Construct Stabilization and the Unity of the Mind-Brain Sciences

Philosophy of Science 83 (5):662-673 (2016)
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Abstract

This paper offers a critique of an account of explanatory integration that claims that explanations of cognitive capacities by functional analyses and mechanistic explanations can be seamlessly integrated. It is shown that achieving such explanatory integration requires that the terms designating cognitive capacities in the two forms of explanation are stable but that experimental practice in the mind-brain sciences currently is not directed at achieving such stability. A positive proposal for changing experimental practice so as to promote such stability is put forward and its implications for explanatory integration are briefly considered.

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10.1086/687853

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Jacqueline Anne Sullivan
University of Western Ontario

Citations of this work

Construct validity in psychological tests – the case of implicit social cognition.Uljana Feest - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (1):1-24.
Optogenetics, Pluralism, and Progress.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (00):1090-1101.

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References found in this work

Explaining the brain: mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience.Carl F. Craver - 2007 - New York : Oxford University Press,: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.

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