{"pk":25580,"title":"Can Modern Neuroscience Change Our Idea of the Human?","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The paper briefly reviews the contribution of recent\nneuroscience findings to our understanding of our human\nnature – more exactly, to the understanding of the three\nproperties that we conceive of as highly-specifically human:\nconsciousness, freedom, and language. The analysis yields\nrather surprising results. Self-consciousness is possibly not\nthe highpoint of our sophisticated cognitive functions, but\nrather the basic pre-reflective self-other distinction intimately\nrelated to body control and affective states, within whose\nlimits cognitive processes become possible. Freedom is not a\nviolation of natural (biological) laws, but, in contrast, a\nnecessary attribute of complex behavior; it roots in the\nfundamental biomechanical freedom of biological\nmovements. Language comprehension is neither an instinct\nnor a set of complex inferences, but a behavior based on\nlearnt hierarchy of predictive, anticipatory processes. Thus the\nanswer to the question formulated in the title is positive: yes,\nit can change. From the author’s viewpoint, these changes\nemphasize embodied, enacted nature of the specifically\nhuman functions.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"consciousness; freedom; language; neuroscience;\nspecificum humanum"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99r800z9","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Boris","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kotchoubey","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Tübingen","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25580/galley/15204/download/"}]}