Explanatory relevance across disciplinary boundaries: the case of neuroeconomics
Journal of Economic Methodology 17 (2):219–228 (2010)
Abstract
Many of the arguments for neuroeconomics rely on mistaken assumptions about criteria of explanatory relevance across disciplinary boundaries and fail to distinguish between evidential and explanatory relevance. Building on recent philosophical work on mechanistic research programmes and the contrastive counterfactual theory of explanation, we argue that explaining an explanatory presupposition or providing a lower-level explanation does not necessarily constitute explanatory improvement. Neuroscientific findings have explanatory relevance only when they inform a causal and explanatory account of the psychology of human decision-making.Author Profiles
DOI
10.1080/13501781003756576
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Citations of this work
Evidential Diversity and the Triangulation of Phenomena.Jaakko Kuorikoski & Caterina Marchionni - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (2):227-247.
On the neural enrichment of economic models: tractability, trade-offs and multiple levels of description.Roberto Fumagalli - 2011 - Biology and Philosophy 26 (5):617-635.
For a Few Neurons More: Tractability and Neurally Informed Economic Modelling.Matteo Colombo - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4):713-736.
Neural Findings and Economic Models: Why Brains Have Limited Relevance for Economics.Roberto Fumagalli - 2014 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (5):606-629.
References found in this work
Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation.James Woodward - 2003 - Oxford University Press.
Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience.Carl F. Craver - 2007 - Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.
Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research.William Bechtel & Robert C. Richardson - 2010 - Princeton.
The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain.William R. Uttal - 2001 - MIT Press.
Dissecting explanatory power.Petri Ylikoski & Jaakko Kuorikoski - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 148 (2):201–219.