Mechanisms and Psychological Explanation. C. Wright and W. Bechtel

 DRAFT (to be proofread)

Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Volume 12: Philosophy of Psychology. 2006. Pp. 31-79.

A crucial element in psychological explanation is mechanism. Psychologists tend to explain psychological phenomena in terms of mechanisms, but what is a mechanism? This is a (substantive) philosophical issue, point out the autors.

They start with Descartes. In his view the natural world (including human body) was mechanical. He understood this concept according to the mechanisms developed in the 17th century, wich "producted their effects because of the shape, motion, and contact between their parts" (p. 32). The inmaterial mind was excluded from mechanistic explanation.

Although philosophers such as La Mettrie argued for extending the mechanistic view to the human mind, the anti-mechanistic attitude was predominat. The authors illustrate this [tendency] whih the controversy about localizationism at the beginning of the 19th century. They appears to relate the localizationsim proposed by Gall (phrenology) to mechanistic explanation as opposed to holistic interpretations (Flourens). Likewise they connect, "at root", associatinist psychology to the mechanistic tradition ("since it constures thinking as involving an assembling or associating of ideas", p. 36) , in this approach the brain would be a mechanism for making associations [but thas appears to point to the holistic conception!].
I do not see how the mechanical (or mechanistic?) explanation relate to the link between a type of mental process and the brain. Broca was localizationist while Wernicke was rather associationit. In the 20th century a very holistic and anti-localiztionist conception was initialy adopted, but from 19860s-1980s researchers embraced a localization perspective what [able they] lead to a  substantial ("dramatic")  progress in identifyng areas of specialization in the brain.

This historic overview is not very useful in my opinion, the substantial content begins when the authors address contemporary conceptions of mechanism (p. 44), whose main feature may be the idea of "composite hierarchical systems" (p. 45), and, specially, when they dicuss the mechanistic explanation, in terms of ontic explanation (Salmon 1984), as an alternative to the traditional deductive-nomological model (p. 47 ss.) (see the connection to laws).  They provide a number of interesting examples of mechanistic explanations both theoretical and in particular sciences. Relevant aspects in these examples are the role of casual relations, and the emphasis in how the phenomenon (or the explanandum) is produced. To point out certain regularities is not enough to count as explanation (p. 48).
However, the authors are critical regarding the distintion ontic/epistemic (allegedly parallel to the distinction mechanistic/deductive-nomological), that they consider naive (p. 50). In this sentse they point out in particular the problem to take the ontic conception literally (ibid.).

LA MENTE COMPUTACIONAL

En esta entrada consideraré algunas cuestiones sobre la concepción computacional de la mente, comenzando por lo que significa que una mente compute o que el cerebro-mente humano posea propiedades computacionales, una idea clave en la constitución de la Ciencia Cognitiva. Entre los coceptos que habrá que examinar las nociones de símbolo y de representación serán cruciales.

EL ANÁLISIS DE LA MEMORIA DE STERNBERG

El carácter normativo de la ética: Para una crítica del biologismo desde Kant

“En una filosofía práctica donde no se trata para nosotros de admitir fundamentos de lo que sucede, sino leyes de lo que debe suceder, aún cuando ello no suceda nunca (...) no necesitamos instaurar investigaciones acerca de los fundamentos de por qué unas cosas agradan o desagradan... no necesitamos investigar en qué descanse el sentimiento de placer y dolor, y cómo de aquí se originen deseos e inclinaciones y de ellas máximas..."
Kant. Fundamentación de la Metafísica de las Costumbres.