- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience
- Contributors
- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience
- Introduction
- Molecules, Systems, and Behavior: Another View of Memory Consolidation
- Biological Clocks: Explaining with Models of Mechanisms
- Methodology and Reduction in the Behavioral Neurosciences: Object Exploration as a Case Study
- The Science of Research and the Search for Molecular Mechanisms of Cognitive Functions
- The Lower Bounds of Cognition: What Do Spinal Cords Reveal?
- Lessons for Cognitive Science from Neurogenomics
- Learning, Neuroscience, and the Return of Behaviorism
- fMRI: A Modern Cerebrascope? The Case of Pain
- The Embedded Neuron, the Enactive Field?
- The Role of Neurobiology in Differentiating the Senses
- Enactivism's Vision: Neurocognitive Basis or Neurocognitively Baseless?
- Space, Time, and Objects
- Neurocomputational Models: Theory, Application, Philosophical Consequences
- Neuroanatomy and Cosmology
- The Emerging Theory of Motivation
- Inference to the Best Decision
- Emergentism at the Crossroads of Philosophy, Neurotechnology, and the Enhancement Debate
- What's “Neu” in Neuroethics?
- Confabulations about People and Their Limbs, Present or Absent
- Delusional Experience
- The Case for Animal Emotions: Modeling Neuropsychiatric Disorders
- Levels, Individual Variation, and Massive Multiple Realization in Neurobiology
- Neuro‐Eudaimonics or Buddhists Lead Neuroscientists to the Seat of Happiness
- The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This article aims to examine the possible relation between neuroanatomy and cosmology. It describes brain-wiring optimization and suggests that such extreme neural network organization is a prerequisite for brain functioning, and it states that it is possible that other set of brain-enabling conditions of the universe exist. It also discusses the relation between brain-wiring minimization and optimization landscapes and between brain-wiring optimization and the anthropic principle.
Keywords: neuroanatomy, cosmology, brain-wiring optimization, brain-wiring minimization, brain function, neural network, anthropic principle
Christopher Cherniak is a member of the Philosophy Department and its Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences at the University of Maryland. His research falls mainly in theory of knowledge and in computational neuroscience. His chapter in this volume is based on computational neuroanatomy that stemmed from his epistemology book, Minimal Rationality. His articles have appeared in, among other journals, Journal of Philosophy, Physical Review, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).
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- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience
- Contributors
- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience
- Introduction
- Molecules, Systems, and Behavior: Another View of Memory Consolidation
- Biological Clocks: Explaining with Models of Mechanisms
- Methodology and Reduction in the Behavioral Neurosciences: Object Exploration as a Case Study
- The Science of Research and the Search for Molecular Mechanisms of Cognitive Functions
- The Lower Bounds of Cognition: What Do Spinal Cords Reveal?
- Lessons for Cognitive Science from Neurogenomics
- Learning, Neuroscience, and the Return of Behaviorism
- fMRI: A Modern Cerebrascope? The Case of Pain
- The Embedded Neuron, the Enactive Field?
- The Role of Neurobiology in Differentiating the Senses
- Enactivism's Vision: Neurocognitive Basis or Neurocognitively Baseless?
- Space, Time, and Objects
- Neurocomputational Models: Theory, Application, Philosophical Consequences
- Neuroanatomy and Cosmology
- The Emerging Theory of Motivation
- Inference to the Best Decision
- Emergentism at the Crossroads of Philosophy, Neurotechnology, and the Enhancement Debate
- What's “Neu” in Neuroethics?
- Confabulations about People and Their Limbs, Present or Absent
- Delusional Experience
- The Case for Animal Emotions: Modeling Neuropsychiatric Disorders
- Levels, Individual Variation, and Massive Multiple Realization in Neurobiology
- Neuro‐Eudaimonics or Buddhists Lead Neuroscientists to the Seat of Happiness
- The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity
- Index
