Q&A: Real and Imaginary Cognition (Anselm) – Neuroscience
Real and Imaginary Cognition (Anselm) – Neuroscience
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
In your book The First Existent, p. 76, you explain (in the context of Anselm’s argument) that when a person imagines an object or sees it, the same neurons are at work in the brain.
In addition, you explain that in light of the fact that we can distinguish between imagination and reality, it follows that there is a part of the brain responsible for distinguishing between imagination and reality (distinguishing between the act of “translation” and the act of creation).
Later on (p. 77), you write on that basis that there is a difference in cognition between “X” and “X exists.” That is, it is a different kind of cognition.
I wanted to ask: if at the end of the cognitive process, the neurons that are active when I imagine are the same neurons that are active when I also see an external object, why should this be regarded, as a scientific (neurological) term, as a different cognition?
I’ll borrow the concept of the “context of discovery” that appears in your book: the part of the brain responsible for distinguishing between imagination and reality is seemingly only a distinction in the way the brain activated the neurons responsible for cognition, both imaginary and real. But cognition itself is the same cognition.
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. By the same token, you could also argue that when neurons reflect something to me—a picture, a scientific finding, and so on—it’s all just a hallucination.
Discussion on Answer
I understand. And that is what I answered. The translation neurons tell me that this is a picture from reality and not a picture being generated. What I wrote is that if you don’t believe them, then don’t believe any neuron.
What I mean is that I definitely do believe them.
But they only tell me *how* this cognition came about, and I believe them. But does that mean that the cognition in the two cases is *of a different kind*, once the difference is only in the *way* that this cognition is present in my mind?
I don’t understand this hair-splitting. Those neurons tell you that this picture came from outside. That’s all. Either believe them or don’t.
My question is about what you claim there, that these are two different kinds of cognition.
What I’m asking is that in light of what you wrote there on page 76, apparently these are not different kinds of cognition but exactly the same kind.
Separately from that, the brain also knows how to identify for me the *way* I arrived at these cognitions, whether through “translation” or through creation. But the cognition itself is the same cognition.