The Trouble with Neurobiological Explanations of Mind

Neuroist literature dresses psychological narratives up with neuroscience facts. But there are fundamental differences between the languages of the mind and the brain, so ad hoc devices paper over the gaps. These include taking words out of their proper contexts; equating the conceptual architecture of psychology with the neural architecture of the brain; mimicking the format of scientific research papers; and exalting paradox to produce a thrilling sense of mystery. In addition there are outright errors that are hard for nonneuroscientists to detect. Neuroism is a bid for status by nonnatural science disciplines such as psychoanalysis.     

Extended Mechanistic Explanations: Expanding the Current Mechanistic Conception to Include More Complex Biological Systems

Mechanistic accounts of explanation have recently found popularity within philosophy of science. Presently, we introduce the idea of an extended mechanistic explanation, which makes explicit room for the role of environment in explanation. After delineating Craver and Bechtel’s (2007) account, we argue this suggestion is not sufficiently robust when we take seriously the mechanistic environment and modeling practices involved in studying contemporary complex biological systems. Our goal is to extend the already profitable mechanistic picture by pointing out the importance of the mechanistic environment. It is our belief that extended mechanistic explanations, or mechanisms that take into consideration the temporal sequencing of the interplay between the mechanism and the environment, allow for mechanistic explanations regarding a broader group of scientific phenomena.     

Telic and Mechanistic Explanations of Mind and Meaningfulness: An Empirical Illustration

ABSTRACT Two traditions of personality theorizing, teleology and mechanism, are contrasted on their views of mind and the pivotal cognitive phenomenon of meaningfulness A major, albeit less well known, distinction between these traditions involves the assumption of time The fact that contemporary cognitive models rely on time (e g, temporal sequences or past events) places them firmly in the mechanistic tradition of personality theorizing Telic implications for cognition have been relatively overlooked, and are herein explored theoretically and empirically Cognition without temporality is described and distinguished from modern cognitive models that employ telic terminology An original study is provided to illustrate how these distinctions can be operationalized and addressed empirically     

共情的神经生物基础

共情指个体感知或想象他人的情感, 并部分体验到他人感受的心理过程。共情包括情感共情和认知共情两个独立成分。情感共情的神经网络包括前脑岛(AI)、前扣带回(ACC)以及镜像神经系统(MNS), 认知共情的核心脑区是腹内侧前额叶(vmPFC)。共情的神经网络在个体发展中逐渐成熟并受到认知评价的调节。另外, 催产素和催产素受体基因多态性与共情密切联系。未来应该深入研究躯体感觉皮质在疼痛共情中的作用, 共情和亲身情感体验的神经网络的区别, 开展催产素改善共情缺陷个体的干预研究, 采用脑成像基因技术研究基因多态性与共情神经网络的关系以及提高共情研究范式的生态效度。     

Chronometric Explanations

In this paper I present a problem for the conventionalist regarding temporal metrics, and I defend an objectivist position on the ground of its explanatory force. Roughly, the conventionalist has it that there is no fact of the matter with respect to the truth or falsity of judgments of the kind “event e₁ lasted as long as event e₂”, while the objectivist thinks that they are grounded in objective features of space-time. I argue that, by positing grounds for judgments of relative temporal length, the objectivist gains an explanatory force that the conventionalist position lacks.     

Complementary Explanations

Scientific explanations arc subject to the occurrence of inconsistencies. To rule them out in many cases demands the construction of new theories. As the examples of complementary explanations show, that may take a while. Furthermore, even if possible in principle, it is not always reasonable to eliminate inconsistencies immediately, e.g., by bringing in a more sophisticated formal language. After all, under some circumstances a provisional, not fully coherent explanation may be better than none. In any case, we need a logically controlled approach to such inconsistencies. Modern logic provides the tools which are necessary to solve this task. We will mention two alternative approaches. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

尼古丁依赖的神经生物学机制

尼古丁依赖是香烟成瘾的主要原因,其特征为无法克制的尼古丁觅求冲动,以及强迫性地、连续地使用尼古丁,以体验其带来的欣快感和愉悦感,并避免可能产生的戒断症状。该文主要从动物模型和人类脑功能成像两个方面来综述已有关于尼古丁依赖的神经生物学机制的研究成果,发现中脑边缘多巴胺系统是尼古丁依赖中的重要神经生物学基础。然而,目前对于尼古丁依赖的研究主要从静态的角度出发,较少研究其动态过程;并且尼古丁依赖与其他药物依赖之间的差异也缺乏直接的证据,因此这些都将成为将来可能的研究方向。     

Explanations for unemployment in Britain

Psychological studies on unemployment in the 1930's and the 1970's and 1980's have concentrated on the psychological impact of unemployment on such things as people's health, self-esteem and social interaction. Furthermore studies have, not unnaturally, concentrated almost exclusively on the unemployed neglecting the employed altogether. Very few studies have concerned the range and determinants of lay explanations or attributions about the causes of unemployment. This study set out to examine differences in the explanations for unemployment as a function of whether people were employed or unemployed, as well as their age, sex, education and voting pattern, The results showed a predictable pattern of differences between the employed and unemployed, the former believing more in individualistic explanations and less in societal explanations than the latter. Whereas there were few sex and age differences, education and vote revealed numerous differences in explanations for unemployment. As in the case with explanations for poverty, Conservatives found individualistic explanations for unemployment more important than Labour voters who in turn found societal explanations more important than Conservative voters. Results were discussed in terms of the psychology of explanations, political socialization and the experience of unemployment. Problems in this study as well as the limitations and difficulties in research of the kind were also discussed.     

Purely Theoretical Explanations

Philosophia - This paper introduces a new kind of explanation that we describe as ‘purely theoretical’. We first present an example, E, of what we take to be a case of purely...     

Coherence and Explanations

The article advocates a particular coherence theory of justification that emphasizes the significance of explanatory relations. It is shown that other approaches to coherence have failed because they underestimate the importance of explanatory theories in forming a system of beliefs. Additionally, a conception of explanation as a unifying substantial embedding of models is sketched that closely conforms with the proposed theory of coherence.     

社会从众的生物学基础

社会从众是指个体改变态度或行为, 与他人保持一致的现象。社会认知神经科学采用社会心理学的实验范式研究发现：背内侧前额叶、纹状体、眶额皮层、脑岛、杏仁核和海马等多个脑区在社会从众中扮演重要角色; 能够提高多巴胺水平、改善大脑奖赏敏感性的某些神经递质可能间接影响从众。强化学习理论的奖惩预期可以部分解释社会从众的原因。未来研究应改进实验范式, 扩大研究群体, 借助神经、生化技术, 利用动物模型, 深入探讨社会从众的神经生物学基础。     

发展性阅读障碍的神经生物学研究进展

发展性阅读障碍的研究起源于英语国家。因英语是一种深正字法语言 ,而且许多调查表明深正字法语种国家阅读障碍的发生率高于浅正字法语种国家 ,许多认知实验也证明阅读障碍者存在语音缺陷 ,因此开始时心理学家们倾向于用语音缺损 (phonologicaldeficit)理论来解释发展性阅读障碍的发生 ;但另一方面 ,部分研究者坚持认为阅读障碍的发生有其神经生物学原因 ,大量的相关研究表明阅读障碍个体表现出一定的神经系统结构和功能的异常 ,人们推测在脑异常与包括语音加工缺陷在内的阅读障碍间存在某种因果联系。最近E .Paulesu等 (2 0 0 1)的一个跨…     

语言表征的神经生物学理论

神经科学家F．Pulvermüller根据Hebb的“细胞群集”学说和相关性学习原理构建的“语言表征的神经生物学理论”首次试图基于皮层功能网络来解释语音、词汇和句法在大脑皮层的表征机制,不仅能较好地描述语言活动中经典语言脑区与其它参与活动脑区的相互关系,也对语言加工的大脑功能偏侧化与整合现象作了合适的说明。本文介绍了这一理论的主要观点和研究资料,并提出了一些尚需进一步研究的问题。     

Neurobiological foundations of aesthetics and art

A theory of the neurobiological foundations of aesthetics and art is described. This has its roots in emotion, in which what is pleasant or unpleasant, a reward or punisher, is the result of an evolutionary process in which genes define the (pleasant or unpleasant) goals for action. To this is added the operation of the reasoning, syntactic, brain system which evolved to help solve difficult, multistep, problems, and the use of which is encouraged by pleasant feelings when elegant, simple, and hence aesthetic solutions are found that are advantageous because they are parsimonious, and follow Occam's Razor. The combination of these two systems, and the interactions between them, provide an approach to understanding aesthetics that is rooted in evolution and its effects on brain design and function.     

Functions and Mechanisms in Structural-Modelling Explanations

One way social scientists explain phenomena is by building structural models. These models are explanatory insofar as they manage to perform a recursive decomposition on an initial multivariate probability distribution, which can be interpreted as a mechanism. Explanations in social sciences share important aspects that have been highlighted in the mechanisms literature. Notably, spelling out the functioning the mechanism gives it explanatory power. Thus social scientists should choose the variables to include in the model on the basis of their function in the mechanism. This paper examines the notion of ‘function’ within structural modelling. We argue that ‘functions’ ought to be understood as the theoretical underpinnings of the causes, namely as the role that causes play in the functioning of the mechanism.     

Explanations of social shyness

Shyness is a widespread reaction to social situations, characterized by inaction, self-consciousness, and heightened physiological reaction. Two explanations of this pattern have been proposed, in terms of a primary emotion related to shame or as a form of social anxiety. These positions lead to different predictions, but have attracted little investigation. Explanations of individual differences in shyness have emphasized either social skill deficits or low self-esteem, but these are not supported by empirical evidence. It is argued that an explanation in terms of self-attentional processes accounts for current findings, leads to original predictions, and relates shyness more closely to social psychological principles.     

Mathematics and Program Explanations

Aidan Lyon has recently argued that some mathematical explanations of empirical facts can be understood as program explanations. I present three objections to his argument.     

Nationalism and Its Explanations

This paper presents new terms for analyzing individuals' national attitudes and their conceptualization and operationalization, a universal psychological structure in which these concepts interconnect, and a nationalism explanatory model. Three empirical studies using anonymous self-administered surveys served to test and improve national attitude assessment and its developmental theory. These empirical studies were conducted in a well-established state (the Netherlands), a recently established state (Slovakia), and a region in which a considerable proportion of citizens are striving to develop a new independent state (the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain).