Neuroscientific Explanation with Carl Craver (Index)

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The structure and form of neuroscientific explanations is my main area of interest and I have yet to write about on this blog. That is all about to change. Today, I begin a series on the work of Carl Craver, a philosopher who looks directly at the nature of neuroscientific explanations.

Craver has one of my favourite takes on the subject since he offers a fantastically detailed examination of multi-level mechanistic explanations. If you are intimidated by that phrase now, don't worry it will all make sense at the end.

In forthcoming entries I will go through the majority* of his scholarly articles, offering summaries and comments along the way.


Index to the Series

1. "Thinking About Mechanisms" by Machamer, Darden and Craver

• Part 1: Introduction to Mechanisms
• Part 2: The Depolarisation Mechanism
• Part 3: Hierarchies, Schemata and Intelligibility

2. "When Mechanistic Models Explain"

• Part 1: Models and Explanations
• Part 2: The Hodgkin-Huxley Model
• Part 3: Evaluating Models

3. "Top-down Causation without Top-Down Causes"

• Part 1: Mechanisms and their Levels
• Part 2: Constitutive Relations
• Part 3: Some Problem Cases

4. "Interlevel Experiments and Multilevel Mechanisms in the Neuroscience of Memory"

• Part 1: The LTP Mechanism
• Part 2: The Levels of the LTP Mechanism
• Part 3: Interlevel Experiments and Integration

5. "The Making of a Memory Mechanism"

6. "Role Functions, Mechanism and Hierarchy"

7. "Dissociable Realisation and Kind-Splitting"

*I have included articles which I was able to access online (through university subscription). Craver also has a book published in 2007 by the Oxford University Press, which you can purchase here or here. I have not read this book. I assume there is great overlap between its contents and the contents of these scholarly articles, but I may be wrong.