Mechanism, explanatory pluralism and efficient coding explanation in neuroscience
There is a growing debate within the philosophical community about the unity or disunity of neuroscience. The new Mechanist philosophers claim that neuroscience exhibits a mosaic unity –one in which different explanatory models may contribute to the explanation of some explanandum phenomenon ? by se...
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| Formato: | Artículo revista |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
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Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
2017
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| Acceso en línea: | https://revistas.unc.edu.ar/index.php/racc/article/view/14650 |
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| Sumario: | There is a growing debate within the philosophical community about the unity or disunity of neuroscience. The new Mechanist philosophers claim that neuroscience exhibits a mosaic unity –one in which different explanatory models may contribute to the explanation of some explanandum phenomenon ? by setting causal constraints on the space of possible mechanisms for ?. Non-mechanist philosophers frequently adopt some form or another of explanatory pluralism. In this paper I argue, first, that Mechanism is compatible with a popular version of explanatory pluralism, which I call causally restricted pluralism. Then, I present a liberalized version of explanatory pluralism –one according to which there are models in neuroscience that are explanatory of some phenomenon ? but that do not set any causal constraint on the space of possible mechanisms for ?. Finally, I argue that there is at least one pattern of explanation in neuroscience –namely, efficient coding explanation– that is better accounted for by liberal pluralism. |
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