Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind

by Gualtiero Piccinini (Editor)

Overview

This volume provides a cohesive and comprehensive case that cognitive neuroscience is maturing into an integrated, interdisciplinary science that is transforming our understanding of the mind.

The rise of cognitive neuroscience has prompted a rethinking of levels, computation, representation, psychological explanation, and the relation between psychology and neuroscience. Despite these advances, many philosophers and scientists of the mind continue to write as though cognitive neuroscience didn’t exist and psychology remains autonomous from neuroscience or, perhaps, they maintain that cognitive neuroscience has not deepened our understanding of the mind. The chapters in this volume showcase important ways in which cognitive neuroscience makes a profound difference to our understanding of the mind. The contributors address a wide range of topics, including explanation, computation, representation, inference, emotion, language, intention, and thought. Together, they demonstrate the ways in which cognitive neuroscience supersedes traditional cognitive science and supports a unified, integrated, multilevel, mechanistic, neurocomputational account of the mind.

Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind is essential reading for scholars and advanced students interested in the foundations of the philosophy of mind and the mind sciences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032602981
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/17/2025
Series:	Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gualtiero Piccinini is Florence G. Kline Professor and Curators' Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri. He received the Simon Award (2014) and the Barwise Prize (2018). His publications include Physical Computation (2015), Neurocognitive Mechanisms (2020), and The Physical Signature of Computation (with Neal G. Anderson, 2024).

Table of Contents

1. New Foundations for the Philosophy of Mind and the Mind Sciences Gualtiero Piccinini  2. A NeuroEcological Architecture for Situated Cognizing Systems Luis H. Favela  3. Confirmation and Explanation in Neuroscience: Reassessing the Relationship between Functional and Mechanistic Approaches Marcin Milkowski  4. Cognitive Ontology in Terms of Cognitive Homology: The Role of Brain, Behavior, and Environment for Individuating Cognitive Categories Beate Krickel and Mariel K. Goddu  5. Representational Vehicles, from Regions to Cells Adina Roskies  6. Frames of Discovery and the Formats of Cognitive Representation Dimitri Coelho Mollo and Alfredo Vernazzani  7. Structural Representation as Complexity Management Manolo Martínez  8. The Mind-Brain is a Computer, but What is (Neural) Computation? Corey J. Maley and Oron Shagrir  9. Inference in (Neuro)cognitive Systems Urte Laukaityte and Matteo Colombo  10. Interventionist Methods for Interpreting Deep Neural Networks Raphaël Millière and Cameron Buckner  11. From Cognitive Semantics to Neurosemantics: The Neuroscience Turn in the Empirical Study of Word Meaning Fabrizio Calzavarini  12. Talking to Ourselves: Inner Speech and Natural Language as a Language of Thought Wade Munroe  13. Working Memory and the Neural Basis of Intention Wayne Wu  14. Basic Emotion Theory Meets the Brain: Radicals and Reformists in the Arena of Neuroscience Marco Viola and Fausto Caruana

Editorial Reviews

"This volume brings together some of the top researchers in philosophy of neuroscience to address some of the major issues in the field. The novelty and breadth of the contributions are really impressive. Clearly, the authors are not looking to just re-tread old ground but to advance philosophical discussion in a way informed by the most cutting-edge neuroscientific results."

Dan Burnston, Tulane University, USA

From the Publisher