Explaining the Brain

by Carl F. Craver

Overview

What distinguishes good explanations in neuroscience from bad? Carl F. Craver constructs and defends standards for evaluating neuroscientific explanations that are grounded in a systematic view of what neuroscientific explanations are: descriptions of multilevel mechanisms. In developing this approach, he draws on a wide range of examples in the history of neuroscience (e.g. Hodgkin and Huxleys model of the action potential and LTP as a putative explanation for different kinds of memory), as well as recent philosophical work on the nature of scientific explanation. Readers in neuroscience, psychology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science will find much to provoke and stimulate them in this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199568222
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/17/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Carl F. Craver is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis.

Table of Contents

Preface1. Introduction: Starting With Neuroscience2. Explanation and Causal Relevance3. Causal Relevance and Manipulation4. The Norms of Mechanistic Explanation5. A Field-Guide to Levels6. Nonfundamental Explanation7. The Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience

Editorial Reviews

"There have been pockets of activity, I would say, but few systematic accounts that explore the field of neuroscience as a whole. Carl Craver's book Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience represents this new direction, and an excellent addition to a burgeoning field it is.... Explaining the Brain is timely, well-written, and meticulously argued.... I highly recommend this text to anyone with any interest in how theories in neuroscience are constructed.... As one of the first in-depth treatments of theory-construction in neuroscience, Craver's book sets the bar high. It will be difficult indeed to surpass this work in the near future."-Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"Overall, Explaining the Brain is a complete read of thoughtful revelations on the inner workings of neuroscience intermixed with a few temperate insinuations on how its complex and ostensibly unsystematic workings may be unified. In summary, Craver's text is a read which is intense and...undeniably enlightening."—Metpsychology Online Reviews

From the Publisher