Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:29:01.248Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Construct Stabilization and the Unity of the Mind-Brain Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jacqueline Anne Sullivan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article offers a critique of an account of explanatory integration that claims that explanations of cognitive capacities by functional analyses and mechanistic explanations can be seamlessly integrated. It is shown that achieving such explanatory integration requires that the terms designating cognitive capacities in the two forms of explanation are stable but that experimental practice in the mind-brain sciences currently is not directed at achieving such stability. A positive proposal for changing experimental practice so as to promote such stability is put forward, and its implications for explanatory integration are briefly considered.

Type
Unifying the Mind-Brain Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 662 - 673
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

The author would like to thank Muhammad Ali Khalidi, an anonymous referee, and members of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy’s 2015 Summer Writing Workshop, including Frédéric-Ismaël Banville, Danny Booth, Robert Foley, John Jenkinson, Andrew Peterson, Nicholas Slothouber, and Jessey Wright, for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

References

Bannerman, David, Good, Mark, Butcher, Steven, Ramsey, Mark, and Morris, Richard. 1995. “Distinct Components of Spatial Learning Revealed by Prior Training and NMDA Receptor Blockade.” Nature 378:182–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bechtel, William. 2008. Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Craver, Carl. 2007. Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cronbach, Lee, and Meehl, Paul. 1955. “Construct Validity in Psychological Tests.” Psychological Bulletin 52:281–302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cummins, Robert. 1983. The Nature of Psychological Explanation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Eichenbaum, Howard, Stewart, Caroline, and Morris, Richard. 1990. “Hippocampal Representation in Place Learning.” Journal of Neuroscience 10 (1): 3531–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Figdor, Carrie. 2011. “Semantics and Metaphysics in Informatics: Toward an Ontology of Tasks.” Topics in Cognitive Science 3:222–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fodor, Jerry. 1968. Psychological Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry 1974. “Special Sciences (or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis).” Synthese 28:97–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, Ronald. 2010. Scientific Perspectivism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morris, Richard. 2015. “The Watermaze.” In The Maze Book: Theories, Practice and Protocols for Testing Rodent Cognition, ed. Bimonte-Nelson, Heather, 73–92. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Nagel, Ernest. 1961. The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Keefe, John, and Nadel, Lynn. 1978. The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero, and Craver, Carl. 2011. “Integrating Psychology and Neuroscience: Functional Analysis as Mechanism Sketches.” Synthese 183 (3): 283–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poldrack, Russell. 2006. “Can Cognitive Processes Be Inferred from Functional Imaging Data?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10 (2): 59–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poldrack, Russell 2010. “Subtraction and Beyond: The Logic of Experimental Designs for Neuroimaging.” In Foundational Issues in Human Brain Mapping, ed. Hanson, Stephen and Bunzl, Martin, 147–59. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Price, Cathy, and Friston, Karl. 2005. “Functional Ontologies for Cognition: The Systematic Definition of Structure and Function.” Cognitive Neuropsychology 22 (3/4): 262–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shadish, William, Cook, Thomas, and Campbell, Donald. 2002. Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Jacqueline A. 2009. “The Multiplicity of Experimental Protocols: A Challenge to Reductionist and Nonreductionist Models of the Unity of Science.” Synthese 167:511–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Jacqueline A. 2010. “Reconsidering Spatial Memory and the Morris Water Maze.” Synthese 177 (2): 261–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Jacqueline A. 2014a. “Is the Next Frontier in Neuroscience a Decade of the Mind?” In Brain Theory, ed. Wolfe, Charles, 45–67. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfe, Charles 2014b. “Stabilizing Mental Disorders: Prospects and Problems.” In Classifying Psychopathology: Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds, ed. Kincaid, Harold and Sullivan, Jacqueline, 257–81. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, William. 2007. Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar