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Neuroscience and the Multiple Realization of Cognitive Functions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Carrie Figdor
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Abstract

Many empirically minded philosophers have used neuroscientific data to argue against the multiple realization of cognitive functions in existing biological organisms. I argue that neuroscientists themselves have proposed a biologically based concept of multiple realization as an alternative to interpreting empirical findings in terms of one-to-one structure-function mappings. I introduce this concept and its associated research framework and also how some of the main neuroscience-based arguments against multiple realization go wrong.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 419 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I wish to thank Jennifer Mundale, John Bickle, and the audience at the 2003 Society for Philosophy and Psychology annual meeting for comments on a distant ancestor of this paper; at least two anonymous reviewers at Philosophy of Science; Tom Polger and other members of the October 2008 Workshop on Multiple Realization at the University of Cincinnati, including Ken Aizawa, John Bickle, Carl Craver, Carl Gillett, Larry Shapiro, and Jacqueline Sullivan; and my colleagues in the Philosophy Department and the Program in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Iowa.

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