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Philosophy & Neuroscience Collaborative Mentorships
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What Can Cephalopod Camouflage Dynamics Tell Us About Perception?
| Eryn Sale UT Southwestern Medical Center | Perception is described as the formation of internal representations from sensory input. Whether sensory information is represented differently across species, and whether perceptual experience itself is species-dependent, remain open philosophical questions. I investigate whether conserved latent neural dynamics of perception can be inferred from behavioral motor outputs in cephalopod camouflage, an independently evolved visual system that provides a powerful comparative test case. I ask two fundamental questions: (1) Which algorithms govern camouflage trajectories in chromatophore pattern space? (2) What functional role do observed “slow-points” play in these dynamics? |
Philosophy Mentor TBA | Neuroscience Mentor TBA |
Naturalistic Neuroscience Needs Mechanistic Insight to Get Ethological (and Computational) Validity
| Henri Scott Chastain | “Naturalistic Neuroscience” argues that ethologically relevant tasks eliciting ‘natural behaviors’ form the basis for better neuroscientific models than traditional ‘mechanistic’ and/or ‘computational’ approaches that specify a formal process of how information is stored and processed within an agent. However, a growing literature in philosophy of neuroscience has questioned the epistemic validity of ‘natural behaviors’, and highlighted the various roles mechanistic analysis plays in neuroscientific models. Nevertheless, the goal of ethological validity is an epistemic virtue. In this perspective piece, I will argue that naturalistic neuroscience is not in opposition to mechanistic approaches, as specifying how behavior arises from the information processing of the agent is necessary to (1) obtain their epistemic goal of ethological validity and (2) translate complex behaviors across species-specific models. |
Philosophy Mentor TBA | Neuroscience Mentor TBA |
The Society for Philosophy & Neuroscience | Established 2024 |
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