Число и кантианская исследовательская программа в современной нейронауке

Abstract

The article presents the attempt to consider the Kantian research program in modern neuroscience in its part, which relates to the representation of the “number” and the mechanisms for processing numerical information by neu­ral structures. We claim that Kantian ideas about the a priori nature of certain mathematical categories related to the status of space and time [geometry and arithmetic], which were subjected to doubt as a result of the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, proved to be highly demanded and reassessed as a result of the intensive progress of modern cognitive and cultural neuroscience. The dis­covery of the subitizing phenomena, “sense of number” and “sense of place” (analogous to the navigation system of the brain) push us to recall the old Kan­tian judgments concerning certain a priori constructions of mathematics. The on­togenetic foundations of such phenomena, their conditionality by the features of the functioning of the brain, reveal not the metaphorical, but the strategic nature of the Kantian research program in modern neuroscience. In the context of these studies, it also turned out that in the case of living systems, one can speak about their proto-arithmetic traits, and in the case of humans, mathematical abilities that are largely independent of the language, and their systematic development from an early age significantly increases the likelihood of successful mathemati­cal activity in future. Attention drawn to the interdependence of the activity of the developing brain, social and cultural contexts, which intersects and expressed in the process of acculturation of the brain and vice versa – neural determination of culture. This kind of interaction support the idea of the possibility of expand­ing original Kantian idea and introducing the idea related to the transcendental­ism of the activity type