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True neuroscience

Nature Neuroscience volume 7, page 1283 (2004)Cite this article

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The Physiology of Truth: Neuroscience and Human Knowledge

  • Jean-Pierre Changeux
(translated by M.B. Debevoise) Harvard University Press, 2004 336 pp. hardcover, $45 ISBN 0674012836 | ISBN: 0-674-01283-6

Most experimental scientists do not have a theory of truth despite being confident that they are diligent truth seekers. At most, the question “Is it a true fact?” evokes an answer of the type, “Sure, I used ANOVA” (or whatever favorite statistical test was unearthed for the occasion). Those few scientists who contemplate the issue a bit further usually end up using what philosophers might call a 'recursive correspondence theory'. This is the belief—itself a loaded term—that our knowledge about an event or process is true if the behavior of that event or process in the world corresponds to the predictions of that knowledge, and if that knowledge integrates properly with other knowledge. Because this correspondence might break down when the analysis is pushed to its limits, research programs and academic careers are generated in an attempt to resolve the discrepancies. The new knowledge, alas, will generate new discrepancies; hence the recursiveness.

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References

  1. Vico, G. On the Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language (Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, New York, 1710/1988).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    Yadin Dudai

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  1. Yadin Dudai
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Dudai, Y. True neuroscience. Nat Neurosci 7, 1283 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1204-1283

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1204-1283

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