Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science

This collection brings together a set of new papers that advance the debate concerning the nature of explanation in mind and brain science, and help to clarify the prospects for bonafide integration across these fields. Long a topic of debate among philosophers and scientists alike, there is growing appreciation that understanding the complex relationship between the psychological sciences and the neurosciences, especially how their respective explanatory frameworks interrelate, is of fundamental importance for achieving progress across these scientific domains. Traditional philosophical discussions tend to construe the relationship between them in stark terms - either they are related in terms of complete independence (i.e., autonomy) or complete dependence (i.e., reduction), leaving little room for more interesting relations such as that of mutually beneficial interaction or integration. A unifying thread across the diverse set of contributions to this volume is the rejection of the assumption that no stable middle ground exists between these two extremes, and common embrace of the idea that these sciences are partially dependent on or constrained by one another. By addressing whether the explanatory patterns employed across these domains are similar or different in kind, and to what extent they inform and constrain each another, this volume helps to deepen our understanding of the prospects for successfully integrating mind and brain science.

David M. Kaplan is a researcher in the Department of Cognitive Science and an Associate Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD) at Macquarie University. After completing his PhD at Duke University (2007), he was a James S. McDonnell postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (PNP) Program at Washington University in St. Louis (2007-2009). He completed additional postdoctoral training in neurophysiology in the lab of Dr Lawrence Snyder at Washington University in St. Louis - School of Medicine (2009-2013). His research is organized into two interrelated streams. One research stream falls within the field of sensorimotor neuroscience and addresses the neural mechanisms and computations underlying motor planning and learning. The other stream addresses foundational methodological and explanatory issues in neuroscience and cognitive science.