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" -- ofthe universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which beginsat birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret oursensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptualjudgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which anyperceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled inthe first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book.

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 Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (both published by the MIT Press), and other books.