The Matter Of The Mind - Philosophical Essays On Psychology, Neuroscience And Reduction

• Written by leading philosophers in the field
• Discusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews and weighs the evidence in favour of reductionism against the backdrop of recent important advances within psychology and the neurosciences
• Collects the latest work on central topics where neuroscience is now making inroads in traditional psychological terrain, such as adaptive behaviour, reward systems, consciousness, and social cognition.

Huib Looren de Jong is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is the author of Naturalism and Psychology (1992) and Theoretical Issues in Psychology (2006, with Sacha Bem), and a number of research articles. He serves as Associate Editor of Theory & Psychology.

Preface and Acknowledgments.

1. Mind Matters: The Roots of Reductionism (Maurice Schouten and Huib Looren de Jong).

Part I: Metaphysics of Science.

2. Functionalism and Psychological Reductionism: Friends, Not Foes (Andrew Melnyk).

3. Some Metaphysical Anxieties of Reductionism (Thomas W. Polger).

4. The Metaphysics of Mechanisms and the Challenge of the New Reductionism (Carl Gillett).

5. Reductionism, Embodiment, and the Generality of Psychology (Lawrence A. Shapiro).

Part II: Philosophical Accounts of Reduction, Mechanism, Co-evolution.

6. Reduction without the Structures (Robert C. Richardson).

7. Reinforcing the Three "R"s: Reduction, Reception, and Replacement (Ronald Endicott).

8. Reducing Psychology while Maintaining its Autonomy via Mechanistic Explanations (William Bechtel).

9. Enriching Philosophical Models of Cross-Scientific Relations: Incorporating Diachronic Theories (Robert N. McCauley).

Part III: Mechanisms of Mind.

10. Coupling, Emergence, and Explanation (Andy Clark).

11. Is Psychological Explanation Going Extinct? (Cory D. Wright).

12. Who Says You Can't Do a Molecular Biology of Consciousness? (John Bickle).

13. Mind Reading and Mirror Neurons: Exploring Reduction (Huib Looren de Jong and Maurice Schouten).

Name Index.

Subject Index.