Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. (1 other version)Design principles as minimal models.Wei Fang - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 105 (C):50-58.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Natural Kinds (Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Science).Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 2023 - Cambridge University Press.
    Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different guise when one (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Realism and instrumentalism in Bayesian cognitive science.Danielle Williams & Zoe Drayson - 2023 - In Tony Cheng, Ryoji Sato & Jakob Hohwy (eds.), Expected Experiences: The Predictive Mind in an Uncertain World. Routledge.
    There are two distinct approaches to Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. Black-box approaches use Bayesian theory to model the relationship between the inputs and outputs of a cognitive system without reference to the mediating causal processes; while mechanistic approaches make claims about the neural mechanisms which generate the outputs from the inputs. This paper concerns the relationship between these two approaches. We argue that the dominant trend in the philosophical literature, which characterizes the relationship between black-box and mechanistic approaches to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Computing in the nick of time.J. Brendan Ritchie & Colin Klein - 2023 - Ratio 36 (3):169-179.
    The medium‐independence of computational descriptions has shaped common conceptions of computational explanation. So long as our goal is to explain how a system successfully carries out its computations, then we only need to describe the abstract series of operations that achieve the desired input–output mapping, however they may be implemented. It is argued that this abstract conception of computational explanation cannot be applied to so‐called real‐time computing systems, in which meeting temporal deadlines imposed by the systems with which a device (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Phenomenological Laws and Mechanistic Explanations.Gabriel Siegel & Carl F. Craver - 2024 - Philosophy of Science 91 (1):132-150.
    In light of recent criticisms by Woodward (2017) and Rescorla (2018), we examine the relationship between mechanistic explanation and phenomenological laws. We disambiguate several uses of the phrase “phenomenological law” and show how a mechanistic theory of explanation sorts them into those that are and are not explanatory. We also distinguish the problem of phenomenological laws from arguments about the explanatory power of purely phenomenal models, showing that Woodward and Rescorla conflate these problems. Finally, we argue that the temptation to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Computational Modelling for Alcohol Use Disorder.Matteo Colombo - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.
    In this paper, I examine Reinforcement Learning modelling practice in psychiatry, in the context of alcohol use disorders. I argue that the epistemic roles RL currently plays in the development of psychiatric classification and search for explanations of clinically relevant phenomena are best appreciated in terms of Chang’s account of epistemic iteration, and by distinguishing mechanistic and aetiological modes of computational explanation.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Explicating Agency: The Case of Visual Attention.Denis Buehler - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (2):379-413.
    How do individuals guide their activities towards some goal? Harry Frankfurt once identified the task of explaining guidance as the central problem in action theory. An explanation has proved to be elusive, however. In this paper, I show how we can marshal empirical research to make explanatory progress. I contend that human agents have a primitive capacity to guide visual attention, and that this capacity is actually constituted by a sub-individual psychological control-system: the executive system. I thus illustrate how we (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • In Defense of Dynamical Explanation.Shannon B. Nolen - unknown
    Proponents of mechanistic explanation have argued that dynamical models are mere phenomenal models, in that they describe rather than explain the scientific phenomena produced by complex systems. I argue instead that dynamical models can, in fact, be explanatory. Using an example from neuroscientific research on epilepsy, I show that dynamical models can meet the explanatory demands met by mechanistic models, and as such occupy their own unique place within the space of explanatory scientific models.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Integrating Philosophy of Understanding with the Cognitive Sciences.Kareem Khalifa, Farhan Islam, J. P. Gamboa, Daniel Wilkenfeld & Daniel Kostić - 2022 - Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 16.
    We provide two programmatic frameworks for integrating philosophical research on understanding with complementary work in computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. First, philosophical theories of understanding have consequences about how agents should reason if they are to understand that can then be evaluated empirically by their concordance with findings in scientific studies of reasoning. Second, these studies use a multitude of explanations, and a philosophical theory of understanding is well suited to integrating these explanations in illuminating ways.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • New functionalism and the social and behavioral sciences.Lukas Beck & James D. Grayot - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4):1-28.
    Functionalism about kinds is still the dominant style of thought in the special sciences, like economics, psychology, and biology. Generally construed, functionalism is the view that states or processes can be individuated based on what role they play rather than what they are constituted of or realized by. Recently, Weiskopf has posited a reformulation of functionalism on the model-based approach to explanation. We refer to this reformulation as ‘new functionalism’. In this paper, we seek to defend new functionalism and to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Agential capacities: a capacity to guide.Denis Buehler - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (1):21-47.
    In paradigm exercises of agency, individuals guide their activities toward some goal. A central challenge for action theory is to explain how individuals guide. This challenge is an instance of the more general problem of how to accommodate individuals and their actions in the natural world, as explained by natural science. Two dominant traditions–primitivism and the causal theory–fail to address the challenge in a satisfying way. Causal theorists appeal to causation by an intention, through a feedback mechanism, in explaining guidance. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Mechanistic Explanation in Psychology.Mark Povich - forthcoming - In Hank Stam & Huib Looren De Jong (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Theoretical Psychology. (Eds.) Hank Stam and Huib Looren de Jong. Sage.
    Philosophers of psychology debate, among other things, which psychological models, if any, are (or provide) mechanistic explanations. This should seem a little strange given that there is rough consensus on the following two claims: 1) a mechanism is an organized collection of entities and activities that produces, underlies, or maintains a phenomenon, and 2) a mechanistic explanation describes, represents, or provides information about the mechanism producing, underlying, or maintaining the phenomenon to be explained (i.e. the explanandum phenomenon) (Bechtel and Abrahamsen (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Information and explanation: an inconsistent triad and solution.Mark Povich - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-17.
    An important strand in philosophy of science takes scientific explanation to consist in the conveyance of some kind of information. Here I argue that this idea is also implicit in some core arguments of mechanists, some of whom are proponents of an ontic conception of explanation that might be thought inconsistent with it. However, informational accounts seem to conflict with some lay and scientific commonsense judgments and a central goal of the theory of explanation, because information is relative to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Deep learning: A philosophical introduction.Cameron Buckner - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (10):e12625.
    Deep learning is currently the most prominent and widely successful method in artificial intelligence. Despite having played an active role in earlier artificial intelligence and neural network research, philosophers have been largely silent on this technology so far. This is remarkable, given that deep learning neural networks have blown past predicted upper limits on artificial intelligence performance—recognizing complex objects in natural photographs and defeating world champions in strategy games as complex as Go and chess—yet there remains no universally accepted explanation (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • Pseudo‐mechanistic Explanations in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience.Bernhard Hommel - 2020 - Topics in Cognitive Science 12 (4):1294-1305.
    Pseudo‐mechanistic explanations in psychology and cognitive neuroscienceThis paper focuses on the level of systems/cognitive neuroscience. It argues that the great majority of explanations in psychology and cognitive neuroscience is “pseudo‐mechanistic.” On the basis of various case studies, Hommel argues that cognitive neuroscience should move beyond what he calls an “Aristotelian phase” to become a mature “Galilean” science seeking to discover actual mechanisms of cognitive phenomena.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • (1 other version)Wiring optimization explanation in neuroscience: What is Special about it?Sergio Daniel Barberis - 2019 - Theoria : An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science 1 (34):89-110.
    This paper examines the explanatory distinctness of wiring optimization models in neuroscience. Wiring optimization models aim to represent the organizational features of neural and brain systems as optimal (or near-optimal) solutions to wiring optimization problems. My claim is that that wiring optimization models provide design explanations. In particular, they support ideal interventions on the decision variables of the relevant design problem and assess the impact of such interventions on the viability of the target system.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Model-based Cognitive Neuroscience: Multifield Mechanistic Integration in Practice.Mark Povich - 2019 - Theory & Psychology 5 (29):640–656.
    Autonomist accounts of cognitive science suggest that cognitive model building and theory construction (can or should) proceed independently of findings in neuroscience. Common functionalist justifications of autonomy rely on there being relatively few constraints between neural structure and cognitive function (e.g., Weiskopf, 2011). In contrast, an integrative mechanistic perspective stresses the mutual constraining of structure and function (e.g., Piccinini & Craver, 2011; Povich, 2015). In this paper, I show how model-based cognitive neuroscience (MBCN) epitomizes the integrative mechanistic perspective and concentrates (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Fallacy of the Homuncular Fallacy.Carrie Figdor - 2018 - Belgrade Philosophical Annual 31 (31):41-56.
    A leading theoretical framework for naturalistic explanation of mind holds that we explain the mind by positing progressively "stupider" capacities ("homunculi") until the mind is "discharged" by means of capacities that are not intelligent at all. The so-called homuncular fallacy involves violating this procedure by positing the same capacities at subpersonal levels. I argue that the homuncular fallacy is not a fallacy, and that modern-day homunculi are idle posits. I propose an alternative view of what naturalism requires that reflects how (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Psa 2018.Philsci-Archive -Preprint Volume- - unknown
    These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2018.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • (1 other version)Representation Re-construed: Answering the Job Description Challenge with a Construal-based Notion of Natural Representation.Mikio Akagi - manuscript
    Many philosophers worry that cognitive scientists apply the concept REPRESENTATION too liberally. For example, William Ramsey argues that scientists often ascribe natural representations according to the “receptor notion,” a causal account with absurd consequences. I rehabilitate the receptor notion by augmenting it with a background condition: that natural representations are ascribed only to systems construed as organisms. This Organism-Receptor account rationalizes our existing conceptual practice, including the fact that scientists in fact reject Ramsey’s absurd consequences. The Organism-Receptor account raises some (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Empiricism without Magic: Transformational Abstraction in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks.Cameron Buckner - 2018 - Synthese (12):1-34.
    In artificial intelligence, recent research has demonstrated the remarkable potential of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs), which seem to exceed state-of-the-art performance in new domains weekly, especially on the sorts of very difficult perceptual discrimination tasks that skeptics thought would remain beyond the reach of artificial intelligence. However, it has proven difficult to explain why DCNNs perform so well. In philosophy of mind, empiricists have long suggested that complex cognition is based on information derived from sensory experience, often appealing to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   48 citations  
  • (1 other version)Representation Re-construed: Construal-based Norms for Ascribing Natural Representations.Akagi Mikio - manuscript
    Many philosophers worry that cognitive scientists apply the concept REPRESENTATION too liberally. For example, William Ramsey argues that scientists often ascribe natural representations according to the “receptor notion,” a causal account with absurd consequences. I rehabilitate the receptor notion by augmenting it with a background condition: that natural representations are ascribed only to systems construed as organisms. This Organism-Receptor account rationalizes our existing conceptual practice, including the fact that scientists in fact reject Ramsey’s absurd consequences. The Organism-Receptor account raises some (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Making too many enemies: Hutto and Myin’s attack on computationalism.Jesse Kuokkanen & Anna-Mari Rusanen - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 21 (2):282-294.
    We analyse Hutto & Myin's three arguments against computationalism [Hutto, D., E. Myin, A. Peeters, and F. Zahnoun. Forthcoming. “The Cognitive Basis of Computation: Putting Computation In Its Place.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind, edited by M. Sprevak, and M. Colombo. London: Routledge.; Hutto, D., and E. Myin. 2012. Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Hutto, D., and E. Myin. 2017. Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]. The Hard Problem (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Functional Analyses, Mechanistic Explanations, and Explanatory Tradeoffs.Sergio Daniel Barberis - 2013 - Journal of Cognitive Science 14:229-251.
    Recently, Piccinini and Craver have stated three theses concerning the relations between functional analysis and mechanistic explanation in cognitive sciences: No Distinctness: functional analysis and mechanistic explanation are explanations of the same kind; Integration: functional analysis is a kind of mechanistic explanation; and Subordination: functional analyses are unsatisfactory sketches of mechanisms. In this paper, I argue, first, that functional analysis and mechanistic explanations are sub-kinds of explanation by scientific (idealized) models. From that point of view, we must take into account (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Review of Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account by Gualtiero Piccinini - Gualtiero Piccinini, Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015), 313 pp., $65.00 (cloth). [REVIEW]Oron Shagrir - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (3):604-612.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Models and Explanation.Alisa Bokulich - 2017 - In Magnani Lorenzo & Bertolotti Tommaso Wayne (eds.), Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science. Springer. pp. 103-118.
    Detailed examinations of scientific practice have revealed that the use of idealized models in the sciences is pervasive. These models play a central role in not only the investigation and prediction of phenomena, but in their received scientific explanations as well. This has led philosophers of science to begin revising the traditional philosophical accounts of scientific explanation in order to make sense of this practice. These new model-based accounts of scientific explanation, however, raise a number of key questions: Can the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Fiction As a Vehicle for Truth: Moving Beyond the Ontic Conception.Alisa Bokulich - 2016 - The Monist 99 (3):260-279.
    Despite widespread evidence that fictional models play an explanatory role in science, resistance remains to the idea that fictions can explain. A central source of this resistance is a particular view about what explanations are, namely, the ontic conception of explanation. According to the ontic conception, explanations just are the concrete entities in the world. I argue this conception is ultimately incoherent and that even a weaker version of the ontic conception fails. Fictional models can succeed in offering genuine explanations (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   54 citations  
  • The central executive system.Denis Buehler - 2018 - Synthese 195 (5):1969-1991.
    Executive functioning has been said to bear on a range of traditional philosophical topics, such as consciousness, thought, and action. Surprisingly, philosophers have not much engaged with the scientific literature on executive functioning. This lack of engagement may be due to several influential criticisms of that literature by Daniel Dennett, Alan Allport, and others. In this paper I argue that more recent research on executive functioning shows that these criticisms are no longer valid. The paper clears the way to a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Mechanistic Abstraction.Worth Boone & Gualtiero Piccinini - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (5):686-697.
    We provide an explicit taxonomy of legitimate kinds of abstraction within constitutive explanation. We argue that abstraction is an inherent aspect of adequate mechanistic explanation. Mechanistic explanations—even ideally complete ones—typically involve many kinds of abstraction and therefore do not require maximal detail. Some kinds of abstraction play the ontic role of identifying the specific complex components, subsets of causal powers, and organizational relations that produce a suitably general phenomenon. Therefore, abstract constitutive explanations are both legitimate and mechanistic.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Redefining Physicalism.Guy Dove - 2018 - Topoi 37 (3):513-522.
    Philosophers have traditionally treated physicalism as an empirically informed metaphysical thesis. This approach faces a well-known problem often referred to as Hempel’s dilemma: formulations of physicalism tend to be either false or indeterminate. The generally preferred strategy to address this problem involves an appeal to a hypothetical complete and ideal physical theory. After demonstrating that this strategy is not viable, I argue that we should redefine physicalism as an interdisciplinary research program seeking to explain the mental in terms of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Mechanisms in psychology: ripping nature at its seams.Catherine Stinson - 2016 - Synthese 193 (5).
    Recent extensions of mechanistic explanation into psychology suggest that cognitive models are only explanatory insofar as they map neatly onto, and serve as scaffolding for more detailed neural models. Filling in those neural details is what these accounts take the integration of cognitive psychology and neuroscience to mean, and they take this process to be seamless. Critics of this view have given up on cognitive models possibly explaining mechanistically in the course of arguing for cognitive models having explanatory value independent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Mechanisms and Model-Based Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.Mark Povich - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (5):1035-1046.
    Mechanistic explanations satisfy widely held norms of explanation: the ability to manipulate and answer counterfactual questions about the explanandum phenomenon. A currently debated issue is whether any nonmechanistic explanations can satisfy these explanatory norms. Weiskopf argues that the models of object recognition and categorization, JIM, SUSTAIN, and ALCOVE, are not mechanistic yet satisfy these norms of explanation. In this article I argue that these models are mechanism sketches. My argument applies recent research using model-based functional magnetic resonance imaging, a novel (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Moving parts: the natural alliance between dynamical and mechanistic modeling approaches.David Michael Kaplan - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (6):757-786.
    Recently, it has been provocatively claimed that dynamical modeling approaches signal the emergence of a new explanatory framework distinct from that of mechanistic explanation. This paper rejects this proposal and argues that dynamical explanations are fully compatible with, even naturally construed as, instances of mechanistic explanations. Specifically, it is argued that the mathematical framework of dynamics provides a powerful descriptive scheme for revealing temporal features of activities in mechanisms and plays an explanatory role to the extent it is deployed for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • The cognitive neuroscience revolution.Worth Boone & Gualtiero Piccinini - 2016 - Synthese 193 (5):1509-1534.
    We outline a framework of multilevel neurocognitive mechanisms that incorporates representation and computation. We argue that paradigmatic explanations in cognitive neuroscience fit this framework and thus that cognitive neuroscience constitutes a revolutionary break from traditional cognitive science. Whereas traditional cognitive scientific explanations were supposed to be distinct and autonomous from mechanistic explanations, neurocognitive explanations aim to be mechanistic through and through. Neurocognitive explanations aim to integrate computational and representational functions and structures across multiple levels of organization in order to explain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   67 citations  
  • Depth and deference: When and why we attribute understanding.Daniel A. Wilkenfeld, Dillon Plunkett & Tania Lombrozo - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (2):373-393.
    Four experiments investigate the folk concept of “understanding,” in particular when and why it is deployed differently from the concept of knowledge. We argue for the positions that people have higher demands with respect to explanatory depth when it comes to attributing understanding, and that this is true, in part, because understanding attributions play a functional role in identifying experts who should be heeded with respect to the general field in question. These claims are supported by our findings that people (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • Making mechanism interesting.Alex Rosenberg - 2018 - Synthese 195 (1):11-33.
    I note the multitude of ways in which, beginning with the classic paper by Machamer et al., the mechanists have qualify their methodological dicta, and limit the vulnerability of their claims by strategic vagueness regarding their application. I go on to generalize a version of the mechanist requirement on explanations due to Craver and Kaplan :601–627, 2011) in cognitive and systems neuroscience so that it applies broadly across the life sciences in accordance with the view elaborated by Craver and Darden (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Functional kinds: a skeptical look.Cameron Buckner - 2015 - Synthese 192 (12):3915-3942.
    The functionalist approach to kinds has suffered recently due to its association with law-based approaches to induction and explanation. Philosophers of science increasingly view nomological approaches as inappropriate for the special sciences like psychology and biology, which has led to a surge of interest in approaches to natural kinds that are more obviously compatible with mechanistic and model-based methods, especially homeostatic property cluster theory. But can the functionalist approach to kinds be weaned off its dependency on laws? Dan Weiskopf has (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Models, Mechanisms, and Coherence.Matteo Colombo, Stephan Hartmann & Robert van Iersel - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (1):181-212.
    Life-science phenomena are often explained by specifying the mechanisms that bring them about. The new mechanistic philosophers have done much to substantiate this claim and to provide us with a better understanding of what mechanisms are and how they explain. Although there is disagreement among current mechanists on various issues, they share a common core position and a seeming commitment to some form of scientific realism. But is such a commitment necessary? Is it the best way to go about mechanistic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • (3 other versions)Function-Theoretic Explanation and the Search for Neural Mechanisms.Frances Egan - 2017 - In David Michael Kaplan (ed.), Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 145-163.
    A common kind of explanation in cognitive neuroscience might be called functiontheoretic: with some target cognitive capacity in view, the theorist hypothesizes that the system computes a well-defined function (in the mathematical sense) and explains how computing this function constitutes (in the system’s normal environment) the exercise of the cognitive capacity. Recently, proponents of the so-called ‘new mechanist’ approach in philosophy of science have argued that a model of a cognitive capacity is explanatory only to the extent that it reveals (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Explanatory Role of Computation in Cognitive Science.Nir Fresco - 2012 - Minds and Machines 22 (4):353-380.
    Which notion of computation (if any) is essential for explaining cognition? Five answers to this question are discussed in the paper. (1) The classicist answer: symbolic (digital) computation is required for explaining cognition; (2) The broad digital computationalist answer: digital computation broadly construed is required for explaining cognition; (3) The connectionist answer: sub-symbolic computation is required for explaining cognition; (4) The computational neuroscientist answer: neural computation (that, strictly, is neither digital nor analogue) is required for explaining cognition; (5) The extreme (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Function, selection, and construction in the brain.Justin Garson - 2012 - Synthese 189 (3):451-481.
    A common misunderstanding of the selected effects theory of function is that natural selection operating over an evolutionary time scale is the only functionbestowing process in the natural world. This construal of the selected effects theory conflicts with the existence and ubiquity of neurobiological functions that are evolutionary novel, such as structures underlying reading ability. This conflict has suggested to some that, while the selected effects theory may be relevant to some areas of evolutionary biology, its relevance to neuroscience is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • Husserl on Personal Level Explanation.Heath Williams - 2020 - Human Studies 43 (1):1-22.
    This paper makes a phenomenological contribution to the distinction between personal and subpersonal types of explanation. I expound the little-known fact that Husserl gives an account of personal level explanation via his exposition of our capacity to express the understanding of another’s motivational nexus when we are in the personalistic attitude. I show that Husserl’s unique exposition of the motivational nexus conveys its concrete, internally coherent, and intentional nature, involving relationships amongst the sense contents of acts of consciousness. Moreover, the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Integrating computation into the mechanistic hierarchy in the cognitive and neural sciences.Lotem Elber-Dorozko & Oron Shagrir - 2019 - Synthese 199 (Suppl 1):43-66.
    It is generally accepted that, in the cognitive and neural sciences, there are both computational and mechanistic explanations. We ask how computational explanations can integrate into the mechanistic hierarchy. The problem stems from the fact that implementation and mechanistic relations have different forms. The implementation relation, from the states of an abstract computational system to the physical, implementing states is a homomorphism mapping relation. The mechanistic relation, however, is that of part/whole; the explaining features in a mechanistic explanation are the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • (3 other versions)Function-Theoretic Explanation and the Search for Neural Mechanisms.Frances Egan - 2017 - In David Michael Kaplan (ed.), Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 145-163.
    A common kind of explanation in cognitive neuroscience might be called function-theoretic: with some target cognitive capacity in view, the theorist hypothesizes that the system computes a well-defined function (in the mathematical sense) and explains how computing this function constitutes the exercise of the cognitive capacity (in the system's normal environment). Recently, proponents of the so-called ‘new mechanist’ approach in philosophy of science have argued that a model of a cognitive capacity is explanatory only to the extent that it reveals (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Reconciling New Mechanism and Psychological Explanation: A Pragmatic Approach.Michael De Vivo - unknown
    Recently, Gualtiero Piccinini and Carl Craver have argued that functional analyses in psychology lack explanatory autonomy from explanations in neuroscience. In this thesis I argue against this claim by motivating and defending a pragmatic-epistemic conception of autonomous psychological explanation. I argue that this conception of autonomy need not require that functional analyses be distinct in kind from neural-mechanistic explanations. I use the framework of Bas van Fraassen’s Pragmatic Theory of Explanation to show that explanations in psychology and neuroscience can be (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Modeling Authenticity.Daniel A. Wilkenfeld - 2016 - Res Philosophica 93 (1):245-268.
    In this paper, we explore the link between understanding and transformative decisions. Paul (2014) suggests that one important aspect of making some decisions is that we make them not just on the basis of what data from other people tell us, but based on our own acquaintance with how the decision affects us. In this paper, we draw out a parallel between the sort of reasoning that Paul argues is required for authentic decision making and the sort of epistemic grasp (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Integrative Modeling and the Role of Neural Constraints.Daniel A. Weiskopf - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (5):647-685.
    Neuroscience constrains psychology, but stating these constraints with precision is not simple. Here I consider whether mechanistic analysis provides a useful way to integrate models of cognitive and neural structure. Recent evidence suggests that cognitive systems map onto overlapping, distributed networks of brain regions. These highly entangled networks often depart from stereotypical mechanistic behaviors. While this casts doubt on the prospects for classical mechanistic integration of psychology and neuroscience, I argue that it does not impugn a realistic interpretation of either (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Are Systems Neuroscience Explanations Mechanistic?Carlos Zednik - unknown
    Whereas most branches of neuroscience are thought to provide mechanistic explanations, systems neuroscience is not. Two reasons are traditionally cited in support of this conclusion. First, systems neuroscientists rarely, if ever, rely on the dual strategies of decomposition and localization. Second, they typically emphasize organizational properties over the properties of individual components. In this paper, I argue that neither reason is conclusive: researchers might rely on alternative strategies for mechanism discovery, and focusing on organization is often appropriate and consistent with (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • La indispensabilidad de las leyes en ciencias cognitivas.Sergio Daniel Barberis Almirón - 2021 - Sophia. Colección de Filosofía de la Educación 30:95-123.
    Partiendo de la distinción filosófica entre las leyes de la ciencia y las leyes de la naturaleza, en el presente artículo se defiende la indispensabilidad explicativa de las leyes de la ciencia en el campo de las ciencias cognitivas. Se sostiene que las leyes de la ciencia desempeñan un papel epistémico indispensable tanto en el análisis funcional como en la explicación mecanicista de las capacidades cognitivas. De esta manera, se ofrece una elucidación plausible del poder explicativo de las ciencias cognitivas (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Mapping Explanatory Language in Neuroscience.Daniel Kostić & Willem Halffman - 2023 - Synthese 202 (112):1-27.
    The philosophical literature on scientific explanation in neuroscience has been dominated by the idea of mechanisms. The mechanist philosophers often claim that neuroscience is in the business of finding mechanisms. This view has been challenged in numerous ways by showing that there are other successful and widespread explanatory strategies in neuroscience. However, the empirical evidence for all these claims was hitherto lacking. Empirical evidence about the pervasiveness and uses of various explanatory strategies in neuroscience is particularly needed because examples and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation