Would we know (and shold we think that we would know) all about the mind if we knew all about the brain? The debate about reductionism and reductivism in philosophy of mind

Abstract

The paper distinguishes the debate between reductionism and antireductionism (centered around the question whether sciences such as psychology are in principle reducible to neurosciences and eventually to physics) from a debate between reductivism and antireductivism (centered around the practical question whether we should prefer neuroscientific theories over psychological theories). The first part of the paper surveys various arguments for and against reductionism and ends with a plea for agnosticism. The second part of the paper contains an argument that even if reductionism is true, we should all be antireductivists.