Suppose that we have two explanations of the same phenomenon (or at least related phenomena).

Then there are four broad ways of characterizing their relationship:

1. The two explanations are competitors. If one explanation is correct, then the other one is not. (Maybe Goel talking about neuroscientific and cognitive/computational explanations? Most cognitive psychologists talking about logical explanations.)
2. The two explanations are independent of each other. Both explanations are correct, neither explanation is inherently better than the other, but facts about either one of the explanations do not bear on the other. (Weiskopf on computational/functional/cognitive explanations vs. mechanistic explanations)
3. The two explanations are mutually reinforcing of each other. Both explanations are correct, neither explanation is inherently better than the other, and facts about each of the explanations bears on the other. (Marr, Bermudez, and Oaksford; some mechanists; also see Sandra Mitchell’s article, “Integrative Pluralism.”)
4. One of the explanations is in the driver’s seat. Both explanations are correct, but one of the explanations is clearly better (more fundamental, deeper) than the other. (All reductionists and some mechanists, e.g., Piccinini and Craver).

For those of you interested in evaluating Bickle’s “ruthlessly reductive” approach to neuroscience, you may find the following articles of his especially useful:

Bickle, John. 1995. “Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: Some accomplished facts.”  Philosophical Psychology 8 (3):265-285.

Bickle criticizes the antireductionist argument that psychological explanations require representations and computations over their contents. This has implications for defenders of Marr-style integration (e.g., Bermudez and Oaksford), but also for mechanists such as Piccinini and Craver, autonomists such as Weiskopf, and pluralists such as Potochnik and Sanches de Oliveira.

Bickle, John. 2015. “Marr and Reductionism.”  Topics in Cognitive Science 7 (2):299-311.

Marr was explicitly antireductionist. In this article, Bickle challenges Marr. Note that some of the authors we’ve read, such as Bermudez and Oaksford, are defenders of Marr’s approach.

Silva, A. J., and John Bickle. 2009. “Science of Research and the Search for the Molecular Mechanisms of Cognitive Functions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience, edited by John Bickle. Oxford University Press.

I haven’t looked at this, but it may be a useful survey article.

Hi Class,

As we gear up for our final, I thought it would be useful to have a message board in which we can share information. A few reminders:

1. This way of teaching the class is an experiment. Consequently, both you and I will still have gaps in our understanding as you start to write your papers.
2. Let’s help each other out in plugging those gaps. Use this board to ask questions, share useful readings, etc.
3. Some of you have asked about doing additional research for the final. Here’s the policy: you’re not required to do so, but I suspect it will be useful to do so.
4. Because this is an experiment, I’ll be relatively lenient in grading the finals. Consequently, feel free to take some intellectual risks. I mostly want you to use this as an opportunity to think about how the relevant disciplines should relate to each other. Hopefully, you appreciate the importance of these relationships either in virtue of your major or in virtue of being a student of the liberal arts, so this should be an opportunity to reflect on a deep level about activities that are central to your intellectual life at Middlebury.

Using logical and mathematical tools, formal semantics answers the following questions: Why do sentences mean what they mean? How is reasoning possible? How does language structure our understanding of time, change, knowledge, morality, identity, and possibility? We will assess formal semantics as a theory of linguistic meaning and reasoning by comparing its predictions with linguistic and psychological evidence. We will also examine its philosophical assumptions. This course is well suited for students interested in computer science, linguistics, logic, mathematics, or philosophy. (Some prior familiarity with formal logic is recommended, but not required.)