I’d like to start by thanking Gary Marcus for starting a terrific series of Neuroscience discussions from his post as New Yorker’s Neuroscience Blogger. Each topic has been juicy, and each perspective fresh.

This is a continued discussion from Gary’s first post: Moral Machines. As with Gary, I’m going to focus on the design strategy for programming moral behavior into a robot.

Gary’s post focuses on Isaac Asimov’s rules for programming moral behavior into robots. The most prominent commandment is the first:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Gary explores whether this is sufficient.

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Over the past few days the question has been raised: “Does Neuroscience Need a Newton?”. Gary Marcus says yes. Scicurious says “no”.

I think Neuroscience has aready had one: Cajal. Read Gordon Shepherd’s 1991 book Foundations of the Neuron Doctrice. The 19th century scientists were lost, arguing about which of the artifacts seen under the microscope were which. Cajal, in remote Spain, peered through his microscope and saw neurons.

Living on the current side of this revolution, its hard to imagine the 19th century image of neural function. Were juices flowing down tubes? Were strings being pulled?

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Gary Marcus has a marvelous article in this week’s New Yorker that points out the over-reach the media has imposed on Neuroscience. Neuroscience has progressed, but is still in its infancy. I have no disagreement with Marcus. This post is part of a conversation.

A major culprit has been functional imaging (fMRI) as presented in the media. Functional imaging has been a wonderful advance that permits a glimpse of the activity in regions of the normal human brain. A wonderful tool, but it is a tool with serious limitations. It doesn’t lead to direct understanding how the brain works. Let me explain.

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