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Pseudo‐mechanistic Explanations in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Author(s) -
Hommel Bernhard
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
topics in cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.191
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1756-8765
pISSN - 1756-8757
DOI - 10.1111/tops.12448
Subject(s) - phenomenon , cognitive science , cognition , psychology , context (archaeology) , cognitive neuroscience , cognitive psychology , component (thermodynamics) , neuroscience , epistemology , paleontology , philosophy , physics , thermodynamics , biology
Few articles in psychology and cognitive neuroscience do without the promise to get into the “mechanisms underlying” particular psychological phenomena. And yet the progress in our mechanistic understanding of human cognition and behavior must be considered disappointing: Most “explanations” merely classify the phenomenon under investigation as falling into a broader category of (not any better understood) phenomena, specify the context conditions under which the phenomenon is likely to occur, or specify a particular kind of neural activity (such as the activation of a particular brain area) that is correlated with the phenomenon. None of these meets the criteria of a truly mechanistic explanation, which needs to account for phenomena in terms of “a structure performing a function in virtue of its component parts, component operations, and their organization” (Bechtel, 2006). This contribution characterizes the problem and some of its implications and discusses possible solutions.