Chapter 6 - Larger Implications

Summary

Of all the biological sciences, it is the study of the brain that most impinges on philosophy; and like philosophers, neuroscientists need to take special care in how they name things (Smythies 2009). Most would agree that the function of the brain is to convert stimuli into responses. But what is a stimulus? Is it best considered as the pattern formed by the combined activity of all sensory receptors at a given point in time? That is indeed what ultimately determines what the brain does. But it is not at all what is being described, for instance, in the Methods section of scientific papers. Here ‘stimulus’ means something extremely localised and specific – perhaps a dot of a certain size and colour – and there is tacit complicity with the subject that nothing else counts in making the response that is to be measured. There is also complicity regarding which aspects of the stimulus will be quietly ignored.