Neurophilosophers, Neuroscientists, and the Dreaming Brain

Nicolas Langlitz

In the last decades, brain research has led to a neurobiologi-zation of our self-image. In the 1980s, the anthropological, epistemological, and ethical consequences of this new concep-tion of ourselves as cerebral subjects became the subject matter of the philosophical subdiscipline of neurophilosophy, as Pa-tricia Churchland called this new fi eld. This historical and eth-nographic research project addresses three general questions:

1) How did neurophilosophy come into existence and how can it be demarcated from previous as well as alternative con-temporary forms of philosophical refl ection on the brain?

2) How did and do neurophilosophers and neuroscientists re-late to each other? What happens to their concepts and ideas when they cross disciplinary boundaries?

3) How do neurophilosophers seek to espouse a certain cul-tura animi, a rejuvenation of philosophy as both a way of life and an ethical cultivation of the soul?

Department II

The fi rst publication of graphically recorded rapid eye movements (REM) during sleep. REM sleep was regarded as the neural correlate of dreaming. From: Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman, Regularly Occuring Periods of Eye Motility, and Concomitant Phenomena, During Sleep, Science 118 (1953): 273-274

EEG recording: The anthropologist as participant observer (from previous fi eld study)

As a case in point, the project explores these questions in the more circumscribed context of philosophical and neuroscientifi c studies of dreaming. Dreaming is a particularly suitable subject matter as it has been a key problem of modern philosophy ever since Descartes’ Meditations; brain research has signifi cantly transformed the previously pre-dominantly psychoanalytic con-ception of dreaming; and the understanding of dreams has been an important philosophical and therapeutic question con-cerning the conduct of life from antiquity to the present. The study is based on an analysis of twentieth-century literature, oral history interviews with key actors, as well as fi eldwork on a collaboration between neuro-scientists and philosophers at a sleep laboratory in Turku, Fin-land.

Neuroimaging: How do physiological measurements of the dreaming brain inform the philosophy of mind? Photo: Courtesy Dr. Felix Hasler, Zurich

Neurophilosophy: From brain research to wisdom? Book-cover of Patricia Smith Churchland’s Brain-Wise. Stud-ies in Neurophilosophy, Cambridge, Mass. (MIT Press), 2002

History of Scientifi c Observation