Mark Couch

An important issue to understand concerns what makes something a relevant part of a neural mechanism. This has been called the problem of “relevance” (Craver 2007) by philosophers of neuroscience. A neural mechanism is a structure with parts organized to perform a behavior, and scientists need an account of the difference between the relevant and irrelevant parts. This is a problem for scientists interested in understanding the brain and how its parts contribute to its operations. This talk will describe several accounts of relevance and explain which one I think should be preferred. The first account comes from the philosophers Bechtel and Mundale (1999) and concerns the relation between psychological and neural states. Their interest is with how researchers classify the neural states underlying the psychological states of different species. Their account is concerned with the practice of how neuroscientists “identify brain parts” (177). Based on their description of Korbinian Brodmann’s neuroanatomical approach to mapping the brain, they suggest relevance can be explained in terms of “the actual procedures by which neuroscientists identify brain areas” (201). While interesting this approach has some problems. The main concern is that it depends on the resolution of disagreements among scientists about how to classify brain areas, since alternative approaches for classifying neural areas exist (Figdor 2010). A second account of relevance comes from the influential philosopher of neuroscience Craver (2007). On his account, a relevant part is understood in terms of the notion of an intervention, in the spirit of Woodward’s (2003) theory of causal explanation. The idea is that a part is relevant to a mechanism’s behavior when an intervention on the part brings about changes to the mechanism’s behavior. While this account improves on the first one there are still problems. One problem is that there are difficulties explicating the notion of an intervention on the account. The notion of an intervention requires the parts to be independent from the behavior of the mechanism, and some think this condition cannot be met. So it is unclear that this account solves the problem. The third approach from Couch (2011) is called the “INUS notion of relevance.” This account holds that a relevant part of a mechanism is a necessary part of a sufficient condition for a behavior. I will explain what this means and how the account helps us in understanding the notion of a relevant part. I show that not only does the account avoid the concern with the previous account, but it is general enough to be applied to mechanisms in neuroscience and elsewhere.

Mark Couch (PhD Columbia University) is interested in the areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. His work is centered around the issue of how we should understand various kinds of explanations and the way they apply to human behavior and the mind. He has published a number of articles in these areas in such journals as Philosophy of Science, Biology and Philosophy, Synthese, Philosophical Psychology, and Frontiers in Psychology. He is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Seton Hall University in NJ, where he also directs the Liberal Studies program.