The philosophising brain

Lorenzo Zucca:

There isn't a single definition on what philosophising is, but it generally involves systematic reflection on fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, and meaning. Unlike casual wondering, it typically involves conceptual analysis, logical argumentation, and attempts to work through problems rigorously. People philosophise for various reasons: to make sense of their experience, to examine assumptions, to resolve conceptual confusions, or simply because humans seem naturally inclined to ask "why" and "what if" questions that go beyond immediate practical concerns. 

Philosophising shares elements with speculating and planning but differs in important ways. Planning is future-oriented and typically goal-directed, engaging prefrontal regions involved in executive function. Speculation is more exploratory but can be untethered from systematic constraints. 

Whether it is possible to model the brain’s ability to philosophise is most provocative question. Some computational work touches on related capacities: conceptual reasoning, argumentation structure, even automated theorem proving. The challenge isn't just modelling logical inference but the open-ended conceptual creativity, the sense of what's puzzling, the ability to see connections across domains. Modelling that might tell us more about the cognitive architecture underlying abstract thought than about philosophy per se.

Noam Goldway:

My sense is that philosophising, planning, and speculation share common cognitive machinery: mental simulation that balances goal-directed planning with the consideration of low-probability scenarios. Where philosophising differs most from other forms of mental simulation is not in its cognitive basis but in its cultural, technological, and organizational dimensions: each community/academic discipline has its own frameworks, conventions, and tools that define what counts as acceptable inquiry.

Relatedly, natural sciences historically evolved a branch of philosophy, one that tests ideas against evidence. I don’t think there is a single “scientific state of mind”; science is a profession composed of multiple processes unfolding across projects and seasons of work. Likewise, philosophizing isn’t a unitary mental state, but a language game: a norm-governed social practice. If we model it, the right level may be social interaction, norms, and conventions, not just individual cognition.

Federico Turkheimer:

I agree that that the mental machinery is the same, it is just a matter of language and norms. I wonder whether philosophising is different across cultures (while scientific enquiry probably not)? I can imagine situations where certain cultural norms around how one seeks insight into the nature of reality could differ quite dramatically.

Lorenzo:

Following P.M.S. Hacker's work, I think it's useful to distinguish between cognitive and cogitative functions of the mind. Cognitive processes – perceiving, remembering, recognizing – are necessarily grounded in sensory experience and are fed by empirical reality. Cogitative processes – thinking, imagining – don't require that empirical grounding. To form a concept or imagine a possibility doesn't depend on sensory input in the same way.

This distinction might help with Federico's excellent point about cross-cultural variation. Scientific inquiry, even theoretical physics, remains tethered to empirical reality in ways that constrain how much it can vary culturally. Philosophy, being more purely cogitative at its core, has much greater latitude for cultural variation. We see this dramatically in the divergence between analytical and continental traditions – analytical philosophy emerging from British empiricism and becoming increasingly fixated on logical and linguistic analysis, while continental philosophy remained more humanistic and less concerned with propositional content alone.

I want to push back gently against reducing philosophy entirely to social norms and language games. At its most rigorous philosophy involves challenging all assumptions and norms, including those of one's own community. Baruch Spinoza's scientific reading of religious scripture cost him his place in the Amsterdam Jewish community precisely because real philosophical inquiry questions the metaphysical foundations that communities take as given. This isn't just following different norms; it's the activity of norm-questioning itself.

Of course, much academic philosophy does operate as Noam describes – following disciplinary conventions, largely for instrumental reasons (publication, promotion). But I'd argue that's small-p philosophy, philosophy as a professional practice. Capital-P Philosophy, at its best, keeps redefining itself.

If we're trying to model cogitative functions – the capacity for conceptual innovation, radical questioning, seeing connections across domains – that's a different challenge than modelling cognitive processes or even goal-directed mental simulation. It might tell us something profound about how minds can operate independently of empirical constraints, though whether computational approaches can capture that open-ended cogitative capacity remains an open question.

One final thought: at the highest level, philosophy, science, and art blend together. Descartes, Spinoza, Galileo, Newton were all doing both philosophical and scientific work. Einstein famously said imagination came first. So perhaps what we're really talking about is the balance between cogitative and cognitive functions, with philosophy leaning most heavily toward the cogitative end of the spectrum.

Federico:

Would then be appropriate to define the mental qualities involved in capital-P Philosophy as those involved in meta-cognition where it comprises metacognitive knowledge (understanding one's learning strategies), metacognitive regulation (planning and monitoring learning processes), and metacognitive experiences (reflecting on past learning experiences))? Can we equate Philosophy with the redefinition of one’s cognitive identity?

And would then be appropriate to say that small-p philosophy involves the traditional cognitive strategies? That meta-cognitive areas involved in cognitive integration are key to Philosophy while day-by-day philosophical reasoning resides on local cognitive resources?

Lorenzo:

It could be possible to define Philosophy as a way of redefining one’s own cognitive identity (by systematically challenging biases, assumptions, false beliefs on one hand, and reconstructing the edifice from ground zero. As Descartes did with his Cogito). There is a proviso though: Cogitation is independent from cognition.

Small-p philosophy is indeed in my opinion closely associated with traditional cognitive strategies.

Federico:

In my personal view, mental properties do not arise independently as I see them as the result level-by-level integration of more elementary sub-components, e.g. some sort of processing pyramid. For this reason I struggle with the idea of cogitation and I have difficulty in placing it as a neuroscientific entity.

Lorenzo:

Cogitation is seen at times as a specific type of cognition, but specific in what sense? Is it quantitatively different: philosophising as an intense type of cognition (deep thinking)? Or is it qualitatively different: philosophising as a Sui generis type of cognition? I don’t have an answer.

Noam:

Where this discussion has led me is back to our shared ideas about creativity. It is not necessarily about drawing a strict line between philosophy and the sciences, especially considering that, as mentioned, many pivotal thinkers throughout history have engaged in both in similar ways. In that sense, intellectual achievements, whether scientific or philosophical, are ultimately grounded in a shared form of creativity.

I’d also be curious to learn more about the two types of cognition and to what extent they can truly be separated by the factor of creativity. My own intuition is that no thought is ever entirely original. Everything we think builds upon existing constructs, which can be traced back to prior perceptions we already hold. This, once again, brings us to creativity, the capacity to perceive new connections between familiar elements, which I see as a defining feature of that mode of thought.

I also think there is a substantial role for metacognition in creativity, something that distinguishes a creative process from one that is merely random or noisy. If we break creativity down, it seems to involve alternating between more and less “noisy” states of exploration, and then evaluating the progress made during these more chaotic phases. Integrating that progress into a more structured pathway requires a reflective, evaluative process, a form of metacognition.

I’m still not entirely convinced that there is a fundamental difference between philosophizing and engaging in other cognitively demanding forms of inquiry. Rather, I think disciplinary boundaries and conventions play a key role in differentiating philosophy, science, and art. What might contribute to achievement across all of these domains, in my view, is creativity: the balance between structured, goal-directed (model based) behavior and more exploratory, (model-shifting?) processes.

Lorenzo:

I agree that creative imagination is part of this puzzle, and to know more about that might also shed some light on whether a distinction between cognition and cogitation can be drawn.

Here’s a thought experiment: If I ask you to think about a new planet, in an undiscovered galaxy, with potential life on it. I am not asking to describe it, but just to imagine its possibility and imagine what life would be like there. Do you think that all we can imagine can be tracked back to original perception, or do you think that it is possible to dream up something from scratch.

I am really curious about that, and it would help to identify free-floating imagination as one type of cogitation.

Federico:

There is a view that see a clear separation between body and mind, then there is the body-mind view that looks at the whole brain function as integrated (the mind exists as the product of the interaction between the brain and the environments - that includes the body). In this view, free-floating thinking is not a thing as it must have been shaped by present and past interactions.

Lorenzo:

I agree - the mind goes far beyond than the brain. Psychological concepts are meaningful only when applied to a complete, living organism capable of behaviour in the world, not the brain in isolation.

Beyond the brain, there is full embodied knowledge (which gives us the main input for cognition). The body-in-the-world (which includes the mind) acts according to norms and constraints that can be local and contingent. Those norms shape all kind of activities, including cognition. This we all agree on.

Where we diverge, is that thought (in particular, philosophical thought) and imagination diverge from ordinary cognitive activities in so far that they challenge or transcend sensory data AND the local norms that guide competent cognition of the data.

Now, the question is whether cognition is qualitatively or quantitatively different from cogitation. (Ie, is philosophical thought just a form of deep cognition or is it something else?). (Or again, is creative Imagination just an enhanced form of cognition, some would say distorted, that is also rooted somehow in the same process as any cognition, and it is also in some way guided by similar norms?).

Noam:

My inclination is to focus on the limits of imagination: are we confined to our previous perceptions and just recombining their parts in different ways, or can we construct something completely novel?

Federico:

I wonder what others (mathematicians, philosophers, cognitive scientists) might think...