The Idealized Brain: Uniting Philosophy of Science and Computational Neuroscience

A critical look at our modeling techniques, and what idealized modeling can tell us, if anything, about the mind and brain.

In The Idealized Brain, Michael Kirchhoff explores the challenges of using idealized modeling in computational neuroscience. The book spans work on neural coding, deep learning, machine learning, AI, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of science.

The author addresses many of the epistemic uses and harms of idealization across multiple scales and paradigms—fr...