Context-sensitive computational mechanistic explanation in cognitive neuroscience

Theoretical strategies for an embodied cognitive neuroscience: Mechanistic explanations of brain-body-environment systems

Cognitive neuroscience seeks to explain mind, brain, and behavior. But how do we generate explanations? In this integrative theoretical paper, we review the commitments of the 'New Mechanist' movement within the philosophy of science, focusing specifically on the role of mechanistic models in scientific explanation. We highlight how this approach differs from other explanatory approaches within the field, showing its unique contributions to the efforts of scientific explanation. We then argue that the commitments of the Embodied Cognition framework converge with the commitments of the New Mechanist movement in a way that provides a necessary explanatory strategy available to cognitive neuroscience. We then discuss a number of consequences of this convergence, including issues related to the inadequacy of statistical prediction, neuroscientific reduction, the autonomy of psychology from neuroscience, and psychological and neuroscientific ontology. We hope that our integrative thesis provides researchers with a theoretical strategy for an embodied cognitive neuroscience.

Mechanistic decomposition and reduction in complex, context-sensitive systems

Standard arguments in philosophy of science infer from the complexity of biological and neural systems to the presence of emergence and failure of mechanistic/reductionist explanation for those systems. I argue against this kind of argument, specifically focusing on the notion of context-sensitivity. Context-sensitivity is standardly taken to be incompatible with reductionistic explanation, because it shows that larger-scale factors influence the functioning of lower-level parts. I argue that this argument can be overcome if there are mechanisms underlying those context-specific reorganizations. I argue that such mechanisms are frequently discovered in neuroscience.