Neuroreductionism

Abstract

Neuroscience pivots on the answers to four connected questions: What are the relations between physical events in the brain and the mental events underlying perception, volition, memory, and consciousness? Those relations may be of three kinds: either identity, or correlation, or causal connection. Reductionism is a methodology for showing those relations. Reductionism is concerned with order, i.e., with information about relations, and not only with matter and energy. In addition to showing identities, and correlations, which are noncausal, reductionism aims at understanding causalities in terms of connecting, organizing, controlling, and stabilizing mechanisms or forces necessary for the functional relationships of parts to be maintained in the organized whole.

King Hui had a carver named Ting. When this carver Ting was carving a bull for the king, every touch of his carving knife was as carefully timed as the movements of a dancer. . . . “Wonderful,” said the king, “I could never believe that the art of carving could reach such a point as this.” “I am a lover of Tao,” replied Ting, “and have succeeded in applying it to the art of carving. When I first began to carve I fixed my gaze on the animal in front of me. After three years I no longer saw it as a whole bull, but as a thing already divided into parts. . . .Unerringly my knife slips into the natural cleavages. . . .And so, by conforming my work to the structure with which I am dealing, I have arrived at a point where my knife never touches even the smallest ligament or tendon. . . . Where part meets part there is always space, and a knife-blade has no thickness. Insert an instrument that has no thickness into a structure and surely it cannot fail to have plenty of room.” Chuang Tzu (ca. 399–295 B.C.)