M. Chirimuuta, "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2024)
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What is the central argument of The Brain Abstracted about neuroscience simplifications?
Hi everyone, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and I'm also a historian. I used to be a history professor, and I love maps. So I'm especially happy to tell you that this episode is sponsored by What's Your Map, which was the winner of the best education podcast at the 2025 British Podcast Awards. What's Your Map is hosted by historian and prize-winning author, Professor Jerry Broughton. In each episode, he invites a guest to share. A map close to their heart and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. I can tell you I've listened and it's fascinating. The podcast is in its sixth series and is enjoyed by audiences around the globe. You can explore all the maps in the podcast at occulehyphenmundi.com while you listen.
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdoor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talise, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Masvida Chirimuda, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Her new book, The Brain Abstracted, is just out from the MIT Press. and is available open access. Is the brain literally a computer or is this just an analogy and often a bad one at that? In The Brain Abstracted, Chirimuda argues that the standard ways neuroscientists simplify the brain to build models for their research purposes often mislead us about how the brain actually works.
The key issue instead is to figure out which details of brain function are relevant for understanding its role in causing behavior. After all, the biological brain is a highly energetically efficient basis of cognition in contrast to the massive data centers driving AI that are based on the simplification that brain functionality is just a matter of neuronal action potentials. Trimuda also argues for a Kantian inspired view of neuroscientific knowledge called haptic realism. According to which what we can know about the brain is is a product of the interaction between brains and the scientific methods and aims of That guide how we interact with them. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Masvida Chirimuda, welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
Hi Carrie. Nice to be here.
Um, I am very excited about talking about your new book, The Brain Ex Abstracted. Um Before we get to the book or or maybe as as an introduction to discussing the book itself. Uh maybe you can say a bit about yourself, your background interests as a philosopher, and then how this book came about.
Yeah, sure. Um so this is my second book. Um my previous book was on philosophy of colour perception. And I got interested in that question um because my early training Um as a PhD student was actually in visual neuroscience. So after my degree in philosophy of psychology and ph philosophy and psychology, I went on to join a visual neuroscience lab where I was Um, doing both psychophysics and computational modeling. So the psychophysics kind of grew out of my psychology degree. That's where you're doing kind of close measurements on sensory thresholds of human subjects. I used myself as one of the subjects in a lot of the experiments. Um and my supervisor. Um had him himself done physiological experiments on primary visual cortex.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central argument of The Brain Abstracted about neuroscience simplifications?
0:00–8:51
2
How does Mazvita Chirimuuta explain the gap between brain complexity and computational models?
8:51–16:30
3
Why does the author propose a Kantian‑inspired ‘haptic realism’ for neuroscientific knowledge?
16:30–24:56
4
What are the consequences of treating neurocomputational models as literal descriptions of the brain?
24:56–31:38
5
How does the book connect the brain’s energy‑efficient biology to the limits of AI data‑center scaling?
31:38–38:52
6
What practical changes does the author suggest for neuroscience research to address oversimplification?
38:52–47:05
7
What future research directions does Chirimuuta plan after The Brain Abstracted?
47:05–47:33
8
How can listeners access the open‑access version of The Brain Abstracted?
47:33–48:03
Speakers
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