Philosophy of Neuroscience

In your second year, you’ll dive more deeply into neurophilosophy.

In the course Philosophy of Mind, Brain and Behaviour, you’ll engage with ‘4E Cognition’ approaches, according to which cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted and extended, and investigate their impact on contemporary debates on the mind-body problem and debates on the nature and treatment of psychiatric disorders.

In the Neuroscientific Explanation course, you’ll focus on three central topics in the philosophy of neuroscience: mechanistic explanation, network models and the concept of causation. We invite neuroscientists working on current cases to discuss their projects with students – for example, a recent case involved a researcher working on a network model of multiple sclerosis.

In the course Neurophilosophy, Phenomenology and Subjectivity, you’ll examine the role of first-person subjective reports (e.g. by a patient) in neuroscientific research, and look for ways to incorporate subjectivity in solving scientific problems. Topics span from philosophical discussions surrounding the naturalization of consciousness to the application of qualitative study designs and their role in guiding neuroscientific investigations.

In the course Neurophilosophy and Psychiatry, you’ll look at how neuroscience shapes our understanding of mental health. You investigate different perspectives on the nature of mental disorders, ranging from views that classify them as brain disfunctions to views that conceptualize them as socially deviant behavior, and explore questions about research methodologies, diagnostic practices and treatment options.

Of course, neuroscience has ethical and societal implications, and affects practices like law and psychiatry. In the Neuroethics and Society course we discuss how neuroscience confronts us with moral concerns about cognitive enhancement, "mind-reading" and lie-detection, military applications and forms of health surveillance, but also how it can be instrumental in promoting health and wellbeing, for instance in deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease and psychopathology.

In the Key Concepts course, you’ll focus on a research area of your choice. You collaborate with neuroscientists in that areas and develop your own research project in which you examine a specific key concept in neuroscience and its related philosophical/ethical implications – asking how your findings can be translated to other parties.

Finally, you’ll write your Master’s thesis on a topic of your choice, at the interface between philosophy and neuroscience. For example, you could write a thesis on the concept of explanation in network neuroscience, on whether mental illnesses are solely ‘in the head’, or on the ethical consequences of Deep Brain Stimulation.