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HomeUpcoming EventsGualtiero Piccinini (University of Missouri - St. Louis): Explaining Cognition Mechanistically: The Cognitive Neuroscience Revolution
Gualtiero Piccinini (University of Missouri - St. Louis): Explaining Cognition Mechanistically: The Cognitive Neuroscience Revolution

Abstract: Once upon a time, there was cognitive science: the interdisciplinary study of cognition. On one side stood psychology, with the help of computer science, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy; on the other side stood neuroscience. Psychology etc. studied the functional or cognitive or computational or psychological level; neuroscience studied the mechanistic or implementational or neural level. Psychology etc. were supposed to be autonomous from neuroscience. I argue that cognitive science as traditionally conceived is on its way out, and it?s being replaced by cognitive neuroscience broadly construed. Instead of the old two-levelism (functional/cognitive vs. mechanistic/neural), there are many levels of mechanistic organization. No one level has the monopoly on cognition proper. Instead, different levels are more or less cognitive depending on their specific properties. Old psychological theories 
pitched at the functional level are nothing but sketches of mechanistic explanations at one level of mechanistic organization among others. Disciplines are not autonomous from one another. 
Instead, different disciplines contribute to the common enterprise of constructing multilevel mechanistic explanations of cognitive phenomena.

Date & time

  • Thu 18 Feb 2016, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room A

Event Series

Philosophy Departmental Seminars