1st Edition
Mental Mechanisms Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience
By William Bechtel
Copyright 2008
322 Pages
by
Psychology Press
332 Pages
by
Psychology Press
328 Pages
by
Psychology Press
Also available as eBook on:
A variety of scientific disciplines have set as their task explaining mental activities, recognizing that in some way these activities depend upon our brain. But, until recently, the opportunities to conduct experiments directly on our brains were limited. As a result, research efforts were split between disciplines such as cognitive psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence that... Read more
Contents: Naturalism and Mechanism: Outlines of a New Philosophy of Science. From Mental Phenomena to Operations: Delineating and Decomposing Memory. From Working Parts to Operations: Decomposing and Resynthesizing Visual Processing. Reduction and Independence of Higher-Level Sciences: A Rapprochement. Representations and Mental Mechanisms. From Responsive to Active Mechanisms. Confronting Mechanism's Critics: Accounting for Freedom and Dignity via Mental Mechanisms.
Biography
William Bechtel
"Mental Mechanisms provides one of the best accounts of the notion of a mechanism, detailing its prevalence in the practice of cognitive neuroscience. . . . [T]his is an important book that succeeds admirably in spelling out the mechanistic approach, its implications, and its empirical applications. Because of this, Mental Mechanisms should spark interest in anyone working on reduction and explanation in the sciences of the mind and brain."
-Kinesis
