Philosophical Issues in Neural Computation

The idea that the brain performs computations is widely accepted in cognitive science and computational neuroscience. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that neural computation differs fundamentally from classical computation. Key aspects of what it means to compute in a neural context are under debate. For example, to what extent is neural computation medium-independent, or is it tied to the biological substrate of the brain? What is the status of deep learning models in computational neuroscience? What kind of models are they—engineering or scientific—and how do they explain neural phenomena? How does neural computation relate to, or differ from, analog and digital computation as understood in traditional computer science? This workshop brings together philosophers and researchers from other fields to address these questions and develop a clearer understanding of computation in neural systems.