Communities of Dialogue Russian and Ukrainian Émigrés in Modernist Prague

Repository | Journal | Volume | Article

236623

Why neuroscience matters to cognitive neuropsychology

pp. 347-371

Abstract

The broad issue in this paper is the relationship between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. That issue arises particularly sharply for cognitive neurospsychology, some of whose practitioners claim a methodological autonomy for their discipline. They hold that behavioural data from neuropsychological impairments are sufficient to justify assumptions about the underlying modular structure of human cognitive architecture, as well as to make inferences about its various components. But this claim to methodological autonomy can be challenged on both philosophical and empirical grounds. A priori considerations about (cognitive) multiple realisability challenge the thesis on philosophical grounds, and neuroscientific findings from developmental disorders substantiate that challenge empirically. The conclusion is that behavioural evidence alone is inadequate for scientific progress since appearances of modularity can be thoroughly deceptive, obscuring both the dynamic processes of neural development and the endstate network architecture of real cognitive systems.

Publication details

Published in:

Hohwy Jakob (2007) Functional integration and the mind. Synthese 159 (3).

Pages: 347-371

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-007-9234-1

Full citation:

(2007) „Why neuroscience matters to cognitive neuropsychology“. Synthese 159 (3), 347–371.