Neurocognitive Mechanisms
Gualtiero Piccinini
Abstract
Abstract This book provides the foundations for a neurocomputational explanation of cognition based on contemporary cognitive neuroscience. An ontologically egalitarian account of composition and realization, according to which all levels are equally real, is defended. Multiple realizability and mechanisms are explicated in light of this ontologically egalitarian framework. A goal-contribution account of teleological functions is defended, and so is a mechanistic version of functionalism. This provides the foundation for a mechanistic account of computation, which in turn clarifies the ways in which the computational theory of cognition is a multilevel mechanistic theory supported by contemporary cognitive neuroscience. The book argues that cognition is computational at least in a generic sense. The computational theory of cognition is defended from standard objections yet a priori arguments for the computational theory of cognition are rebutted. The book contends that the typical vehicles of neural computations are representations and that, contrary to the received view, neural representations are observable and manipulable in the laboratory. The book also contends that neural computations are neither digital nor analog; instead, neural computations are sui generis. The book concludes by investigating the relation between computation and consciousness, suggesting that consciousness may have a functional yet not wholly computational nature.