Pluralistic Mechanism

Abel Wajnerman Paz
2017 THEORIA : an International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science  
An argument recently proposed by Chirimuuta (2014) seems to motivate the rejection of the claims that every neurocognitive phenomenon can have a mechanistic explanation and that every neurocognitive explanation is mechanistic. In this paper, I focus on efficient coding models involving the so-called "canonical neural computations" and argue that although they imply some form of pluralism, they are compatible with two mechanistic generalizations: all neurocognitive explanations are (at least in
more » ... art) mechanistic; and all neurocognitive phenomena that have an explanation have (at least) a purely mechanistic explanation.
doi:10.1387/theoria.16877 fatcat:gqkt67j2dje4bkmyk7tys7c22a