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Article ID: CBB000770695

Beyond Reduction: Mechanisms, Multifield Integration and the Unity of Neuroscience (2005)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 36
Pages: 373--395

Publication Date: 2005
Edition Details: Part of a special issue: “Mechanisms in Biology”
Language: English

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Philosophers of neuroscience have traditionally described interfield integration using reduction models. Such models describe formal inferential relations between theories at different levels. I argue against reduction and for a mechanistic model of interfield integration. According to the mechanistic model, different fields integrate their research by adding constraints on a multilevel description of a mechanism. Mechanistic integration may occur at a given level or in the effort to build a theory that oscillates among several levels. I develop this alternative model using a putative exemplar of reduction in contemporary neuroscience: the relationship between the psychological phenomena of learning and memory and the electrophysiological phenomenon known as Long-Term Potentiation. A new look at this historical episode reveals the relative virtues of the mechanistic model over reduction as an account of interfield integration.

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Article Craver, Carl F.; Darden, Lindley (2005) Introduction. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 233). unapi

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