How might a “philosopher’s toolkit” help advance neuroscience? Let’s
ask some neuroscientists
Abstract
How might a “philosopher’s toolkit” contribute to progress in
neuroscience? This paper addresses this question by first posing it to
several neuroscientists, all with a track record of successfully
interacting with philosophers. These discussions took the form of
structured interviews following the strategy of Barwich (2020, 2021) and
highlighted a number of issues these neuroscientists thought
philosophers could help them solve; some of these problems were at the
center of these neuroscientists’ research programs. Are philosophers
willing and able to bring their “toolkits” to bear on problems like
these? No definite answers to this question emerge from these
interviews, but in our interactions it became obvious that philosophers
will need real training in neuroscience to contribute to these concerns.
Fortunately, over the past two decades, there are growing numbers of
philosophers trained in the science-in-practice movement. Our collective
findings should not only encourage them that they can genuinely
contribute to neuroscience’s progress, but also that some
neuroscientists will seek them out and highly value their contributions.
These discussions can also guide other neuroscientists about ways to
interact fruitfully with philosophers active in the field of
science-in-practice.