Review - Explaining the Brain Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience by Carl F. Craver

by Maura Pilotti in Metapsychology Online Reviews

"For Carl F. Craver, the philosophy of neuroscience has a labor-intensive and challenging objective to realize and a fundamental truth to reveal.  Its objective is to make explicit the 'widely accepted though largely implicit standards' upon which scientists rely to assess the adequacy of explanations of brain phenomena.  The undeniable fact to uncover, Craver claims, is that at present 'explanations in neuroscience describe mechanisms'.  In Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience, the author takes the goal of divulging the standards of neuroscience seriously, methodically dissecting a variety of interpretations of brain phenomena to highlight their underlying similarities and differences and their strengths and weaknesses. Craver also cleverly concentrates on a few key illustrations of mechanistic explanations in neuroscience and then literally disassembles them to expose the norms that define their foundations..."   

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