Abstract

Majority of the philosophers regard neurophilosophy as a highly marginal philosophical school of thought and reject it based on either principled reasons or alleged facts about the human brain. Principled objections typically include categorical rejections based on assumptions about the nature of philosophical problems and their solutions. Another objection is based on the extremely complex structure of the nervous systems, the idea that if neurophilosophical hypotheses are correct, it would mean the death of philosophy as a separate discipline and the perceived exclusion of human psychological, sociological, and historical existence and meaning by neurophilosophers. Here, I argue that these rejections are largely the result of either textual misreading of Churchlands’ publications or possibly of the farfetched interpretations by Churchlands’ critics stating that “wherever Churchlands do talk about necessary conditions of understanding the mind, these conditions should be read as expressions of the sufficient conditions.” Once I show that these various objections are mistaken, I propose an objection about a serious defect in neurophilosophical practice and offer a positive suggestion for removing the defect.