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No Levels, No Problems: Downward Causation in Neuroscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Markus I. Eronen
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Abstract

I show that the recent account of levels in neuroscience proposed by Craver and Bechtel is unsatisfactory since it fails to provide a plausible criterion for being at the same level and is incompatible with Craver and Bechtel’s account of downward causation. Furthermore, I argue that no distinct notion of levels is needed for analyzing explanations and causal issues in neuroscience: it is better to rely on more well-defined notions such as composition and scale. One outcome of this is that apparent cases of downward causation can be analyzed away.

Type
General Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 2013 , pp. 1042 - 1052
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I thank Bob Richardson, Bill Bechtel, Carl Craver, Albert Newen, Jani Raerinne, Leon de Bruin, Raphael van Riel, and Laura Bringmann for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article or related presentations. I also thank Malte Ahlers for introducing me to the details of retina research. I have presented different versions of this paper at the Trends and Tensions in Intellectual Integration research colloquium at the University of Helsinki (March 2012), the workshop “Metaphysics of Mind and Brain” in Berlin (July 2012), the Eighth International Congress of the Society for Analytic Philosophy in Constance (September 2012), and PSA 2012 in San Diego (November 2012). I thank the audiences of these talks for helpful questions and feedback. The research that led to this publication was financially supported by the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study and the Ruhr University Bochum.

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