•  57
    Reduction and Mechanism (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (3): 637-641. 2022.
    Reductionism is an old doctrine desperate for new direction. With nomologically constructed theories commanding less attention in the life sciences, concern for the twentieth-century tradition of a...
  •  744
    "New wave" reductionism aims at advancing a kind of reduction that is stronger than unilateral dependency of the mental on the physical. It revolves around the idea that reduction between theoretical levels is a matter of degree, and can be laid out on a continuum between a "smooth" pole (theoretical identity) and a "bumpy" pole (extremely revisionary). It also entails that both higher and lower levels of the reductive relationship sustain some degree of explanatory autonomy. The new wave predic…Read more
  •  943
    History of Behavioral Neurology
    In Sergio Della Sala (ed.), Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 1, Elsevier. 2022.
    This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of behavioral neurology, dividing it roughly into six eras. In the ancient and classical eras, emphasis is placed on two transitions: firstly, from descriptions of head trauma and attempted neurosurgical treatments to the exploratory dissections during the Hellenistic period and the replacement of cardiocentrism; and secondly, to the more systematic investigations of Galenus and the rise of pneumatic ventricular theory. In the medieval throug…Read more
  •  400
    Mechanist idealisation in systems biology
    with Dingmar van Eck
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 1555-1575. 2020.
    This paper adds to the philosophical literature on mechanistic explanation by elaborating two related explanatory functions of idealisation in mechanistic models. The first function involves explaining the presence of structural/organizational features of mechanisms by reference to their role as difference-makers for performance requirements. The second involves tracking counterfactual dependency relations between features of mechanisms and features of mechanistic explanandum phenomena. To make …Read more
  •  500
    Ontic Explanation Is either Ontic or Explanatory, but Not Both
    with Dingmar van Eck
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5. 2018.
    What features will something have if it counts as an explanation? And will something count as an explanation if it has those features? In the second half of the 20th century, philosophers of science set for themselves the task of answering such questions, just as a priori conceptual analysis was generally falling out of favor. And as it did, most philosophers of science just moved on to more manageable questions about the varieties of explanation and discipline-specific scientific explanation. O…Read more
  •  220
    Pluralism and the Liar
    In Bradley Armour-Garb (ed.), Reflections on the Liar, Oxford University Press. 2017.
    Pluralists maintain that there is more than one truth property in virtue of which bearers are true. Unfortunately, it is not yet clear how they diagnose the liar paradox or what resources they have available to treat it. This chapter considers one recent attempt by Cotnoir (2013b) to treat the Liar. It argues that pluralists should reject the version of pluralism that Cotnoir assumes, discourse pluralism, in favor of a more naturalized approach to truth predication in real languages, which shoul…Read more
  •  480
    The free-energy principle states that all systems that minimize their free energy resist a tendency to physical disintegration. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, anatomy and function of the brain, and has been called a postulate, an unfalsifiable principle, a natural law, and an imperative. While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the relationship betwe…Read more
  •  12
  • Hypocretin regulates brain reward function and cocaine consumption in rats
    with Benjamin Boutrel, Paul J. Kenny, R. Winsky, S. Specio, George Koob, Athina Markou, and L. De Lecea
    Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 29. 2003.
    Hypocretin regulates brain reward function and cocaine consumption in rats. The hypocretinergic (Hcrt) system is implicated in energy homeostasis, feeding and sleep regulation. Hypocretinergic cell bodies are located in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) and project throughout the brain. The aim of the present studies was to investigate the role of the Hcrt system in regulating brain reward function and the reinforcing properties of cocaine in rats. Intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) thresholds pro…Read more
  • Stimulation of mGluR2/3 receptors precipitates nicotine withdrawal in rats: role of mGluR5 and NMDA receptors
    with Paul J. Kenny, Fabrizio Gasparini, and Athina Markou
    Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 27. 2001.
    Elevations in brain stimulation reward (BSR) thresholds have been observed in rats undergoing nicotine withdrawal and have been proposed as a sensitive measure of the negative affective state associated with nicotine withdrawal. mGluR are presynaptic autoreceptors that decrease glutamate release when stimulated. The aim of this study was to examine the role of glutamate neurotransmission in nicotine dependence. The mGluR agonist LY314582 (2.5–7.5 mg/kg) precipitated nicotine withdrawal as measur…Read more
  •  54
    The neuropsychopharmacological methods and theories used to investigate the nature of depression have been viewed as suspect for a variety of philosophical and scientific reasons. Much of this criticism aims to demonstrate that biochemical- and neurological-based theories of this mental illness are defective, due in part because the methods used in their service are consistently invalidated, failing to induce depression in pre-clinical animal models. Neuropsychopharmacologists have been able to …Read more
  •  224
    Advancement in cognitive science depends, in part, on doing some occasional ‘theoretical housekeeping’. We highlight some conceptual confusions lurking in an important attempt at explaining the human capacity for rational or coherent thought: Thagard & Verbeurgt’s computational-level model of humans’ capacity for making reasonable and truth-conducive abductive inferences (1998; Thagard, 2000). Thagard & Verbeurgt’s model assumes that humans make such inferences by computing a coherence function …Read more
  •  801
    HIT and brain reward function: a case of mistaken identity (theory)
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 64. 2017.
    This paper employs a case study from the history of neuroscience—brain reward function—to scrutinize the inductive argument for the so-called ‘Heuristic Identity Theory’ (HIT). The case fails to support HIT, illustrating why other case studies previously thought to provide empirical support for HIT also fold under scrutiny. After distinguishing two different ways of understanding the types of identity claims presupposed by HIT and considering other conceptual problems, we conclude that HIT is …Read more
  •  818
    Traditional inflationary approaches that specify the nature of truth are attractive in certain ways; yet, while many of these theories successfully explain why propositions in certain domains of discourse are true, they fail to adequately specify the nature of truth because they run up against counterexamples when attempting to generalize across all domains. One popular consequence is skepticism about the efficaciousness of inflationary approaches altogether. Yet, by recognizing that the failure …Read more
  •  908
    Rational analysis, intractability, and the prospects of ‘as if’-explanations
    with Iris van Rooij, Johan Kwisthout, and Todd Wareham
    Synthese 195 (2): 491-510. 2018.
    Despite their success in describing and predicting cognitive behavior, the plausibility of so-called ‘rational explanations’ is often contested on the grounds of computational intractability. Several cognitive scientists have argued that such intractability is an orthogonal pseudoproblem, however, since rational explanations account for the ‘why’ of cognition but are agnostic about the ‘how’. Their central premise is that humans do not actually perform the rational calculations posited by their …Read more
  •  42
    We argue that the concepts of mechanism and autonomy appear to be antagonistic when autonomy is conflated with agency. Once these concepts are disentangled, it becomes clearer how autonomy emerges from complex forms of control. Subsequently, current biomimetic strategies tend to focus on homeostatic regulatory systems; we propose that research in AI and robotics would do well to incorporate biomimetic strategies that instead invoke models of allostatic mechanisms as a way of understanding how to…Read more
  •  894
    Truth, Ramsification, and the Pluralist's Revenge
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (2). 2010.
    Functionalists about truth employ Ramsification to produce an implicit definition of the theoretical term _true_, but doing so requires determining that the theory introducing that term is itself true. A variety of putative dissolutions to this problem of epistemic circularity are shown to be unsatisfactory. One solution is offered on functionalists' behalf, though it has the upshot that they must tread on their anti-pluralist commitments
  •  747
    Psychoneural reductionists sometimes claim that sufficient amounts of lower-level explanatory achievement preclude further contributions from higher-level psychological research. Ostensibly, with nothing left to do, the effect of such preclusion on psychological explanation is extinction. Reductionist arguments for preclusion have recently involved a reorientation within the philosophical foundations of neuroscience---namely, away from the philosophical foundations and toward the neuroscience. I…Read more
  •  702
    Truth as a normative modality of cognitive acts
    with Gila Sher
    In Dirk Greimann & Geo Siegwart (eds.), Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Routledge. pp. 280-306. 2007.
    Attention to the conversational role of alethic terms seems to dominate, and even sometimes exhaust, many contemporary analyses of the nature of truth. Yet, because truth plays a role in judgment and assertion regardless of whether alethic terms are expressly used, such analyses cannot be comprehensive or fully adequate. A more general analysis of the nature of truth is therefore required – one which continues to explain the significance of truth independently of the role alethic terms play in d…Read more
  •  2404
    What is psychological explanation?
    In P. Calvo & J. Symons (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, Routledge. pp. 113--130. 2009.
    Due to the wide array of phenomena that are of interest to them, psychologists offer highly diverse and heterogeneous types of explanations. Initially, this suggests that the question "What is psychological explanation?" has no single answer. To provide appreciation of this diversity, we begin by noting some of the more common types of explanations that psychologists provide, with particular focus on classical examples of explanations advanced in three different areas of psychology: psychophysic…Read more
  •  706
    Truth, explanation, minimalism
    Synthese 195 (3). 2018.
    Minimalists about truth contend that traditional inflationary theories systematically fail to explain certain facts about truth, and that this failure licenses a ‘reversal of explanatory direction’. Once reversed, they purport that their own minimal theory adequately explains all of the facts involving truth. But minimalists’ main objection to inflationism seems to misfire, and the subsequent reversal of explanatory direction, if it can be made sense of, leaves minimalism in no better explanator…Read more
  •  650
    Embodied Cognition: Grounded Until Further Notice?
    British Journal of Psychology 99 157-164. 2008.
    Embodied Cognition is the kind of view that is all trees, no forest. Mounting experimental evidence gives it momentum in fleshing out the theoretical problems inherent in Cognitivists’ separation of mind and body. But the more its proponents compile such evidence, the more the fundamental concepts of Embodied Cognition remain in the dark. This conundrum is nicely exemplified by Pecher and Zwaan’s book, Grounding Cognition, which is a programmatic attempt to rally together an array of empirical r…Read more
  •  145
    Pluralism about Truth as Alethic Disjunctivism
    with Nikolaj Jang Linding Lee Pedersen
    In Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen & Cory Wright (eds.), Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates, Oxford University Press. 2013.
    The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of various forms of alethic pluralism. Along the way we will draw a number of distinctions that, hopefully, will be useful in mapping the pluralist landscape. Finally, we will argue that a commitment to alethic disjunctivism, a certain brand of pluralism, might be difficult to avoid for adherents of the other pluralist views to be discussed. We will proceed as follows: Section 1 introduces alethic monism and alethic pluralism. Section 2 presents a …Read more
  •  294
    New Waves in Truth (edited book)
    with Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen
    Palgrave-Macmillan. 2010.
    What is truth? Philosophers are interested in a range of issues involving the concept of truth beginning with what sorts of things can be true. This is a collection of eighteen new and original research papers on truth and other alethic phenomena by twenty of the most promising young scholars working on truth today.
  •  625
    There is widespread recognition at universities that a proper understanding of science is needed for all undergraduates. Good jobs are increasingly found in fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine, and science now enters almost all aspects of our daily lives. For these reasons, scientific literacy and an understanding of scientific methodology are a foundational part of any undergraduate education. Recipes for Science provides an accessible introduction to the main conce…Read more
  •  76
    Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2012.
    The relative merits and demerits of historically prominent views such as the correspondence theory, coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism, and instrumentalism have been subject to much attention in the truth literature and have fueled the long-lived debate over which of these views is the most plausible one. While diverging in their specific philosophical commitments, adherents of these historically prominent views agree in at least one fundamental respect. They are all alethic monists. They …Read more
  •  918
    Courtesy of its free energy formulation, the hierarchical predictive processing theory of the brain (PTB) is often claimed to be a grand unifying theory. To test this claim, we examine a central case: activity of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic (DA) systems. After reviewing the three most prominent hypotheses of DA activity—the anhedonia, incentive salience, and reward prediction error hypotheses—we conclude that the evidence currently vindicates explanatory pluralism. This vindication implies th…Read more