"Philosophy
contributes the analysis of central phenomena under investigation (and
their different, often competing, conceptualizations); for example, emotions, moral
decisions, and responsibility. It also serves to clarify the content and status of notions
such as determinism, reductionism, specificity, and consilience—concepts that have
been floated in neuroscience and its critiques for a while, and require sharpening.
Often, these and other concepts play key roles in what Hartmann (this volume) calls
the hidden hermeneutics of the neurosciences: structural narratives that practitioners
routinely employ as they describe their objects of investigation and construct
interpretations of data, but that are rarely reflected upon explicitly. Ideas about
“cerebral subjectivity” (Vidal, 2009) or the ubiquitous but often vague appeals to
evolutionary theory are good examples (Richardson, 2007); similarly the new hype
around the notion of cerebral plasticity (Malabou, 2008).
The task here is to elucidate a specific meta level: ascending from the manifest
contents of theories, explanatory frameworks, and core concepts in current
neuroscience to the analysis of latent assumptions and formative backgrounds, such as
the implicit construal of the brain as the stable ontological foundation of both personal
traits and social and cultural phenomena (to name just one, albeit crucial example).
Philosophy also contributes to enriching the description of phenomena under study
through phenomenological investigations, performing what has been called
“front-loaded phenomenology” (Gallagher, 2003, this volume; Gallagher & Zahavi,
2008; Ratcliffe, 2008, 2009; Zahavi, 2004)". (Jan Slaby and Suparna Choudhury 2012, p. 44)
