Michael Anderson, Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science at Western University will be giving a CTN Seminar.
Title: Neural reuse, dynamics, and constraints: Getting beyond componential mechanistic explanation of neural function
Abstract: In this talk, I will review some of the evidence for neural reuse--a form of neural plasticity whereby existing neural resources are put to many different uses--and use it to motivate an argument that we need to move beyond (although not necessarily abandon) componential mechanistic explanation in the neurosciences. I claim that what is needed to capture the full range of neural plasticity and dynamics is a style of explanation based on the notion of constraints--enabling constraints in particular. I will give examples of neural phenomena that are hard to capture in the mechanistic framework, and show that they are naturally handled by enabling constraints. As this moves us away from faculty psychology, it has some important implications for the ontology of cognition.