Bickle John
Department of Philosophy and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
J Physiol Paris. 2007 Jul-Nov;101(4-6):230-5. doi: 10.1016/j.jphysparis.2007.11.009. Epub 2008 Jan 8.
Social cognition appears to present phenomena that "ruthlessly reductive" molecular and cellular neuroscience cannot fruitfully investigate or explain. This is because the causes of such phenomena are distal and external not only to the molecular machinery of individual neurons, but to individual brains. However, the "reductionist's epiphany" insists that to the extent that we understand the specific molecular mechanisms that underlie phenomena upon which most or all social cognition depends, we can be sure that molecular mechanisms for the broader phenomena can be found using standard experimental methods from molecular and cellular cognition. Furthermore, social recognition memory consolidation is required for virtually all types of social cognition, and its specific molecular mechanisms have now been uncovered experimentally. These same molecular mechanisms obtain across a wide variety of divergent species (from invertebrates to vertebrates). Thus we can expect to find the molecular mechanisms of the broader social cognitive functions that must "plug into" these specific molecular mechanisms, despite these functions' typically distal, external initial causes. This conclusion rests on explicit scientific facts, not just on some vague philosophical commitment to physicalism about mind.
社会认知似乎呈现出一些现象，而“极端简化”的分子和细胞神经科学无法有效地研究或解释这些现象。这是因为这些现象的原因不仅对于单个神经元的分子机制而言是间接和外在的，对于单个大脑来说也是如此。然而，“还原论者的顿悟”坚持认为，就我们理解大多数或所有社会认知所依赖的现象背后的特定分子机制而言，我们可以确信能够使用分子和细胞认知领域的标准实验方法找到更广泛现象的分子机制。此外，几乎所有类型的社会认知都需要社会识别记忆巩固，并且其特定的分子机制现已通过实验揭示。这些相同的分子机制在各种各样不同的物种（从无脊椎动物到脊椎动物）中都存在。因此，尽管这些更广泛的社会认知功能通常具有间接的、外在的初始原因，但我们仍有望找到那些必然“接入”这些特定分子机制的更广泛社会认知功能的分子机制。这一结论基于明确的科学事实，而不仅仅是基于对心灵物理主义的某种模糊的哲学承诺。
