Description
Book SynopsisThe
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 psychological terrain, such as adaptive behaviour, reward systems, consciousness, and social cognition.
Trade Review“The Matter of the Mind is a well organized book which hosts contributions on the main subjects about philosophy of mind and it is definitely worthwhile reading.” (Metapsychology, 14 May 2013)
"The editors, and the contributors, are to be congratulated. This is the best collection on the nature of intertheoretic reduction ever published, especially as those issues bear on the unfolding relations between the neurosciences on the one hand, and psychology and the social sciences on the other. Thanks to these papers, all of us (yours truly included) are going to be rethinking our views on reduction."
Paul M. Churchland, University of California, San Diego "Parties on both sides of the reductionism wars will benefit from this exciting collection. The editors and their contributors well represent the cutting edges of the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science regarding the reducibility (or lack thereof) of minds to brains." Pete Mandik, William Paterson University
“An outstanding vehicle by which to learn about modern reductionism, the relation of neuroscience to psychology, and how they can cooperate rather than compete.” PsycCritiques
Table of ContentsContributors.
Preface and Acknowledgments.
1. Mind Matters: The Roots of Reductionism (Maurice Schouten and Huib Looren de Jong).
Part I: Metaphysics of Science.
2. Functionalism and Psychological Reductionism: Friends, Not Foes (Andrew Melnyk).
3. Some Metaphysical Anxieties of Reductionism (Thomas W. Polger).
4. The Metaphysics of Mechanisms and the Challenge of the New Reductionism (Carl Gillett).
5. Reductionism, Embodiment, and the Generality of Psychology (Lawrence A. Shapiro).
Part II: Philosophical Accounts of Reduction, Mechanism, Co-evolution.
6. Reduction without the Structures (Robert C. Richardson).
7. Reinforcing the Three "R"s: Reduction, Reception, and Replacement (Ronald Endicott).
8. Reducing Psychology while Maintaining its Autonomy via Mechanistic Explanations (William Bechtel).
9. Enriching Philosophical Models of Cross-Scientific Relations: Incorporating Diachronic Theories (Robert N. McCauley).
Part III: Mechanisms of Mind.
10. Coupling, Emergence, and Explanation (Andy Clark).
11. Is Psychological Explanation Going Extinct? (Cory D. Wright).
12. Who Says You Can't Do a Molecular Biology of Consciousness? (John Bickle).
13. Mind Reading and Mirror Neurons: Exploring Reduction (Huib Looren de Jong and Maurice Schouten).
Name Index.
Subject Index.
