2025/12/26 by Ryan M. Nefdt, Giosuè Baggio · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Philosophy and Theoretical Science #Action Observation and Synchronization
paper · doi:10.1080/09515089.2025.2608211
This article addresses the relationship between philosophy and cognitive neuroscience, focusing on possible sources of experimental ideas when theoretical constructs are absent, weak, or only partly developed. We argue that philosophical thought experiments and cases provide one such source, and we examine their role and nature as conduits to actual laboratory experiments. We demonstrate that the structure of thought experiments, in ethics and in the philosophies of language and mind, may lend itself naturally to translations into cognitive neuroscience research. Such translations into experimental tasks involve structural preservation as well as modification of the original cases, with implications for the mutual relevance of the newly obtained results and the original philosophical analyses. Given philosophy’s long-held place within the cognitive sciences, this analysis sheds additional light on the issue of cognitive neuroscience itself as a disciplinary enterprise.