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Adele Abrahamsen [22]Adele A. Abrahamsen [4]
  1. Explanation: a mechanist alternative.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):421-441.
    Explanations in the life sciences frequently involve presenting a model of the mechanism taken to be responsible for a given phenomenon. Such explanations depart in numerous ways from nomological explanations commonly presented in philosophy of science. This paper focuses on three sorts of differences. First, scientists who develop mechanistic explanations are not limited to linguistic representations and logical inference; they frequently employ diagrams to characterize mechanisms and simulations to reason about them. Thus, the epistemic resources for presenting mechanistic explanations are (...)
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  2.  35
    Connectionism and the Mind.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 1991 - Wiley-Blackwell.
    Something remarkable is happening in the cognitive sciences. After a quarter of a century of cognitive models that were inspired by the metaphor of the digital computer, the newest cognitive models are inspired by the properties of the brain itself. Variously referred to as connectionist, parallel distributed processing, or neutral network models, they explore the idea that complex intellectual operations can be carried out by large networks of simple, neuron-like units. The units themselves are identical, very low-level and 'stupid'. Intelligent (...)
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  3. Dynamic mechanistic explanation: computational modeling of circadian rhythms as an exemplar for cognitive science.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2010 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (3):321-333.
    Two widely accepted assumptions within cognitive science are that (1) the goal is to understand the mechanisms responsible for cognitive performances and (2) computational modeling is a major tool for understanding these mechanisms. The particular approaches to computational modeling adopted in cognitive science, moreover, have significantly affected the way in which cognitive mechanisms are understood. Unable to employ some of the more common methods for conducting research on mechanisms, cognitive scientists’ guiding ideas about mechanism have developed in conjunction with their (...)
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  4.  24
    Connectionism and the Mind: Parallel Processing, Dynamics, and Evolution in Networks.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2002 - Wiley-Blackwell.
    Connectionism and the Mind provides a clear and balanced introduction to connectionist networks and explores theoretical and philosophical implications. Much of this discussion from the first edition has been updated, and three new chapters have been added on the relation of connectionism to recent work on dynamical systems theory, artificial life, and cognitive neuroscience. Read two of the sample chapters on line: Connectionism and the Dynamical Approach to Cognition: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/bechtel.pdf Networks, Robots, and Artificial Life: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/bechtel2.pdf.
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  5. Complex biological mechanisms: Cyclic, oscillatory, and autonomous.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - unknown
    The mechanistic perspective has dominated biological disciplines such as biochemistry, physiology, cell and molecular biology, and neuroscience, especially during the 20th century. The primary strategy is reductionist: organisms are to be decomposed into component parts and operations at multiple levels. Researchers adopting this perspective have generated an enormous body of information about the mechanisms of life at scales ranging from the whole organism down to genetic and other molecular operations.
     
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  6. Why do biologists use so many diagrams?Benjamin Sheredos, Daniel Burnston, Adele Abrahamsen & William Bechtel - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (5):931-944.
    Diagrams have distinctive characteristics that make them an effective medium for communicating research findings, but they are even more impressive as tools for scientific reasoning. Focusing on circadian rhythm research in biology to explore these roles, we examine diagrammatic formats that have been devised to identify and illuminate circadian phenomena and to develop and modify mechanistic explanations of these phenomena.
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  7. Decomposing, recomposing, and situating circadian mechanisms: Three tasks in developing mechanistic explanations.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2009 - In Alexander Hieke & Hannes Leitgeb (eds.), Reduction: Between the Mind and the Brain. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. pp. 12--177.
  8.  90
    (1 other version)Diagrams as Tools for Scientific Reasoning.Adele Abrahamsen & William Bechtel - 2015 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (1):117-131.
    We contend that diagrams are tools not only for communication but also for supporting the reasoning of biologists. In the mechanistic research that is characteristic of biology, diagrams delineate the phenomenon to be explained, display explanatory relations, and show the organized parts and operations of the mechanism proposed as responsible for the phenomenon. Both phenomenon diagrams and explanatory relations diagrams, employing graphs or other formats, facilitate applying visual processing to the detection of relevant patterns. Mechanism diagrams guide reasoning about how (...)
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  9. From reduction back to higher levels.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2008 - In B. C. Love, K. McRae & V. M. Sloutsky (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society. pp. 559--564.
  10.  78
    Scientists’ use of diagrams in developing mechanistic explanations: A case study from chronobiology.Daniel C. Burnston, Benjamin Sheredos, Adele Abrahamsen & William Bechtel - 2014 - Pragmatics and Cognition 22 (2):224-243.
    We explore the crucial role of diagrams in scientific reasoning, especially reasoning directed at developing mechanistic explanations of biological phenomena. We offer a case study focusing on one research project that resulted in a published paper advancing a new understanding of the mechanism by which the central circadian oscillator in Synechococcus elongatus controls gene expression. By examining how the diagrams prepared for the paper developed over the course of multiple drafts, we show how the process of generating a new explanation (...)
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  11. Phenomena and mechanisms: Putting the symbolic, connectionist, and dynamical systems debate in broader perspective.Adele A. Abrahamsen & William P. Bechtel - 2006 - In Robert Stainton (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
    Cognitive science is, more than anything else, a pursuit of cognitive mechanisms. To make headway towards a mechanistic account of any particular cognitive phenomenon, a researcher must choose among the many architectures available to guide and constrain the account. It is thus fitting that this volume on contemporary debates in cognitive science includes two issues of architecture, each articulated in the 1980s but still unresolved: " • Just how modular is the mind? – a debate initially pitting encapsulated mechanisms against (...)
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  12. Bridging boundaries versus breaking boundaries: Psycholinguistics in perspective.Adele A. Abrahamsen - 1987 - Synthese 72 (3):355 - 388.
  13. From Reactive to Endogenously Active Dynamical Conceptions of the Brain.Adele Abrahamsen & William Bechtel - unknown
    We contrast reactive and endogenously active perspectives on brain activity. Both have been pursued continuously in neurophysiology laboratories since the early 20thcentury, but the endogenous perspective has received relatively little attention until recently. One of the many successes of the reactive perspective was the identification, in the second half of the 20th century, of the distinctive contributions of different brain regions involved in visual processing. The recent prominence of the endogenous perspective is due to new findings of ongoing oscillatory activity (...)
     
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  14. In Search of Mitochondrial Mechanisms: Interfield Excursions between Cell Biology and Biochemistry.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2007 - Journal of the History of Biology 40 (1):1-33.
    Developing models of biological mechanisms, such as those involved in respiration in cells, often requires collaborative effort drawing upon techniques developed and information generated in different disciplines. Biochemists in the early decades of the 20th century uncovered all but the most elusive chemical operations involved in cellular respiration, but were unable to align the reaction pathways with particular structures in the cell. During the period 1940-1965 cell biology was emerging as a new discipline and made distinctive contributions to understanding the (...)
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  15. The Life of Cognitive Science.William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen & George Graham - 1998 - In George Graham & William Bechtel (eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science. Blackwell. pp. 1–104.
    Cognitive science is the multidisciplinary scientific study of cognition and its role in intelligent agency. It examines what cognition is, what it does, and how it works.
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  16. Mechanistic explanation and the nature-nurture controversy.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2005 - Bulletin d'Histoire Et d'pistmologie Des Sciences de La Vie 12:75-100.
    Both in biology and psychology there has been a tendency on the part of many investigators to focus solely on the mature organism and ignore development. There are many reasons for this, but an important one is that the explanatory framework often invoked in the life sciences for understanding a given phenomenon, according to which explanation consists in identifying the mechanism that produces that phenomenon, both makes it possible to side-step the development issue and to provide inadequate resources for actually (...)
     
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  17.  35
    History and core themes.Adele Abrahamsen & William Bechtel - 2012 - In Keith Frankish & William Ramsey (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 9.
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  18. Thinking Dynamically About Biological Mechanisms: Networks of Coupled Oscillators. [REVIEW]William Bechtel & Adele A. Abrahamsen - 2013 - Foundations of Science 18 (4):707-723.
    Explaining the complex dynamics exhibited in many biological mechanisms requires extending the recent philosophical treatment of mechanisms that emphasizes sequences of operations. To understand how nonsequentially organized mechanisms will behave, scientists often advance what we call dynamic mechanistic explanations. These begin with a decomposition of the mechanism into component parts and operations, using a variety of laboratory-based strategies. Crucially, the mechanism is then recomposed by means of computational models in which variables or terms in differential equations correspond to properties of (...)
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  19.  72
    Connectionism and the future of folk psychology.William P. Bechtel & Adele A. Abrahamsen - 1992 - In Robert G. Burton (ed.), Minds: Natural and Artificial. SUNY Press.
  20. Understanding the Brain as an Endogenously Active Mechanism.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - unknown
    Although a reactive framework has long been dominant in cognitive science and neuroscience, an alternative framework emphasizing dynamics and endogenous activity has recently gained prominence. We review some of the evidence for endogenous activity and consider the implications not only for understanding cognition but also for accounts of explanation offered by philosophers of science. Our recent characterization of dynamic mechanistic explanation emphasizes the coordination of accounts of mechanisms that identify parts and operations with computational models of their activity. These can, (...)
     
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  21.  90
    Explaining Human Freedom and Dignity Mechanistically.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2007 - Journal of Philosophical Research 32:43-66.
    Mechanistic explanation is the dominant approach to explanation in the life sciences, but it has been challenged as incompatible with a conception of humans as agents whose capacity for self-direction endows them with freedom and dignity. We argue that the mechanical philosophy, properly construed, has sufficient resources to explain how such characteristics can arise in a material world. Biological mechanisms must be regarded as active, not only reactive, and as organized so as to maintain themselves far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Notions (...)
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  22.  14
    Cognitive and Linguistic Development.Adele Abrahamsen - 1998 - In George Graham & William Bechtel (eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science. Blackwell. pp. 146–156.
    Aisha, age 24 months, sees her older sister trip over a toy and squeals “Kiki fell!” At 30 months her doll falls behind the couch, and she asks “Where dolly falled?” At 48 months her computer mouse falls behind a stack of computer manuals under the desk, and she asks “Where did that silly mouse fall?” Both her world and her sentences are getting more complex as she gets older, but there is one oddity: the past‐tense verb fell shows a (...)
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  23.  39
    Cognizers' innards and connectionist nets: A holy alliance?Adele Abrahamsen - 1993 - Mind and Language 8 (4):520-530.
  24.  26
    Books for review and for listing here should be addressed to Emily Zakin, Review Editor, Department of Philosophy, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056.Thomas Baldwin, William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen, Richard Boothby, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Nicholas D. Smith, Mario Bunge, Steven M. Cahn, Peter Markie & David Cockburn - 2002 - Teaching Philosophy 25 (1):107.
  25.  21
    Learning, reward, and cognitive differences.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 1988 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11 (3):448.