Object exploration and a problem with reductionism

Anthony Chemero

Charles Heyser

pp. 403-423

in: John Bickle (ed), Neuroscience and its philosophy, Synthese 147 (3), 2005.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to use neuroscientific evidence to address the philosophical issue of intertheoretic reduction. In particular, we present a literature review and a new experiment to show that the reduction of cognitive psychology to neuroscience is implausible. To make this case, we look at research using object exploration, an important experimental paradigm in neuroscience, behavioral genetics and psychopharmacology. We show that a good deal of object exploration research is potentially confounded precisely because it assumes that psychological generalizations can be reduced to neuroscientific ones.