Gerhard Roth - The Constructive Brain: Neurobiological Aspects of Perception and Cognition

This is an interesting talk on the epistemology of neuroscience, in which the following questions serve as a jumping off point:

• Is objective ("true") knowledge possible and how can we acquire it?
• Which role does perception play, which role reasoning, in the acquisition of knowledge?
• Can perception recognize the world "as it is" ("objectively")?
• How do my perceptions correspond to the "objective world"?
• How reliable is perception?

There is some background info on Roth below the video.

Gerhard Roth - Neuroepistemology (Jacobs University Bremen)

Background and Research Interests

Gerhard Roth (*1942 in Marburg) studied Music Sciences, German Studies and Philosophy in Muenster and Rome from 1963 until 1969 after graduating from the humanistic Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kassel. In 1969 he received a doctorate in Philosophy with his work on the Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Afterwards he studied Biology at Berkeley (California), amongst others. In 1974, he finished his second career at the University of Muenster with a doctorate in Zoology.

Since 1976, he is professor of Behavioural Physiology at the University of Bremen; in 1989, he became director of the Institute for Brain Research.

1997 he was appointed founding rector of the Hanse Science College. He is member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and has been president of the Study Foundation of the German People since 2003.

His main areas of research are cognitive and emotional neurobiology of vertebrates, theoretic neurobiology and neurophilosophy.