Naturalistic Turn in Modern Philosophy: Philosophy and Neuroscience

Abstract

The development of biology stimulates a naturalistic turn within the framework of philosophy, actualizes the problem of the dialogue between philosophical and scientific knowledge. In modern philosophy there is a tendency to imitate the empirical sciences. An attempt to conceptualize the empirical knowledge accumulated in modern brain sciences finds its expression within the neurophilosophy project. In classical philosophy, there was a skeptical assessment of the idea of a total reduction of the life of consciousness to the forms of motion of matter, which contributed to the preservation of dualism. The basis of modern neurobiology is the idea of the identity of physical and mental processes, the statement according to which information in our brain is encoded by the activity of neurons, neural networks. As a result, on the border of philosophy and science, corresponding ontological and epistemological programs are formed, designed to comprehend the classical philosophies of the opposition on naturalistic grounds. The author proposes an understanding of the naturalistic trend in modern epistemology, a reflection of the problem of the relationship between physical and mental processes on the example of the conceptualization of the achievements of modern neurosciences within the framework of the neurophilosophy project. The paper notes the diversity of interpretations of the concept of “neurophilosophy”, fixes the prerequisites for its occurrence, development problems and features of interpretation. In the definitions of the concept of “neurophilosophy” one can see a specific form of being of philosophy, the philosophy of neurosciences, a variant of biophilosophy, a form of the philosophy of consciousness. The paper highlights the problems that complicate the implementation of the neurophilosophy project: constant rethinking and supplementing the baggage of scientific knowledge about the brain, the lack of a unified theory of neurosciences, an interdisciplinary language, one-sided reductionism. To build neurophilosophy in the language of neuroscience means to liken it to a special scientific discipline. The project of neurophilosophy initiates, but does not offer models of a constructive dialogue between philosophy and neurosciences, reducing philosophical problems to the achievements of special scientific knowledge, which allows us to consider neurophilosophy, at this stage of its development, as a ‘scientific manifesto’, another attempt of science to do without philosophy. Against the background of the active appeal of philosophy to the special sciences, there is a need to build an empirical-ontological approach, which is based on the current achievements of the sciences, and makes it possible to bring empirical knowledge to the level of philosophical generalizations.