The Linguistic Dilemma of Cognitive Neuroscience and Its Philosophical Solutions

Contemporary cognitive neuroscience exhibits a “confusion” use of language.Compared to the empirical work of neuroscientists,philosophical language analysis can uncover the underlying linguistic concepts and semantic issues,revealing the hidden linguistic dilemmas.The language use in cognitive neuroscience includes the third-person perspective of language construction and phenomenon identification,as well as the first-person perspective of language embedding and the mind-body connection.Together,these form a cognitive language system shaped by the modern neuroscience paradigm.The state of language use has led to several characteristics in cognitive neuroscience,such as the extensive intertwining of ordinary language and scientific language,the deep integration and blending of multidisciplinary languages,and the generation and transformation of theoretical burdens from old to new paradigms within a historical context.However,the ambiguity in linguistic concepts can cause semantic misunderstandings,resulting in three major linguistic dilemmas:meaningless issues caused by preset biases leading to conceptual confusion,the overextension of improper metaphors,and the expansion of inappropriate analogies.To address these dilemmas,there are three philosophical solutions ranging from moderate to radical:achieving reasonable translation between scientific and everyday language through the framework of domain theory,utilizing the method of factual iteration to position cognitive neuroscience language within a dynamic process of communication and construction,and ultimately constructing an artificial language system unique to cognitive neuroscience to overcome these linguistic challenges.