Explanatory Pluralism and The Heuristic Identity Theory
| Abstract | University and William Bechtel Washington University Abstract Explanatory pluralism holds that the sorts of comprehensive theoretical and ontological economies, which microreductionists and New Wave reductionists envision and which antireductionists fear, offer misleading views of both scientific practice and scientific progress. Both advocates and foes of employing reductionist strategies at the interface of psychology and neuroscience have overplayed the alleged economies that interlevel connections (including identities) justify while overlooking their fundamental role in promoting scientific research. A brief review of research on visual processing provides support for the explanatory pluralist=s general model of cross-scientific relations and discloses the valuable heuristic role hypothetical identities play in cross-scientific research. That model also supplies grounds for hesitation about the correlation objection to the psycho-physical identity theory and complaints about an explanatory gap in physicalist accounts of consciousness. These takes on psycho-neural connections miss both the sorts of considerations that motivate hypothetical identities in science and their fundamental contribution to progressive research. Thus, their focus on the contributions of research at multiple levels of analysis does not bar explanatory pluralists from considering heuristic identity theory (HIT). Arguably, it encourages it. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,664 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesWilliam P. Bechtel & Robert N. McCauley (1999). Heuristic Identity Theory (or Back to the Future): The Mind-Body Problem Against the Background of Research Strategies in Cognitive Neuroscience. In Martin Hahn & S. C. Stoness (eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Markus I. Eronen (forthcoming). Hypothetical Identities: Explanatory Problems for the Explanatory Argument. Philosophical Psychology:1-12.
Markus I. Eronen (2009). Reductionist Challenges to Explanatory Pluralism: Comment on McCauley. Philosophical Psychology 22 (5):637-646.
M. Scheele (2002). Never Mind the Gap: The Explanatory Gap as an Artifact of Naive Philosophical Argument. Philosophical Psychology 15 (3):333-342.
Jeroen van Bouwel & Erik Weber (2008). A Pragmatist Defense of Non-Relativistic Explanatory Pluralism in History and Social Science. History and Theory 47 (2):168–182.
Ingo Brigandt (2013). Explanation in Biology: Reduction, Pluralism, and Explanatory Aims. Science and Education 22:69-91.
Robert N. McCauley (2009). Time is of the Essence: Explanatory Pluralism and Accommodating Theories About Long-Term Processes. Philosophical Psychology 22 (5):611-635.
Stefan Ziemski (1975). The Typology of Scientific Research. Journal for General Philosophy of Science 6 (2):276-291.
Jeroen van Bouwel (2010). Explanatory Pluralism in the Medical Sciences: Theory and Practice. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 31 (5):371-390.
Jeroen van Bouwel, Erik Weber & Leen de Vreese (2011). Indispensability Arguments in Favour of Reductive Explanations. Journal for General Philosophy of Science 42 (1):33-46.
Alisa Bokulich (2012). Distinguishing Explanatory From Nonexplanatory Fictions. Philosophy of Science 79 (5):725-737.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-12-22Total downloads7 ( #133,381 of 549,014 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,261 of 549,014 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
