L’agenda ontologica della neuroscienza cognitiva: le neuroscienze come “arbitro” delle categorie psicologiche (e viceversa)

The article aims to rationally reconstruct the ontology of cognitive neuroscience by satisfying three requirements: an ontology of cognitive functions that describes any mental operation, an ontology of neural structures that describes any brain part, and a one-to-one correspondence between each cognitive function and a neural structure. It examines assumptions behind these requirements and skeptical arguments against them, then considers counterarguments to the skepticism. The strongest defense of this research agenda is argued to be the empirical success of the heuristics it prescribes. The heuristics show how mutual constraints from psychology and cognitive neuroscience provide criteria for choosing and integrating cognitive functions and neural structures.

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Abstract

This article aims at providing a rational reconstruction of the ontology of Cognitive Neuroscience. That should satisfy three desiderata: (a) an ontology of cognitive functions describing any operation of the mind; (b) an ontology of neural structure describing any part of the brain; (c) a one-to-one correspondence between each cognitive function and a given neural structure. The assumptions sustaining these desiderata will be examined, as well as some skeptical arguments against them. Then, after having surveyed some possible counterarguments to the skeptical objections, it will be argued that the strongest defense of this research agenda is the empirical success of the heuristics that it prescribes. Thus, such heuristics will be described, showing how the mutual constraints of psychology and cognitive neuroscience provides some criteria for choosing (and integrating) cognitive functions and neural structures.