Bechtel William
Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States.
Front Integr Neurosci. 2022 Jul 4;16:944303. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2022.944303. eCollection 2022.
A common motivation for engaging in reductionistic research is to ground explanations in the most basic processes operative in the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon to be explained. I argue for a different motivation-directing inquiry to the level of organization at which the components of a mechanism enable the work that results in the phenomenon. In the context of reductionistic accounts of cognitive information processing I argue that this requires going down to a level that is largely overlooked in these discussions, that of chemistry. In discussions of cognitive information processing, the brain is often viewed as essentially an electrical switching system and many theorists treat electrical switching as the level at which mechanistic explanations should bottom out. I argue, drawing on examples of peptidergic and monoaminergic neurons, that how information is processed is determined by the specific chemical reactions occurring in individual neurons. Accordingly, mechanistic explanations of cognitive information processing need to take into account the chemical reactions involved.
从事还原论研究的一个常见动机是，将解释建立在负责待解释现象的机制中最基本的运作过程之上。我主张一种不同的动机——将探究导向这样一个组织层次，在这个层次上，机制的组成部分能够促成导致该现象的工作。在认知信息处理的还原论解释的背景下，我认为这需要深入到一个在这些讨论中基本被忽视的层次，即化学层次。在认知信息处理的讨论中，大脑通常基本上被视为一个电气开关系统，许多理论家将电气开关视为机械解释应追溯到的层次。我以肽能神经元和单胺能神经元为例进行论证，认为信息的处理方式是由单个神经元中发生的特定化学反应决定的。因此，认知信息处理的机械解释需要考虑所涉及的化学反应。
