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The matter of the mind: philosophical essays on psychology, neuroscience, and reduction (edited book)Blackwell. 2012.
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64Evaluating New Wave Reductionism: The Case of VisionBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (1). 2006.This paper inquires into the nature of intertheoretic relations between psychology and neuroscience. This relationship has been characterized by some as one in which psychological explanations eventually will fall away as otiose, overthrown completely by neurobiological ones. Against this view it will be argued that it squares poorly with scientific practices and empirical developments in the cognitive neurosciences. We analyse a case from research on visual perception, which suggests a much mor…Read more
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82The matter of the mind: philosophical essays on psychology, neuroscience, and reduction (edited book)Blackwell. 2007.The Matter of the Mind addresses and illuminates the relationship between psychology and neuroscience by focusing on the topic of reduction. Written by leading philosophers in the field Discusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews and weighs the evidence in favour of reductionism against the backdrop of recent important advances within psychology and the neurosciences Collects the latest work on central topics where neuroscience is now making inroads in traditional psycholo…Read more
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Erik Myin, the matter of the mind. Philosophical essays on psychology, neuroscience, and reductionAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 101 (2). 2009.
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128Ruthless reductionism: A review essay of John Bickle's philosophy and neuroscience: A ruthlessly reductive account (review)Philosophical Psychology 18 (4): 473-486. 2005.John Bickle's new book on philosophy and neuroscience is aptly subtitled 'a ruthlessly reductive account'. His 'new wave metascience' is a massive attack on the relative autonomy that psychology enjoyed until recently, and goes even beyond his previous (Bickle, J. (1998). Psychoneural reduction: The new wave. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) new wave reductionsism. Reduction of functional psychology to (cognitive) neuroscience is no longer ruthless enough; we should now look rather to cellular or mole…Read more
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Theory in psychology: a review essay of Andre Kukla's Methods of theoretical psychologyPhilosophical Psychology 17 (2): 275-95. 2004.
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59Reduction, elimination, and levels: The case of the LTP-learning linkPhilosophical Psychology 12 (3). 1999.We argue in this paper that so-called new wave reductionism fails to capture the nature of the interlevel relations between psychology and neuroscience. Bickle (1995, Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: some accomplished facts, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 265-285; 1998, Psychoneural reduction: the new wave, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) has claimed that a (bottom-up) reduction of the psychological concepts of learning and memory to the concepts of neuroscience has in fact already bee…Read more
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81Theory in psychology: A review essay of Andre Kukla's methods of theoretical psychology (review)Philosophical Psychology 17 (2). 2004.This review essay critically discusses Andre Kukla's Methods of theoretical psychology. It is argued that Kukla mistakenly tries to build his case for theorizing in psychology as a separate discipline on a dubious distinction between theory and observation. He then argues that the demise of empiricism implies a return of some form of rationalism, which entails an autonomous role for theorizing in psychology. Having shown how this theory-observation dichotomy goes back to traditional and largely …Read more
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51Could the neural ABC explain the mind?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (2): 311-312. 2004.Gold & Stoljar are right in rejecting the radical neuron doctrine, but we argue that their distinction between determination and explanation is not principled enough to support their conclusion. We claim that the notions of multiple supervenience and screening-off offer a more precise construal of the dissociation between explanation and determination that lies at the heart of the antireductionist position.
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153Theism, Dualism, and the Scientific Image of HumanityZygon 36 (4): 679-708. 2001.Recently, some philosophers of religion have suggested that a reduction of the classical image of humanity may jeopardize classical theism. To obstruct reductionism, some theologians have argued for dualism on the basis of the argument of consciousness. In this essay, I argue that even consciousness must be considered a brain‐based phenomenon. This does not commit one to reductionism, however. Nonreductive physicalism appears to offer a promising alternative to either dualism or reductionism, wi…Read more
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252Embedded cognition and mental causation: Setting empirical Bounds on metaphysics (review)Synthese 158 (1). 2007.We argue that embedded cognition provides an argument against Jaegwon Kim’s neural reduction of mental causation. Because some mental, or at least psychological processes have to be cast in an externalist way, Kim’s argument can be said to lead to the conclusion that mental causation is as safe as any other form of higher-level of causation
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96Defusing eliminative materialism: Reference and revisionPhilosophical Psychology 11 (4): 489-509. 1998.The doctrine of eliminative materialism holds that belief-desire psychology is massively referentially disconnected. We claim, however, that it is not at all obvious what it means to be referentially (dis)connected. The two major accounts of reference both lead to serious difficulties for eliminativism: it seems that elimination is either impossible or omnipresent. We explore the idea that reference fixation is a much more local, partial, and context-dependent process than was supposed by the cl…Read more
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28The Matter of the Mind: Philosophical Essays on Psychology, Neuroscience and Reduction (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2007.The _Matter of the Mind_ addresses and illuminates the relationship between psychology and neuroscience by focusing on the topic of reduction. Written by leading philosophers in the field Discusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews and weighs the evidence in favour of reductionism against the backdrop of recent important advances within psychology and the neurosciences Collects the latest work on central topics where neuroscience is now making inroads in traditional psycho…Read more
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64Ruthless reductionism: A review essay of John Bickle's Philosophy and neuroscience: A ruthlessly reductive accountPhilosophical Psychology 18 (4): 473-486. 2005.