Explaining the Brain

What distinguishes good explanations in neuroscience from bad? Carl F. Craver constructs and defends standards for evaluating neuroscientific explanations that are grounded in a systematic view of what neuroscientific explanations are: descriptions of multilevel mechanisms. In developing this approach, he draws on a wide range of examples in the history of neuroscience (e.g. Hodgkin and Huxleys model of the action potential and LTP as a putative explanation for different kinds of memory), as well as recent philosophical work on the nature of scientific explanation. Readers in neuroscience, psychology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science will find much to provoke and stimulate them in this book.

Carl F. Craver is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis.

Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction: Starting With Neuroscience

1. Introduction

2. Explanations in Neuroscience Describe Mechanisms.

3. Explanations in Neuroscience are Multilevel

4. Explanations in Neuroscience Integrate Multiple Fields

5. Criteria of Adequacy for an Account of Explanation

Chapter 2. Explanation and Causal Relevance

1. Introduction

2. How Calcium Explains Neurotransmitter Release

3. Explanation and Representation

4. The Covering-Law Model

5. The Unification Model

6. But What About the Hodgkin and Huxley Model?

7. Conclusion

Chapter 3. Causal Relevance and Manipulation

1. Introduction

2. The Mechanism of Long-Term Potentiation

3. Causation as Transmission

3.1. Transmission and Causal Relevance

3.2. Omission and Prevention

4. Causation and Mechanical Connection

5. Manipulation and Causation

5.1. Ideal Interventions

5.2. Invariance, Fragility, and Contingency

5.3. Manipulation and Criteria for Explanation

5.4. Manipulation, Omission, and Prevention

6. Conclusion

Chapter 4. The Norms of Mechanistic Explanation

1. Introduction

2. Two Normative Distinctions

3. Explaining the Action Potential

4. The Explanandum Phenomenon

5. Components

6. Activities

7. Organization

8. Constitutive Relevance

8.1. Relevance and the Boundaries of Mechanisms

8.2. Interlevel Experiments and Constitutive Relevance

8.21. Interference Experiments

8.22. Stimulation Experiments

8.23. Activation Experiments

8.3. Constitutive Relevance as Mutual Manipulability

9. Conclusion

Chapter 5. A Field-Guide to Levels

1. Introduction

2. Levels of Spatial Memory

3. A Field-Guide to Levels

3.1. Levels of Science (Units and Products)

3.2. Levels of Nature

3.21. Causal Levels (Processing and Control)

3.22. Levels of Size

3.23. Levels of Composition

3.231. Levels of Mereology

3.232. Levels of Aggregativity

3.233. Levels of Mere Material/Spatial Containment

3.3. Levels of Mechanisms

4. Conclusion

Chapter 6 Nonfundamental Explanation

1. Introduction

2. Causal Relevance and Making a Difference

3. Contrasts and Switch-Points

4. Causal Powers at Higher Levels of Mechanisms

5. Causal Relevance among Realized Properties

6. Conclusion

Chapter 7. The Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience

1. Introduction

2. Reduction and the History of Neuroscience

2.1. LTP's Origins: Not a Top-Down Search but Intralevel Integration

2.2. The Mechanistic Shift

2.3. Mechanism as a Working Hypothesis

3. Intralevel Integration and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience

3.1. The Space of Possible Mechanisms

3.2. Specific Constraints on the Space of Possible

Mechanisms

3.21. Componency Constraints

3.22. Spatial Constraints

3.23. Temporal Constraints

3.24. Active Constraints

3.3. Reduction and the Intralevel Integration of Fields

4. Interlevel Integration and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience

4.1. What is Interlevel Integration?

4.2. Constraints on Interlevel Integration

4.21. Accommodative Constraints

4.22. Spatial and Temporal Interlevel Constraints

4.23. Interlevel Manipulability Constraints

4.3. Mosaic Interlevel Integration

5. Conclusion: The Epistemic Function of the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience