Carl F. Craver. Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience

Abstract

Human beings enjoy a wide range of mental capacities: we learn, remember, and think. And we have these capacities largely in virtue of the brain. But how does the brain work? Carl Craver’s Explaining the Brain provides a careful, detailed examination of the explanatory framework employed in contemporary neuroscience and how this framework revolves around the notion of a mechanism. Moreover, he argues that an adequate appreciation of this framework requires reconsidering a number of issues in the philosophy of science.