Integrating psychology and neuroscience: functional analyses as mechanism sketches

Abstract

Synthese; Synthese is available online at:http://www.springer.com/philosophy/epistemology+and+philosophy+of+science/jou rnal/11229Abstract. We sketch a framework for building a unified science of cognition. This unification is achieved by showing how functional analyses of cognitive capacities can be integrated with the multilevel mechanistic explanations of neural systems. The core idea is that functional analyses are sketches of mechanisms, in which some structural aspects of a mechanistic explanation are omitted. Once the missing aspects are filled in, a functional analysis turns into a full-blown mechanistic explanation. By this process, functional analyses are seamlessly integrated with multilevel mechanistic explanations.1 This paper was refereed in two rounds. John Symons graciously arranged for a round of blind refereeing; thanks are due to him and the anonymous referees. In addition, thanks to those who refereed the paper non-blindly: Ken Aizawa, Robert Cummins, and Dan Weiskopf. Many thanks to audiences at the 2010 APA Pacific Division, Saint Louis University, and University of Missouri -Columbia. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-0924527 to Gualtiero Piccinini. 2 Integrating Psychology and Neuroscience via Multi-Level Mechanistic ExplanationWhen psychologists explain behavior, the explanations typically make reference to causes that precede the behavior and make a difference to whether and how it occurs.For instance, they explain that Anna ducked because she saw a looming ball. By contrast, when psychologists explain psychological capacities such as stereopsis or working memory, they typically do so by showing that these complex capacities are made up of more basic capacities organized together. In this paper, we focus exclusively on the latter sort of explanation, which is usually referred to as functional analysis. We argue that such decompositional, constitutive explanations gain their explanatory force by describing mechanisms (even approximately and with idealization) and, conversely, that they lack explanatory force to the extent that they fail to describe mechanisms.In arguing for this point, we sketch a framework for building a unified science of cognition. This unification is achieved by showing how functional analyses of cognitive capacities can be and in some cases have been integrated with the multilevel mechanistic explanations of neural systems. The core idea is that functional analyses are sketches of mechanisms, in which some structural aspects of a mechanistic explanation are omitted. Once the missing aspects are filled in, a functional analysis turns into a full-blown mechanistic explanation. By this process, functional analyses are seamlessly integrated with multilevel mechanistic explanations. 3The conclusion that functional analyses are mechanism sketches leads to a simple argument that psychological explanation is mechanistic. It is generally assumed that psychological explanation is functional-that it proceeds via t...

Teorías de doble proceso: ¿una arquitectura cognitiva unificada?

“…Los procesos cognitivos pueden individuarse en términos de, por un lado, los componentes que constituyen dicho proceso. Estos pueden identificarse funcionalmente, en virtud de lo que hacen, es decir, de cuál es la función que llevan a cabo en el proceso del que participan (Piccinini & Craver 2011). De este modo, decir que los procesos cognitivos se individúan, en parte, por sus componentes funcionalmente concebidos, significa que los componentes constituyen las diferentes actividades propias del proceso.…”

Functional individuation, mechanistic implementation: the proper way of seeing the mechanistic view of concrete computation

“…Roughly, while structural considerations deal with the components of a mechanism and their physical properties (such as size, shape, etc. ), functional considerations deal with the activities components perform, their causal powers and how they contribute to the capacity of the whole mechanism (Piccinini and Craver 2011).…”

“…Analogously, the structural decomposition of my laptop, by mentioning components such as the 2 Ghz Intel Core chips, or the 500 GB solid-state Flash hard-disk, places constraints on the functional properties of the computer: it limits which functions it can perform, and how. In other words, functional and structural properties constrain each other to some extent (Piccinini and Craver 2011).…”

Get the Latest Upgrade: Functionalism 6.3.1

“…Instead of functional analysis, Functionalism 3.4 maintains that psychological explanation is mechanistic, that is, it is a decomposition of a system in terms of its components, their functional activities, and their organization [Bechtel & Richardson 2010], [Craver 2001], [Machamer, Darden & Craver 2000], [Piccinini & Craver 2011]. …”