In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation -- or "takes a picture" -- of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.
- ISBN10 0262016869
- ISBN13 9780262016865
- Publish Date 27 January 2012 (first published 20 January 2012)
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 3 July 2014
- Publish Country US
- Publisher MIT Press Ltd
- Imprint MIT Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 304
- Language English