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182Precis of Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account (review)Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (3): 231-238. 2005.This book precis describes the motives behind my recent attempt to bring to bear “ruthlessly reductive” results from cellular and molecular neuroscience onto issues in the philosophy of mind. Since readers of this journal will probably be most interested in results addressing features of conscious experience, I highlight these most prominently. My main challenge is that philosophers (even scientifically-inspired ones) are missing the nature and scope of reductionism in contemporary neuroscience …Read more
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7New wave metascience: Replies to Beckermann, Maloney, and StephanGrazer Philosophische Studien 61 (1): 285-293. 2001.
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64From sensory neuroscience to neurophilosophy: Reflections on llinas and Churchland's mind-brain continuumPhilosophical Psychology 10 (4): 523-530. 1997.Philosophers and psychologists seeking an accessible introduction to current neuroscience will find much value in this volume. Befitting the neuroscientific focus on sensory processes, many essays address explicitly the binding problem. Theoretical and experimental work pertaining to the “temporal synchronicity” solution is prominent. But there are also some surprising implications for current philosophical concerns, such as the intemalism/extemalism debate about representational content, episte…Read more
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211The philosophy of neuroscienceStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006.Over the past three decades, philosophy of science has grown increasingly “local.” Concerns have switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is a natural result. This emerging area was also spurred by remarkable recent growth in the neurosciences. Cognitive and computational neuroscience continues to encroach upon issues traditionally addressed within the humanities, including the nature of …Read more
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108Psychoneural Reduction: The New WaveBradford. 1998.One of the central problems in the philosophy of psychology is an updated version of the old mind-body problem: how levels of theories in the behavioral and brain sciences relate to one another. Many contemporary philosophers of mind believe that cognitive-psychological theories are not reducible to neurological theories. However, this antireductionism has not spawned a revival of dualism. Instead, most nonreductive physicalists prefer the idea of a one-way dependence of the mental on the physic…Read more
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96A Physicalist Manifesto: Thoroughly Modern Materialism (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1): 262-264. 2007.
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Philosophy neuralized: A critical notice of PM Churchland's Neurocomputational PerspectiveBehavior and Philosophy 20 (2): 75-88. 1993.
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80Molecular neuroscience to my rescue (again): Reply to looren de Jong and SchoutenPhilosophical Psychology 18 (4): 487-494. 2005.In their review essay (published in this issue), Looren de Jong and Schouten take my 2003 book to task for (among other things) neglecting to keep up with the latest developments in my favorite scientific case study (memory consolidation). They claim that these developments have been guided by psychological theorizing and have replaced neurobiology's traditional 'static' view of consolidation with a 'dynamic' alternative. This shows that my 'essential but entirely heuristic' treatment of higher-…Read more
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78The molecules of social recognition memory: Implications for social cognition, extended mind, and neuroethicsConsciousness and Cognition 17 (2): 468-474. 2008.Social cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroethics have reached a synthesis of late, but some troubling features are present. The neuroscience that currently dominates the study of social cognition is exclusively cognitive neuroscience, as contrasted with the cellular and increasingly molecular emphasis that has gripped mainstream neuroscience over the past three decades. Furthermore, the recent field of molecular and cellular cognition has begun to unravel some molecular mechanisms invol…Read more
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10Real reduction in real neuroscience : metascience, not philosophy of science (and certainly not metaphysics!)In Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation, Oxford University Press. 2008.This chapter argues that much discussion between philosophers and neuroscientists is infected by philosophical assumptions about the nature of reduction. Instead we should pursue an unbiased examination of the methods used throughout relevant areas of neuroscience. The chapter focuses on reductionist work in the neurobiological discipline of molecular and cellular cognition. It is argued that reduction is a matter of causal intervention into low level mechanisms, and tracking of the effects of t…Read more
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86The structuralist program has developed a useful metascientific resource: ontological reductive links (ORLs) between the constituents of the potential models of reduced and reducing theories. This resource was developed initially to overcome an objection to structuralist ``global'' accounts of the intertheoretic reduction relation. But it also illuminates the way that concepts at a higher level of scientific investigation (e.g., cognitive psychology) become ``structured through reduction'' to lo…Read more
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110New wave psychophysical reductionism and the methodological caveatsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1): 57-78. 1996.A number of influences have combined to make reductionism an unpopular position in recent philosophy of mind and psychology. Davidson’s Principle of the Anomalousness of the Mental, the multiple realizability arguments of Putnam, Fodor, and others, and attempts to characterize supervenience or dependency as the appropriate nonreductive relation to seek between psychological and physical kinds are the most well-known objections. And these have found their mark. Being a psychophysical reductionist…Read more
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157The previous decade has seen renewed critical interest in the multiple realization argument. These criticisms constitute a "second wave" of challenges to this central argument in late-20th century philosophy of mind. Unlike the first wave, which challenged the premise that multiple realization is inconsistent with reduction or type identity, this second wave challenges the truth of the multiple realization premise itself. Since psychoneural reductionism was prominent among the explicit targets o…Read more
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155Understanding neural complexity: A role for reduction (review)Minds and Machines 11 (4): 467-481. 2001.Psychoneural reduction is under attack again, only this time from a former ally: cognitive neuroscience. It has become popular to think of the brain as a complex system whose theoretically important properties emerge from dynamic, non-linear interactions between its component parts. ``Emergence'' is supposed to replace reduction: the latter is thought to be incapable of explaining the brain qua complex system. Rather than engage this issue at the level of theories of reduction versus theories …Read more
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81RepliesPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (3): 285-296. 2005.I reply to challenges raised by contributors to this book symposium. Key challenges include (but are not limited to): distancing my new account of reductionism-in-practice from my previous “new wave” account; clarifying my claimed “heuristic” status for higher-level investigations (including cognitive-neuroscientific ones); defending the “reorientation of philosophical desires” I claim to be required by my project; and addressing consideration about normativity
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Philosophy of mind and the sciencesIn Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 2002.
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Mississippi State UniversityDepartment of Philosophy & Religion
Neurobiology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Mississippi Medical CenterProfessor
University of California, Irvine
PhD, 1989
Starkville, Mississippi, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |