Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience: Causal Explanations, Mechanisms and Experimental Manipulations - Paperback

by Lena Kästner (Author)

How do cognitive neuroscientists explain phenomena like memory or language processing? This book examines the different kinds of experiments and manipulative research strategies involved in understanding and eventually explaining such phenomena. Against this background, it evaluates contemporary accounts of scientific explanation, specifically the mechanistic and interventionist accounts, and finds them to be crucially incomplete. Besides, mechanisms and interventions cannot actually be combined in the way usually done in the literature. This book offers solutions to both these problems based on insights from experimental practice. It defends a new reading of the interventionist account, highlights the importance of non-interventionist studies for scientific inquiry, and supplies a taxonomy of experiments that makes it easy to see how the gaps in contemporary accounts of scientific explanation can be filled. The book concludes that a truly empirically adequate philosophy of science must take into account a much wider range of experimental research than has been done to date. With the taxonomy provided, this book serves a stepping-stone leading into a new era of philosophy of science--for cognitive neuroscience and beyond.

Back Jacket

This book deals with how scientists, especially cognitive neuroscientists, explain phenomena. It systematically analyzes different kinds of experiments performed throughout the discovery process. Against this background, it evaluates contemporary accounts of scientific explanation--specifically mechanist and interventionist views--and supplements them with a catalog of experiments. Taking experimental practice at face value helps to reconfigure our understanding of how experiments reveal the world.

Author Biography

Lena Kästner, University of Saarbrücken.