Rationally Speaking #50 - Neurobabble
Rationally Speaking Podcast
00:00
The Confusion of Description and Explanation in Neuroscience
I see this in a lot of neuroscience discussions that people seem to think that once you know which regions of the brain are associated with some particular behavior or psychological phenomenon, then you've explained that behavior or phenomenon. It's still purely descriptive information. It's not explanatory. I mean, it's still usually valuable to have as complete of a brain function map as possible. But I don't think it's valuable in itself. Learning about whether certain functions are localized in one place is helpful just in our general understanding of how the brain works. That's really important to know. And in fact, let's take your case of jealousy. One cannot simply conclude that therefore those areas of brain cause jealousy
Transcript
Play full episode
