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  1. How we ought to describe computation in the brain.Chris Eliasmith - 2010 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (3):313-320.
    I argue that of the four kinds of quantitative description relevant for understanding brain function, a control theoretic approach is most appealing. This argument proceeds by comparing computational, dynamical, statistical and control theoretic approaches, and identifying criteria for a good description of brain function. These criteria include providing useful decompositions, simple state mappings, and the ability to account for variability. The criteria are justified by their importance in providing unified accounts of multi-level mechanisms that support intervention. Evaluation of the four (...)
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  • Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience.William Bechtel - 2007 - Psychology Press.
    A variety of scientific disciplines have set as their task explaining mental activities, recognizing that in some way these activities depend upon our brain. But, until recently, the opportunities to conduct experiments directly on our brains were limited. As a result, research efforts were split between disciplines such as cognitive psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence that investigated behavior, while disciplines such as neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and genetics experimented on the brains of non-human animals. In recent decades these disciplines integrated, and with (...)
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  • Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account.Gualtiero Piccinini - 2015 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    Gualtiero Piccinini articulates and defends a mechanistic account of concrete, or physical, computation. A physical system is a computing system just in case it is a mechanism one of whose functions is to manipulate vehicles based solely on differences between different portions of the vehicles according to a rule defined over the vehicles. Physical Computation discusses previous accounts of computation and argues that the mechanistic account is better. Many kinds of computation are explicated, such as digital vs. analog, serial vs. (...)
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  • Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World.Michael Weisberg - 2013 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.
    one takes to be the most salient, any pair could be judged more similar to each other than to the third. Goodman uses this second problem to showthat there can be no context-free similarity metric, either in the trivial case or in a scientifically ...
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  • Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism.Sandra D. Mitchell - 2003 - Cambridge University Press.
    This fine collection of essays by a leading philosopher of science presents a defence of integrative pluralism as the best description for the complexity of scientific inquiry today. The tendency of some scientists to unify science by reducing all theories to a few fundamental laws of the most basic particles that populate our universe is ill-suited to the biological sciences, which study multi-component, multi-level, evolved complex systems. This integrative pluralism is the most efficient way to understand the different and complex (...)
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  • Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation.Michael Strevens - 2008 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
    Approaches to explanation -- Causal and explanatory relevance -- The kairetic account of /D making -- The kairetic account of explanation -- Extending the kairetic account -- Event explanation and causal claims -- Regularity explanation -- Abstraction in regularity explanation -- Approaches to probabilistic explanation -- Kairetic explanation of frequencies -- Kairetic explanation of single outcomes -- Looking outward -- Looking inward.
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  • The devil in the details: asymptotic reasoning in explanation, reduction, and emergence.Robert W. Batterman - 2002 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Robert Batterman examines a form of scientific reasoning called asymptotic reasoning, arguing that it has important consequences for our understanding of the scientific process as a whole. He maintains that asymptotic reasoning is essential for explaining what physicists call universal behavior. With clarity and rigor, he simplifies complex questions about universal behavior, demonstrating a profound understanding of the underlying structures that ground them. This book introduces a valuable new method that is certain to fill explanatory gaps across disciplines.
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  • 4 decades of scientific explanation.Wesley C. Salmon - 1989 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13:3-219.
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  • Four Decades of Scientific Explanation.Wesley C. Salmon & Anne Fagot-Largeault - 1989 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 16 (2):355.
    As Aristotle stated, scientific explanation is based on deductive argument--yet, Wesley C. Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. _Four Decades of Scientific Explanation_ provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years. Building on the historic 1948 essay (...)
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  • Cognition and explanation.Herbert A. Simon, Discovering Explanations, Clark Glymour, Andy Clark, Twisted Tales, Alison Gopnik & Explanation as Orgasm - 1998 - Cognition 8 (1).
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  • The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.S. J. Gould & R. C. Lewontin - 1979 - In E. Sober (ed.), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology. The Mit Press. Bradford Books. pp. 73-90.
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