussions in this forum address topics like AI or quantum physics, which is fantastic, but I wonder if we sometimes remain too siloed in our own philosophical frameworks, when we discuss them.

    Should we, perhaps, be doing more to integrate insights from other fields, like neuroscience, for example, into our philosophical inquiries? I did some reading on this and it is how I discovered the work of Nayef Al-Rodhan and his concept of Neuro-Techno-Philosophy (I’ve linked the paper below, hope that’s allowed). And because I have not found a discussion thread on it anywhere else, I am eager to finally be able to discuss with some people, who also like to think about these topics.

    He is both a neuroscientists and philosopher and a Honorary Fellow at St Antony's College of the University of Oxford, and says that,

    In contrast to neurophilosophy, which focuses on the human mind and nature as they are, Neuro-Techno-Philosophy examines the effects of highly transformative innovations on the human mind and nature as they will be.Nayef Al-Rodhan

    What I found quite compelling is how he frames the evolving relationship between philosophy and science. According to him, rapid advances in neuroscience and technology, such as human enhancement, AI, and the emergence of human-machine hybrids, are not just changing our world, they are also challenging the very foundations of how we understand human nature. As a result, philosophers should also adapt.

    But unlike the mindset of experimental philosophy, Al-Rodhan isn’t suggesting that philosophers must become scientists. Instead, we should aim to establish genuine collaboration across disciplines, which in turns leads to both sides gaining new knowledge and understanding of each other.
    Another aspect I appreciated is how he points out that philosophy has always been influenced by other fields. In another blogpost, he cites figures like Proust, whose literary work anticipated neuroscientific insights into memory and the senses, and Cézanne, whose art illuminated aspects of visual perception.

    I’d love to hear your thoughts, especially whether this kind of transdisciplinary approach resonates with your own philosophical interests. If there’s interest, I’d be happy to talk more about some concepts of Al-Rodhan’s work in another post.

    Cheers,
    Loki

    P.S. Here's the paper I mentioned (I hope it's okay to share this, but it feels weird citing something and then not sharing the source): Transdisciplinarity, neuro-techno-philosophy, and the future of philosophy

    And that’s the blogpost: https://blog.apaonline.org/2023/02/20/navigating-living-philosophy-an-unconventional-journey-my-ode-to-transdisciplinary-philosophy/
  • wonderer1
    2.3k


    Welcome to the forum.

    This is a topic I am very interested in. Thanks for the links.
  • SunLoki
    4
    Thank you for your kind answer to my post!
    And so happy you are also interested in the same topics.
  • Baden
    16.5k


    Good OP, thank you, and I agree with the sentiment. There are philosophers out there who bring neuroscience into philosophy---I'm thinking the Churchlands, Dennett, Metzinger etc, and there are those who bring technology in too in a very fundamental way, e.g. Simondon, Stiegler, Deleuze and Guattari etc., but I can't think of one who specifically focuses on both and yes, it's time for that. My current major interest is Philosophy of Technology as a juncture of semiotics, education, ethics, and cultural analysis, and I can definitely see the importance of working neuroscience in there. I have scanned the paper by the way and don't see referenced the names I mentioned (except the Churchlands), but will take a deeper look anyway.
  • Joshs
    6.1k


    What I found quite compelling is how he frames the evolving relationship between philosophy and science. According to him, rapid advances in neuroscience and technology, such as human enhancement, AI, and the emergence of human-machine hybrids, are not just changing our world, they are also challenging the very foundations of how we understand human nature. As a result, philosophers should alsoSunLoki

    My background is in both cognitive science and philosophy. I view science as applied philosophy. As such, new approaches in a field like neuroscience harbor philosophical presuppositions that , proceeding as scientists, they are not in a position to bring out into the light and examine. Take the debate between free energy active inference and embodied enactivist approaches in neuroscience. While the neuroscience is new the philosophical thinking they rely on is 50-100 years old (phenomenology, pragmatism, hermeneutics).
  • Apustimelogist
    759
    Take the debate between free active inference and embodies enactivist approaches in neuroscience.Joshs

    What is "free active inference"? Neither would I say these views are having a debate; they are perfectly mutually consistent. One thing I like about active inference is that emphasis on formality helps clarify, imo, some of these philosophical positions on biology that are often stated by other authors in ways which can comes across as vague or imprecise or over-inflated.
  • Joshs
    6.1k


    What is "free active inference"? Neither would I say these views are having a debate; they are perfectly mutually consistent. One thing I like about active inference is that emphasis on formality helps clarify, imo, some of these philosophical positions on biology that are often stated by other authors in ways which can comes across as vague or imprecise or over-inflated.Apustimelogist

    Free energy. Active inference and enactivism used to be farther apart than they are now. There are still significant conceptual differences between them.
  • Apustimelogist
    759

    I think it depends on the person. These views are perfectly mutually consistent although different people may be more or less inclined to enactivism; but the manner in which fep is structured really has some inherent enactivism. The fact that fep can apply to anything also is perfectly consistent with embodied and extended cognition, especially when you consider that the enactive nature of fep as instantiated by Markov blankets with active states can be nested - i.e. Markov Blankets within Markov blankets - cells, neural populations, brains, social systems, eco-niches, etc, etc.
  • Joshs
    6.1k

    The fact that fep can apply to anything also is perfectly consistent with embodied and extended cognition, especially when you consider that the enactive nature of fep as instantiated by Markov blankets with active states can be nested - i.e. Markov Blankets within Markov blankets - cells, neural populations, brains, social systems, eco-niches, etc, etc.Apustimelogist

    I am far from an expert on fep, but I was impressed by this summary, which sounds consistent with what you wrote.

    In the contrasts between Predictive coding Predictive processing and Predictive engagement, there are not just vocabulary differences; there is a basic conceptual problem about how the different models understand brain function. These seem to be philosophical differences more than neuroscientific ones—differences that concern our understanding of concepts like representation, inference, embodiment, engagement, attunement, affordance, etc. We think that further progress on these issues will depend to some extent on sorting out the very basic issue of defining the unit of explanation (brain vs. brain-body-environment) and controversies about the vocabulary of the explanans. If, for example, for an enactivist PE account, inference and representation are not key parts of the explanans, it needs to provide further explanation of how precisely processes like adjustment, attunement, and accommodation work as part of predictive engagement.

    Notwithstanding the strong contrasts, there is clearly some common ground on which the differences among predictive models can be clarified (Active inference, enactivism and the hermeneutics of social cognition, Shaun Gallagher and Micah Allen 2016).
  • 180 Proof
    15.8k
    Welcome to TPF.

    Nayef Al-Rodhan is new to me but his proposal of "Neuro-Techno-Philosophy" very much reminds me of transhumanism. For context, here's a 2024 article from Philosophy Now:

    https://philosophynow.org/issues/160/A_Philosophical_History_of_Transhumanism

    And on these fora, here are three discussions in which I and quite a few others had participated in back in 2021:

    What is your opinion of Transhumanism?

    Transhumanism: Treating death as a problem (with British philosopher David Pearce)

    Transhumanist theodicy
  • FirecrystalScribe
    3
    This topic makes me think about how for a long time analytic philosophy regarded language as the stuff out of which concepts are made. I was listening recently to this podcast interview with the neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko. She makes a remarkably strong empirical argument that conceptual representations in the brain are language independent. According t her work, language is more like a system of pointers to non-linguistic multi-modal representations. This turns so much of 20th century analytic philosophy on it head (goodbye later Wittgenstein, goodbye Dummett). I don't know if any contemporary philosophers in the analytic tradition have attempted to grapple with this.
  • SunLoki
    4


    Thank you for the welcome! Indeed, when reading all of these fascinating and interesting replies, it makes me feel right at home in this forum.

    And thank you for the links! I have heard about Transhumanism before and I feel, that there is a difference to the concept of Neuro-Techno-Philosophy: Here, in my understanding, its central idea is regarding the benefits of transdisciplinary work - that through applying the knowledge of neuroscience our philosophical understanding of the impact of new technological advancements on humans improves significantly.
    While Transhumanism, on the other hand, wishes to 'use' technology to transform the human and to improve it?
    Please correct me, if I am wrong. I am also going to take the time and read the links that you send me more thoroughly.
  • SunLoki
    4


    Thank you for the link to this podcast, it sounds so fascinating, will try to give it a listen these days.

    And I agree completely with you, regarding the vast implications that neuroscience has for our understanding of the world, including our philosophical one and it is what made me feel so fascinated by the work of Nayef Al-Rodhan, btw if you are interested to read up on more of his stuff, there is a collection of his Articles here.

    To me, there is so much untapped potential within neuroscience for philosophy. When you are saying
    This turns so much of 20th century analytic philosophy on it head (goodbye later Wittgenstein, goodbye Dummett).FirecrystalScribe

    it made me think of Plato's cave and how neuroscience might help us see more of the world than before, something that was simply impossible for Wittgenstein or Dummett because of their 'chains'.
  • GrahamJ
    52


    I am interested in this area, and I like the sound of a trans-disciplinary approach. I am a scientist, a mathematician and programmer with experience in AI and mathematical biology, so you'd probably expect me to be in favour of philosophers taking more account of science.

    I think neuroscience and neurotechnology are an odd choice of scientific fields to promote to philosophers. I mean, include them by all means, but it seems weird to make a thing out of Neuro-Techno-Philosophy in particular. However, instead of arguing about that, I would prefer to clarify first what the fundamental problem(s) are that he is addressing. From what I've read of his writings (a very tiny selection of his huge output) I'd say it was "How do people make decisions?" Is that fair?

    From: A Neurophilosophy of Power and Constitutionalism, 2020
    Back in 1938, Bertrand Russell wrote: “love of power, like lust, is such a strong motive that it influences men’s actions more than they think it should”, and that “the psychological conditions for the taming of power are in some ways the most difficult”. Contemporary neuroscience has demonstrated this in scientific terms, showing how power is neurochemically represented in the brain through a release of dopamine, the same neurochemical involved in the reward circuitry and largely associated with generating the feeling of pleasure, and the motivation to repeat those actions that are conducive to dopamine releases. In other words, power-seeking is akin to other addictive processes, producing ‘cravings’ at the neurocellular level and generating a high much like other drugs. Power, including political power, therefore, will lead to an increase in dopamine levels, which will make those in positions of power to do anything to maintain or enhance their powers.Al-Rodhan

    I am pretty skeptical about an argument that goes all the way from a small organic molecule to the design of constitutions. I am not clear about how knowing about dopamine has allowed us to advance beyond what Russell said. I think psychology can tell us things like "power is addictive" without mapping out the mechanisms.
  • GrahamJ
    52


    I am a scientist not a philosopher, and have only read brief summaries of later Wittgenstein. When I first encountered language-games I immediately thought of Frames as used in AI in the 1970s. Don't be confused by the term "frame language": that refers to a formal language like a programming language. No person or AI would use it for communication. If there is something a bit like frames in our heads, it would be largely or entirely unconscious. The history is interesting, where the motivation for AL frames is described:

    Early work on Frames was inspired by psychological research going back to the 1930s that indicated people use stored stereotypical knowledge to interpret and act in new cognitive situations.[11] The term Frame was first used by Marvin Minsky as a paradigm to understand visual reasoning and natural language processing.[12] In these and many other types of problems the potential solution space for even the smallest problem is huge. For example, extracting the phonemes from a raw audio stream or detecting the edges of an object. Things that seem trivial to humans are actually quite complex. In fact, how difficult they really were was probably not fully understood until AI researchers began to investigate the complexity of getting computers to solve them.

    The initial notion of Frames or Scripts as they were also called is that they would establish the context for a problem and in so doing automatically reduce the possible search space significantly.
    — Wikipedia

    (It would certainly make the task of automatic speech recognition easier if the AI could restrict to block, pillar, slab, beam !)

    Anyway it seems to me that the psychologists in the 1930s, later Wittgenstein in the 1940s and 1950s, AI researchers in the 1970s, and Fedorenko in the 2020s are all broadly compatible. I emphasise broadly: I'm sure there are many devils in the details. Why do you think later Wittgenstein is upended?
  • Ludovico Lalli
    28
    Science is in a position to facilitate human action. Those individuals knowing axiomatology are aware of the fact that human action and human teleologies are always equal. Science is not, in itself, a teleology. Science is equal to a series of epistemologies assisting the man in achieving teleologies which, in truth, are millennial. Science is thus an instrument. Neuro-Techno philosophy is meaningless and self-defeating. You should talk, more properly, about neuro-techno sociology. In terms of sociological research, science must be conceived as the producer of episodes and human phenomenons having to do with the social interconnections between people. Neuro-Techno philosophy must be obliterated and considered as dangerous for philosophy, axiomatology, biology, and anthropology. Neuro-Techno philosophy is meaningless such as psychoanalysis and even more dangerous than psychoanalysis. The problem has to do with the process of humanization of science. Science is equal to an inhuman custom. What is inhuman is always equal to an instrument into the hands of human beings whose teleologies are millennial. The strength of human beings have to do with one issue, their awareness of superiority deriving from their ability in manipulating what is diverse from the human entity. Science is the slave of mankind. Neuro-Techno philosophy is destructive towards human nature and human awareness.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.6k


    R. Scott Bakker has a neat horror story on the consequences of "neural implants" that would allow people to adjust their own emotions "on demand" from the Midwest Philosophical Studies journal (plus an accompanying essay). Want to get along with others better? "Jack the 'mirth slider up a few pips." Need to be more assertive? "Turn the aggression slider up."

    His book "Neuropath" is a thriller on the same topic, but a bit grizzly (being about a sort of neuroscientist serial killer). Of course, we already do this sort of "self-modification" through cognitive and behavioral techniques, and through the ingestion of psychoactive substances (which often have massive side effects).

    Anyhow, Bakker's work is interesting because, unlike many writers who are deep into the "eliminative materialism" mindset, he has a strong (if perhaps contradictory) notion of reflective freedom, i.e., freedom as self-governance and self-determination. But then this "freedom" ends up seeming largely incoherent in his work. I think he might agree with this too, there being no soul to become self-moving.

    Yet in general, I find a lot of "scientific philosophy" tends towards overly reductive analysis, almost as if reductionism is what makes something "properly scientific." I certainly don't think this needs to be the case; it's just a tendency I've noticed. It's an issue that becomes particularly fraught when one starts discussing "engineering human nature," since a strong reductionism will tend to deny that there is any human nature to engineer in the first place, nor any Good by which to orient such an engineering effort.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.6k
    Anyway it seems to me that the psychologists in the 1930s, later Wittgenstein in the 1940s and 1950s, AI researchers in the 1970s, and Fedorenko in the 2020s are all broadly compatible. I emphasise broadly: I'm sure there are many devils in the details.GrahamJ

    I agree with the idea that recent developments in AI seem compatible with the late Wittgenstein's (And Ryle's and Austin's, etc.), linguistic turn. I appreciate your mention of the frame problem in AI since it is an issue that had lingered in the back of my mind for decades—that also suggests compatibilities with, as well as a paradigm shift away, from various earlier approaches to AI. I've just had a short discussion with Gemini 2.5 about it.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.

×
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences.