Against the epistemological primacy of the hardware: The brain from inside out, turned upside down

Before he wrote the recent bookThe Brain from Inside Out, the neuroscientist György Buzsáki previewedsome of the arguments in a paper written 20 years ago (“The brain-cognitive behavior problem: a retrospec-tive”), now finally published. The principal focus of the paper is the relationship between neuroscience andpsychology. The direction in which that research had proceeded, and continues now, is, in his view, funda-mentally misguided. Building on the critique, Buzsáki presents arguments for an“inside-out”approach, where-in the study of neurobiological objects has primacy over using psychological concepts to study the brain, andshould, in fact, give rise to them. We argue that he is too pessimistic, and actually not quite right, about howthe relation between cognition and neuroscience can be studied. Second, we are not in agreement with thenormative recommendation of how to proceed: a predominantly brain first, implementation-driven researchagenda. Finally, we raise concerns about the philosophical underpinning of the research program he advan-ces. Buzsáki’s perspective merits careful examination, and we suggest that it can be linked in a productiveway to ongoing research, aligning his inside-out approach with current work that yields convincing accountsof mind and brain