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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > Philosophy of science
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Beyond Reduction - Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science (Hardcover)
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Beyond Reduction - Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science (Hardcover)
Series: Philosophy of Mind Series
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to assume that the world of
nature can be reduced to basic physics. Yet there are features of
the mind consciousness, intentionality, normativity that do not
seem to be reducible to physics or neuroscience. This explanatory
gap between mind and brain has thus been a major cause of concern
in recent philosophy of mind. Reductionists hold that, despite all
appearances, the mind can be reduced to the brain. Eliminativists
hold that it cannot, and that this implies that there is something
illegitimate about the mentalistic vocabulary. Dualists hold that
the mental is irreducible, and that this implies either a substance
or a property dualism. Mysterian non-reductive physicalists hold
that the mind is uniquely irreducible, perhaps due to some
limitation of our self-understanding.
In this book, Steven Horst argues that this whole conversation is
based on assumptions left over from an outdated philosophy of
science. While reductionism was part of the philosophical orthodoxy
fifty years ago, it has been decisively rejected by philosophers of
science over the past thirty years, and for good reason. True
reductions are in fact exceedingly rare in the sciences, and the
conviction that they were there to be found was an artifact of
armchair assumptions of 17th century Rationalists and 20th century
Logical Empiricists. The explanatory gaps between mind and brain
are far from unique. In fact, in the sciences it is gaps all the
way down.And if reductions are rare in even the physical sciences,
there is little reason to expect them in the case of
psychology.
Horst argues that this calls for a complete re-thinking of the
contemporary problematic inphilosophy of mind. Reductionism,
dualism, eliminativism and non-reductive materialism are each
severely compromised by post-reductionist philosophy of science,
and philosophy of mind is in need of a new paradigm.
Horst suggests that such a paradigm might be found in Cognitive
Pluralism: the view that human cognitive architecture constrains us
to understand the world through a plurality of partial, idealized,
and pragmatically-constrained models, each employing a particular
representational system optimized for its own problem domain. Such
an architecture can explain the disunities of knowledge, and is
plausible on evolutionary grounds.
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