• DOI:10.1007/s11229-011-9898-4
• Corpus ID: 6726609

Integrating psychology and neuroscience: functional analyses as mechanism sketches

@article{Piccinini2011IntegratingPA,
  title={Integrating psychology and neuroscience: functional analyses as mechanism sketches},
  author={Gualtiero Piccinini and Carl F. Craver},
  journal={Synthese},
  year={2011},
  volume={183},
  pages={283-311}
}

• G. Piccinini, C. Craver
• Published 11 March 2011
• Psychology
• Synthese

We sketch a framework for building a unified science of cognition. This unification is achieved by showing how functional analyses of cognitive capacities can be integrated with the multilevel mechanistic explanations of neural systems. The core idea is that functional analyses are sketches of mechanisms, in which some structural aspects of a mechanistic explanation are omitted. Once the missing aspects are filled in, a functional analysis turns into a full-blown mechanistic explanation. By this process, functional analyses are seamlessly integrated with multilevel mechanistic explanations.