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Neural correlates without reduction: the case of the critical period

  • S.I. : New Metaphysics of Science
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Abstract

Researchers in the cognitive sciences often seek neural correlates of psychological constructs. In this paper, I argue that even when these correlates are discovered, they do not always lead to reductive outcomes. To this end, I examine the psychological construct of a critical period and briefly describe research identifying its neural correlates. Although the critical period is correlated with certain neural mechanisms, this does not imply that there is a reductionist relationship between this psychological construct and its neural correlates. Instead, this case study suggests that there may be many-to-many psychological-neural mappings, not just one-to-one or even one-to-many relations between psychological kinds and types of neural mechanisms.

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Notes

  1. For fear, see LeDoux (1998); for envy, see Takahashi et al. (2009); for memory consolidation, see Shadmehr and Holcomb (1997); for consciousness, see Rees et al. (2002).

  2. Lorenz (1937) seems to have borrowed the term “critical period” from embryology to describe the phenomenon of imprinting. See also Michel and Tyler (2005) and Bateson and Hinde (1987) for brief historical surveys of empirical work.

  3. Much of the recent debate concerning multiple realization has revolved around the issue of whether the neural or biological realizers of allegedly multiply realized psychological kinds are indeed “relevantly” different, or whether the psychological kinds themselves are “relevantly” the same. Opponents of multiple realization cast doubt on the claim that the psychological kinds have relevantly different realizers at the neural level (e.g. Bechtel and Mundale 1999; Shapiro 2004; Polger 2009). Meanwhile, proponents of multiple realization reply by producing cases in which the realizers are indeed relevantly different (e.g. Aizawa and Gillett 2009; Weiskopf 2011).

  4. A similar situation seems to arise in other instances of purported psycho-neural reductions, whereby what is reduced to neuroscience is a limiting case or boundary condition of a certain psychological phenomenon rather than the phenomenon itself. Compare Sullivan (2008, p. 509) on the alleged reduction of memory consolidation to the neural mechanism of long-term potentiation (LTP): memory consolidation initiation has been reduced to neural level, not memory consolidation.

  5. Fodor thinks that individualism “is a constitutive principle of science” (1987, p. 45) and claims that planet is not a scientific kind since it is individuated relationally. But planets have properties (e.g. life-supporting features) that they would not have if they were just rocks hurtling through space.

  6. For a discussion of some of the selection pressures that would favor the emergence of critical periods in different species and for different capacities, see Immelmann and Suomi (1981).

  7. In Khalidi (2017), I make a similar case for the psychological capacity of episodic memory.

  8. I am grateful to Joshua Mugg and three anonymous referees for Synthese for very helpful comments that led to numerous improvements to this paper. I am also very much indebted to audiences at several conferences for feedback on earlier versions, including the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice, the Philosophy of Science Association, the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Sciences, and especially the New Trends in the Metaphysics of Science conference, whose organizer Max Kistler kindly invited me to submit a paper for this special issue.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Program, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada

    Muhammad Ali Khalidi

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  1. Muhammad Ali Khalidi
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Khalidi, M.A. Neural correlates without reduction: the case of the critical period. Synthese 197, 1947–1959 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1439-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1439-3

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