Plato's Camera―How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals

In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers anovel account of how the brain constructs a representation--or 'takes a picture'--of the universe'stimeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth,yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensoryexperience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgmentsrequires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to whichany perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembledin the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book.

His account draws on the best of the recent philosophical literature on semantictheory, and on the most recent results from cognitive neurobiology. The resulting story throwsimmediate light on issues that have been at the center of philosophy for at least two millennia,such as how the mind represents reality, both in its ephemeral and in its timeless dimensions.

Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition alsoprovides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated withinan enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. AsChurchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched thehuman race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.

Paul M. Churchland is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. His the author of The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul (MIT Press), Neurophilosophy at Work, and several other books.