Mark Sprevak

This paper explores the claim that explanation of a group 's behaviour in term of individual mental states is, in principle, superior to explanation of that behaviour in terms of group mental states. We focus on the supposition that individual-level explanation is superior because it is simpler than group -level explanation. In this paper, we consider three different simplicity metrics. We argue that on none of those metrics does individual-level explanation achieve greater simplicity than a group -level alternative. We conclude that an argument against group minds should not lay weight on concerns of explanatory simplicity.

William Ramsey’s Representation Reconsidered is a superb, insightful analysis of the notion of mental representation in cognitive science. The book presents an original argument for a bold conclusion: partial eliminativism about mental representation in scientific psychology. According to Ramsey, once we examine the conditions that need to be satisfied for something to qualify as a representation, we can see those conditions are not fulfilled by the ‘representations’ posited by much of modern psychology. Cognitive science—or at least large swathes of it—has no warrant for positing representations. The structure of Ramsey’s argument repeats a familiar eliminativist strategy (c.f. Churchland (1981); Stich (1983)).1 First step: argue that in order for something to be an X, it must satisfy a certain description D (say, beliefs must satisfy the description given in folk psychology). Second step: argue that to the best of our knowledge, nothing satisfies description D (e.g. folk psychology is false). Third step: conclude that since nothing satisfies description D, there are no Xs (no beliefs). Here is how the strategy is played out in the book. First, Ramsey argues for certain minimal conditions that a representation must satisfy (what he calls the ‘job description’). Second (this takes the bulk of the book), he considers the ways in which our best psychological theories use the notion of representation. Ramsey argues that none of these uses satisfy the job description associated with a genuine representation. (A wrinkle is that some representations—those posited by the classical computational theory of cognition—do qualify as true representations. But, Ramsey claims, classical theories are in a minority in cognitive science, and their hold on the field is shrinking.) Therefore, Ramsey concludes, in most of cognitive science, there are no mental representations.

Kanaan and McGuire elegantly describe three challenges facing the use of fMRI to uncover cognitive mechanisms. They shows how these challenges ramify in the case of identifying the mechanisms responsible for psychiatric disorders. In this commentary, I would like to raise another difficulty for fMRI that also appears to ramify in similar cases. This is that there are good reasons for doubting one of the assumptions on which many fMRI studies are based: that neural mechanisms are always and everywhere sufficient for cognition. I suggest that in the case of the mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders, this assumption should be doubted. I do not dispute that a malfunctioning neural mechanism is likely to be a necessary component of a psychiatric disorder—as Kanaan and McGuire say, the experimental evidence from cognitive neuropsychiatry gives us excellent reasons to think that this is so. My question is whether a story only in terms of these neural mechanisms is sufficient to explain the mechanism of a psychiatric disorder. Is the reduction, projected by cognitive neuropsychiatry, of psychiatric disorders to disorders in neural functioning even in principle possible? Drawing on recent concerns about the location of mental states, I argue that such a reduction is likely to fail. Even if the considerable problems raised by Kanaan and McGuire for fMRI could be addressed, we have no reason to think that the mechanisms involved in psychiatric disorders are entirely neural, and that fMRI, or even a perfect science-fiction brain-scanner, would be capable of uncovering them. Psychiatric disorders, like numerous other cognitive processes, are liable to cross the brain–world boundary in such a promiscuous way as to be resistant to neural reduction.