The McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences
Ian Gold
Patricia Churchland has characterized the developing interaction between psychology and neuroscience as a process of 'co-evolution' in which the sciences of the mind constrain and provide a creative stimulus to one another. Co-evolution is undoubtedly correct both as a description of some of actual neuroscience and as a prescription for recalcitrant specialists. But what sort of theory of mind will the co-evolutionary process lead to? One strategy for answering this question is to look at those areas of cognitive neuroscience where success is actually being achieved and attempt to characterize the nature of the explanations being produced. The purpose of this project is to look at one case study the cognitive neuropsychiatry of schizophrenia in order to begin to develop accounts of the nature of explanation in cognitive neuroscience.