Many neuroscientists and philosophers endorse a view about the
explanatory reach of neuroscience (which we will call the neuron
doctrine) to the effect that the framework for understanding the
mind will be developed by neuroscience; or, as we will put it, that a
successful theory of the mind will be solely neuroscientific. It is a
consequence of this view that the sciences of the mind that cannot be
expressed by means of neuroscientific concepts alone count as indirect
sciences that will be discarded as neuroscience matures. This
consequence is what makes the doctrine substantive, indeed, radical.
We ask, first, what the neuron doctrine means and, second, whether it
is true. In answer to the first question, we distinguish two versions
of the doctrine. One version, the trivial neuron doctrine,
turns out to be uncontroversial but unsubstantive because it fails to
have the consequence that the nonneuroscientific sciences of the mind
will eventually be discarded. A second version, the radical neuron doctrine, does have this consequence, but, unlike
the first doctrine, is highly controversial. We argue that the neuron
doctrine appears to be both substantive and uncontroversial only as a
result of a conflation of these two versions. We then consider whether
the radical doctrine is true. We present and evaluate three arguments
for it, based either on general scientific and philosophical
considerations or on the details of neuroscience itself, arguing that
all three fail. We conclude that the evidence fails to support the
radical neuron doctrine.