Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T21:02:06.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Autonomous Psychology: What it Should and Should Not Entail

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

William Bechtel
William Bechtel*
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Cognitivism is now rather clearly the dominant approach in psychology. Philosophers such as Putnam (1975), Dennett (1978), Lycan (1981), and Cummins (1983) have supported the cognitivist strategy by proposing that mental states are to be defined functionally in terms of their interactions with other mental states. One of the most prominent features of the cognitivist-functionalist position is the autonomy it is thought to bestow upon psychology. Psychology, as viewed from this perspective, describes the processing of mental representations within the mind-brain and does not need to concern itself with the neurological activity that underlies its operation.

The arguments that are raised to support the autonomy of psychology from neurophysiology are arguments against a strong reductionist position that makes psychology dispensable (a view held, for example, by P.S. Churchland (1980)). The arguments are designed to show that there are regularities in nature that are not captured in the laws of physics.

Type
Part II. Philosophy of Psychology and Philosophy of Physics
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 42 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I thank Adele Abrahamsen and Robert Richardson for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Work on this paper was supported by a Fellowship for Independent Study and Research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which is gratefully acknowledged.

References

Bechtel, William. (1982a). “Taking Vitalism and Dualism Seriously: Toward a More Adequate Materialism.” Nature And System 4: 23-43.Google Scholar
Bechtel, William. (1982b). “Two Common Errors in Explaining Phenomena in Biology and Psychology.” Philosophy of Science 49: 549-574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechtel, William. (1983). “A Bridge Between Cognitive Science and Neuroscience: The Functional Architecture of the Mind.” Philosophical Studies 44: 319-330.Google Scholar
Bechtel, William. (1984a). “Taking Intentionality Seriously: What It ‘Really’ Involves.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Bechtel, William. (1984b). “Developing Chemical Explanations of Physiological Phenomena: Research on Intermediary Metabolism.” Paper Presented at Conference on Integrating Scientific Disciplines, Georgia State, May 1984.Google Scholar
Churohland, P.S. (1980). “A Perspective on Mind-Brain Research.” The Journal of Philosophy 77: 185-207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert and Chase, William. (1972). “On the Process of Comparing Sentences Against Pictures.” Cognitive Psychology 3: 472-517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cummins, Robert. (1983). The Nature of Psychological Explanation. Cambridge: MIT-Bradford.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel, C. (1978). Brainstorms. Montgomery, VT: Bradford Press.Google Scholar
Flourens, J.P.M. (1824). Recherchés expérimentales sur les propriétés et les functions du système nerveus dans les animaux vertébres. Paris: Crevot.Google Scholar
Fodor, J.A. (1975). The Language of Thought. Cambridge: Crowell.Google Scholar
Fodor, J.A. (1983). The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge: MIT-Bradford Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gall, F.J. (1825). Sur les functions du cerveau et sur celles chacune de ses parties. Paris: Bailliere. (As translated as Gall's Works on the Functions of the Brain and Each of I t s Parts. (trans.) Lewis, W.. Boston: Marsh, Capen and Lyon, 1835.)Google Scholar
Grodzinsky, Yosef; Swinney, David; and Zurif, Edgar, (in press). “Agrammaticism: Structural Deficits and Antecedent Processing Disruptions.” In Agrammaticism. Edited by M.L. Kean. New York: Academic, Holmes, Frederic L. (1984). “Intermediary Metabolism Before the Krebs Cycle.” Paper Presented at Conference on Integrating Scientific Disciplines, Georgia State, May 1984.Google Scholar
Lycan, William G. (1981). “Psychological Laws.” Philosophical Topics 12: 9-38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClelland, James L. (1979). “On the Time Relations of Mental Processes: An Examination of Systems of Processes in Cascade.” Psychological Review 86: 287-330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClelland, James L. and Rumelhart, David E. (1981). “An Interpretive Activation Model of Context Effects in Letter Perception: Part I. An Account of Basic Findings.” Psychological Review 88: 275-407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minsky, Marvin. (1974). A Framework for Representing Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Memo 306. (Partly reprinted in Mind Design. Edited by John Haugeland. Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books, 1981• Pages 95-128.)Google Scholar
Nagel, Ernest. (1961). The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, Allen and Simon, Herbert A. (1972). Human Problem Solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Newell, Allen and Simon, Herbert A. (1976). “Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search.” Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 19: 113-126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Keefe, John and Nadel, Lynn. (1978). The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Posner, Michael I. (1978) Chronometrio Explorations of Mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Posner, Michael I. and McLeod, Peter. (1982). “Information Processing Models: In Search of Elementary Operations.” Annual Review of Psychology 33: 417-514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. (1975). Mind, Language, and Reality. (Philosophical Papers. Volume 2.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pylyshyn, Zenon. (1980). “Computation and Cognition: Issues in the Foundation of Cognitive Science.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 111-132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pylyshyn, Zenon. (1981). “Complexity and the Study of Artificial and Human Intelligence.” In Mind Design. Edited bv John Haugeland. Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books. Pages.67-94. (This is a revised version of a paper that first appeared in Rlngle, M. (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives on Artifical Intelligence. Atlantic Highlands, NY: Humanities Press, 1979. Pages 23-56.)Google Scholar
Quine, W.V. (1970). “On the Reasons for the Indeterminacy of Translation.” Journal of Philosophy 67: 178-183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W.V. (1975). “On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World.” Erkenntnis 9: 318-328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Robert C. (1979). “Functionalism and Reductionism.” Philosophy of Science 46: 533-558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Robert C. (1982a). “How Not to Reduce a Functional Psychology.” Philosophy of Science 49: 125-137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Robert C. (1982b). “Grades of Organization and the Units of Selection Controversy.” In PSA 1982 Volume 1. Edited by P.D. Asquith and T. Nickles. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 324-310.Google Scholar
Richardson, Robert C. (1984). “On Computational Models of the Mind.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Schank, Roger C. and Abelson, Robert P. (1977). Scripts, Plans. Goals, and Understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Shuttlesworth, Duane; Neill, Darryl; and Ellen, Paul. (1984). “The Place of Physiological Psychology in Neuroscience.” Physiological Psychology 12: 3-7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperling, George A. (1960). “The Information Available in Brief Visual Presentation.” Psychological Monographs 74(11): 1-29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sternberg, Saul. (1969). “The Discovery of Processing Stages: Extensions of the Donner Method.” Aota Psvchologica 30: 276-315.Google Scholar
Waugh, N.C. and Norman, D.A. (1965). “Primary Memory.” Psychological Review 72: 89-104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wimsatt, William C. (1972). “Teleology and the Logical Structure of Function Statements.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 3: 1-80.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, William C. (1976). “Reductionism, Levels of Organization, and the Mind-Body Problem.” In Consciousness and the Brain: A Scientific and Philosophical Inquiry. Edited by Globus, G., Maxwell, G. and Savodnik, I.. New York: Plenum Press. Pages 199-267.Google Scholar
Winograd, Terry. (1972). “Understanding Natural Languages.” Cognitive Psychology 3: 1-19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar