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Indeterminism in Neurobiology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marcel Weber
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Abstract

I examine different arguments that could be used to establish indeterminism of neurological processes. Even though scenarios where single events at the molecular level make the difference in the outcome of such processes are realistic, this falls short of establishing indeterminism, because it is not clear that these molecular events are subject to quantum mechanical uncertainty. Furthermore, attempts to argue for indeterminism autonomously (i.e., independently of quantum mechanics) fail, because both deterministic and indeterministic models can account for the empirically observed behavior of ion channels.

Type
Topics in Philosophy of Biology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2005 , pp. 663 - 674
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I wish to thank Andreas Hüttemann for organizing and inviting me to the conference “Determinism in Physics and Biology” (ZiF, University of Bielefeld, July 2002), from which my research on indeterminism in neurobiology has benefited greatly.

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