Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science

Edited by David M. Kaplan

New papers advance the debate concerning the nature of explanation in mind and brain science
Contributions from leading philosophers on the topic
Provides a comprehensive coverage of the debate with balanced viewpoints

Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science

Edited by David M. Kaplan

Description

This collection brings together a set of new papers that advance the debate concerning the nature of explanation in mind and brain science, and help to clarify the prospects for bonafide integration across these fields. Long a topic of debate among philosophers and scientists alike, there is growing appreciation that understanding the complex relationship between the psychological sciences and the neurosciences, especially how their respective explanatory frameworks interrelate, is of fundamental importance for achieving progress across these scientific domains. Traditional philosophical discussions tend to construe the relationship between them in stark terms - either they are related in terms of complete independence (i.e., autonomy) or complete dependence (i.e., reduction), leaving little room for more interesting relations such as that of mutually beneficial interaction or integration. A unifying thread across the diverse set of contributions to this volume is the rejection of the assumption that no stable middle ground exists between these two extremes, and common embrace of the idea that these sciences are partially dependent on or constrained by one another. By addressing whether the explanatory patterns employed across these domains are similar or different in kind, and to what extent they inform and constrain each another, this volume helps to deepen our understanding of the prospects for successfully integrating mind and brain science.

Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science

Edited by David M. Kaplan

1. Integrating Mind and Brain Science: A Field Guide, David Michael Kaplan
2. Neuroscience, Psychology, Reduction, and Functional Analysis, Martin Roth and Robert Cummins
3. The Explanatory Autonomy of Cognitive Models, Daniel A. Weiskopf
4. Explanation in Neurobiology: An Interventionist Perspective, James Woodward
5. The Whole Story, Michael Strevens
6. Brains and Beliefs: On the Scientific Integration of Folk Psychology, Dominic Murphy
7. Function-Theoretic Explanation and the Search for Neural Mechanisms, Frances Egan
8. Neural Computation, Multiple Realizability, and the Prospects for Mechanistic Explanation, David Michael Kaplan
9. Marr's Computational Level and Delineating Phenomena, Oron Shagrir and William Bechtel
10. Multiple Realization, Autonomy, and Integration, Ken Aizawa
11. A Unified Mechanistic Account of Teleological Functions for Psychology and Neuroscience, Corey J. Maley and Gualtiero Piccinini

Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science

Edited by David M. Kaplan

Author Information

David M. Kaplan is a researcher in the Department of Cognitive Science and an Associate Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD) at Macquarie University. After completing his PhD at Duke University (2007), he was a James S. McDonnell postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (PNP) Program at Washington University in St. Louis (2007-2009). He completed additional postdoctoral training in neurophysiology in the lab of Dr Lawrence Snyder at Washington University in St. Louis - School of Medicine (2009-2013). His research is organized into two interrelated streams. One research stream falls within the field of sensorimotor neuroscience and addresses the neural mechanisms and computations underlying motor planning and learning. The other stream addresses foundational methodological and explanatory issues in neuroscience and cognitive science.

Contributors:

Ken Aizawa, Rutgers University
William Bechtel, University of California, San Diego
Robert Cummins, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Frances Egan, Rutgers University
David Michael Kaplan, Macquarie University
Corey J. Maley, University of Kansas
Dominic Murphy, University of Sydney
Gualtiero Piccinini, University of Missouri, St Louis
Martin Roth, Drake University
Oron Shagrir, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Michael Strevens, New York University
Daniel A. Weiskopf, Georgia State University
James Woodward, University of Pittsburgh

Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science

Edited by David M. Kaplan

Reviews and Awards

"All in all, each of the substantive chapters, taken individually, are excellent -- carefully argued, nuanced, clearly written, and deep. In addition, Kaplan's introductory chapter, which I have not summarized here, is a terrific quick history of the major issues in the reduction debate in cognitive science." -- Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews