Schaal, D. W. (2005).
Naming our concerns about neuroscience: A review of Bennett and Hacker’s
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 84, 683-692.
Bennett and Hacker use conceptual analysis to appraise the theoretical language
of modern cognitive neuroscientists, and conclude that neuroscientific theory is
largely dualistic despite the fact that neuroscientists equate mind with the
operations of the brain. The central error of cognitive neuroscientists is to
commit the mereological fallacy, the tendency to ascribe to the brain
psychological concepts that only make sense when ascribed to whole animals. The
authors review how the mereological fallacy is committed in theories of memory,
perception, thinking, imagery, belief, consciousness, and other psychological
processes studied by neuroscientists, and the consequences that fallacious
reasoning have for our understanding of how the brain participates in cognition
and behavior. Several behavior-analytic concepts may themselves be nonsense
based on thorough conceptual analyses in which the criteria for sense and
nonsense are found in the ways the concepts are used in ordinary language.
Nevertheless, the authors’ nondualistic approach and their consistent focus on
behavioral criteria for the application of psychological concepts make
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience an important contribution to cognitive
neuroscience.
Key words: cognitive neuroscience, conceptual analysis, dualism, mereological
fallacy, reductionism