Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories

The computational brain: Patricia S. Churchland and Terrence J. Sejnowski (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992); xi, 544 pages, $39.95

which is used to describe a third component of thinking processes, particularly preverbal, and it denotes the concept that the world is activated by some generalized "energy" that links together causally all objects and events ; it is presumably revealed by a person's lack of curiosity about causal connections, as though they were self-evident. Aside from the rather frequent use of such key words, having strong connotations for this reviewer far away from what the author is aiming to denote, the book is written in a lucid and stimulating style that makes reading it an invigorating intellectual exercise. It is a book that is likely to have somewhat limited attraction to the full-time clinician, especially one treating adult patients. And child psychiatrists and psychologists, if reasonably well read, will most likely be familiar with the majority of references from which this author has synthesized his material. On the other hand, the scholarly and refreshing con¬ ceptual approaches of the author will appeal to psychologists, philosophers, linguists, and psychiatrists with a research bent and anyone else who wants to be provoked to do some thinking on the problems of language, language development, and the psychology of cognition. Louis A. GOTTSCHALK, M.D. Plans and the Structure of Behavior. By George A Miller, Eugene gALANTER, and Karl H. Pribram. Price, $5.00. Pp. 226. Henry Holt & Co., Inc., New York 17, 1960. This is an important book for psychiatrists and behavioral scientists, since it presents a clear, concise study of the application of cybernetics, information and computer theory to the problem of analyzing behavior. The authors have been actively engaged in behavioral research in different areas\p=m-\Millerin information and communication, Galanter in experimental psychology, and Pribram in neurophysiology. The book resulted from a series of discussions which they engaged in during a year they spent together at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, Calif. Their original intent was to write a diary, as it were, of the development of their ideas and, fortunately, enough of this remains to make the book clear, easy to read, and interesting. It is also fortunate, however, that in the final writing a variety of studies comparing the "behavior" of computing machines with human "cognitive behavior" have been reviewed and summarized. The result is one of the best presentations of the present status of the brain-computer problem. The authors, however, do not discuss certain aspects of this problem, such as the difference between the brain and its vast number of parallel channels, but few operations, and the modern high-speed computer with its few channels and vast numbers of operations. This omission is consistent with their interest, since it would introduce the question of mechanisms rather than the problem of the structure of behavior as it is observed in everyday life in the clinic and in experiments on learning, conditioning, etc. Similarly, they do not discuss the qualitative differences between mechanisms of memory in the computer and those in the brain. In the former, a "memory"\p=m-\ i.e., stored information\p=m-\isidentified, metaphorically speaking, by an address, whereas no such mechanism is known in the brain (personal communication, Dr. Julian Bigelow). With few exceptions, however, the data, concepts, and theories presented are handled with elegant precision, as illustrated by the discussion of Sherrington's concepts of the "Reflex" and the "Synapse," Kurt Lewin's ideas of "tension states," and the numerous references to the work of Newell, Shaw, and Simon on computers and logic. There are, nevertheless, areas with

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fjors.1968.86.pdf

Plans and the Structure of Behavior

There exists a divide between findings from integrative neuroscience and clinical research focused on mechanisms of psychopathology. Specifically, a clear correspondence does not emerge between clusters of complex clinical symptoms and dysregulated neurobiological systems, with many apparent redundancies. For instance, many mental disorders involve multiple disruptions in putative mechanistic factors (e.g., excessive fear, deficient impulse control), and different disrupted mechanisms appear to play major roles in many disorders. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework is a heuristic to facilitate the incorporation of behavioral neuroscience in the study of psychopathology. Such integration might be achieved by shifting the central research focus of the field away from clinical description to more squarely examine aberrant mechanisms. RDoC first aims to identify reliable and valid psychological and biological mechanisms and their disruptions, with an eventual goal of understanding how anomalies in these mechanisms drive psychiatric symptoms. This approach will require new methods to ascertain samples, relying on hypothesized psychopathological mechanisms to define experimental groups instead of traditional diagnostic categories. RDoC, by design, uncouples research efforts from clinically familiar categories to focus directly on fundamental mechanisms of psychopathology. RDoC proposes a matrix of domains and levels of analyses and invites the field to test and refine the framework. If RDoC is successful, the domains will ultimately relate to familiar psychopathologies in ways that promote new knowledge regarding etiology and more efficient development of new preventive and treatment interventions.

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Developing constructs for psychopathology research: research domain criteria.

Review of Principles of Behavior.

Publisher Summary This chapter outlines the history of machine-based approaches to psychology. The work on mechanistic explanation that is having a large impact on the philosophy of science is described in the chapter. The research on motivation and reward exemplifies the common explanatory practice in psychology — decomposing a composite, hierarchically organized system into its component parts and operations and then constructing models that abet scientific understanding of the way they might be organized so as to comprise the mechanism's activity. Mechanistic approaches reconfigure a number of issues in the philosophy of psychology beyond that of explanation. Two issues are considered in this chapter: the question of reductionism and the question of scientific discoveries. The mechanistic explanation is partially reductionistic in the sense that it appeals to lower-level parts and their operations in explaining why a mechanism behaves as it does; but mechanistic explanation is not reductionistic in the sense of deriving higher-level theories from lower-level ones nor in the sense of supplanting the explanations of causal processes at higher levels, where the mechanism as a whole engages other entities in its environment.

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Mechanisms and psychological explanation

This chapter focuses on what sort of explanatory practices are distinctive of experimental or scientific psychology. A cursory look at the history of the discipline – particularly, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – reveals a rich collage of explanatory forms and strategies that have been invoked to render intelligible our mental lives and behavioral repertoires. Technological developments led theorists such as Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver to provide a mathematical characterization of information, and others such as Alan Turing and Emil Post to explore how it might be manipulated formally in mechanical systems. The dominant account in twentieth-century epistemology represented knowledge linguaformally, with propositions reporting sensory experiences justifying, by their logical relations, those propositions that do not. By accommodating both a reductionist and an emergentist perspective, mechanistic explanation provides a unifying framework that integrates a variety of explanatory projects in psychology.

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What is Psychological Explanation

The free-energy principle claims that biological systems behave adaptively maintaining their physical integrity only if they minimize the free energy of their sensory states. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, and function of the brain, and has been called a “postulate,” a “mandatory principle,” and an “imperative.” While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the complex relationship between physical environment, life, and mind, its epistemic status and scope are unclear. Also unclear is how the free-energy principle relates to prominent theoretical approaches to life science phenomena, such as organicism and mechanicism. This paper clarifies both issues, and identifies limits and prospects for the free-energy principle as a first principle in the life sciences.

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First Principles in the Life Sciences: The free-energy principle, organicism, and mechanism

Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen and Cory D. Wright Part I: Varieties of Pluralism 2 Three Questions for Truth Pluralism Michael Lynch 3 Lynch's Functionalist Theory of Truth Marian David 4 Alethic Functionalism and the Norm of Belief Pascal Engel 5 Pluralism about Truth as Alethic Disjunctivism Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen and Cory D. Wright 6 Truth, Winning and Simple Determination Pluralism Douglas E. Edwards 7 A Plurality of Pluralisms Crispin Wright Part II: Pluralism, Correspondence and Descriptions 8 Forms of Correspondence: The Intricate Route from Thought to Reality Gila Sher 9 The Synthetic Unity of Truth Robert Barnard and Terence Horgan 10 Alethic Pluralism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth Richard Fumerton 11 Naturalizing Pluralism about Truth Wolfram Hinzen 12 On Describing the World Dorothy Grover Part III: Pluralism, Deflationism and Paradox 13 Deflationism, Pluralism, Expressivism, Pragmatism Simon Blackburn 14 Should We Be Pluralists about Truth? Max Kolbel 15 Deflationism Trumps Pluralism! Julian Dodd 16 Deflated Truth Pluralism J. C. Beall 17 Pluralism and Paradox Aaron Cotnoir

Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/11783/2/BRCG_(MC%2C_CW).pdf

Cory Wright

Papers

Mechanisms and psychological explanation

What is Psychological Explanation

First Principles in the Life Sciences: The free-energy principle, organicism, and mechanism

Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates

Explanatory pluralism: An unrewarding prediction error for free energy theorists.