Relating Psychology and Neuroscience: Taking Up the Challenges

Advances in brain research have invigorated an ongoing debate about the relations between psychology and neuroscience. Cognitive science has historically neglected the study of neuroscience, although the influential subfield of cognitive neuroscience has since attempted to combine information processing approaches with an awareness of brain functioning. Although cognitive neuroscience does not necessarily support a reductionist approach, certain philosophers of mind have suggested that psychological constructs will eventually be replaced with descriptions of neurobiological processes. One implicitly popular response to this proposal is that neuroscience represents a level of implementation that is separate from a level of cognition. Although recent work in the philosophy of mind has gone some way to explicating the concept of psychological and neuroscience approaches as different levels, it is suggested here that a tidy framework of levels is somewhat tenuous. A particular challenge comes from the metatheoretical position of embodiment, which places the mind within the body and brain of an active organism which is deeply embedded in the world. In providing an integration of brain, body, mind, and culture, embodiment exemplifies an important line of defense against claims of the possible reduction of psychology by neuroscience.