- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience
- Contributors
- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience
- Introduction
- Molecules, Systems, and Behavior: Another View of Memory Consolidation
- Biological Clocks: Explaining with Models of Mechanisms
- Methodology and Reduction in the Behavioral Neurosciences: Object Exploration as a Case Study
- The Science of Research and the Search for Molecular Mechanisms of Cognitive Functions
- The Lower Bounds of Cognition: What Do Spinal Cords Reveal?
- Lessons for Cognitive Science from Neurogenomics
- Learning, Neuroscience, and the Return of Behaviorism
- fMRI: A Modern Cerebrascope? The Case of Pain
- The Embedded Neuron, the Enactive Field?
- The Role of Neurobiology in Differentiating the Senses
- Enactivism's Vision: Neurocognitive Basis or Neurocognitively Baseless?
- Space, Time, and Objects
- Neurocomputational Models: Theory, Application, Philosophical Consequences
- Neuroanatomy and Cosmology
- The Emerging Theory of Motivation
- Inference to the Best Decision
- Emergentism at the Crossroads of Philosophy, Neurotechnology, and the Enhancement Debate
- What's “Neu” in Neuroethics?
- Confabulations about People and Their Limbs, Present or Absent
- Delusional Experience
- The Case for Animal Emotions: Modeling Neuropsychiatric Disorders
- Levels, Individual Variation, and Massive Multiple Realization in Neurobiology
- Neuro‐Eudaimonics or Buddhists Lead Neuroscientists to the Seat of Happiness
- The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This article looks at the research methodologies in behavioral neurosciences focusing on reductionism and object exploration procedures for rodents. It provides a brief description of reduction and reductionism and describes the object exploration methodology as it is used in behavioral neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and psychopharmacology. It discusses three of a series of experiments conducted using the object exploration methodology which showed that the affordances of the to-be-explored objects affect the way rodents explore objects. It concludes that neuroscientists, even those who focus their research on genes or neurotransmitter effects, must attend closely to the details of behavior and that neuroscientists who use the object exploration methodology must adopt an extended cognition approach.
Keywords: behavioral neurosciences, research methodologies, reductionism, object exploration, behavioral genetics, psychopharmacology, neuroscientists, cognition approach
Anthony Chemero is Associate Professor in the Scientific and Philosophical Studies of Mind Program and the Psychology Department at Franklin and Marshall College. He is a cognitive scientist and philosopher of science whose work focuses on perception–action, dynamical systems modeling, and complex systems. His first book, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, is soon to be published.
Charles Heyser is Associate Professor at Franklin and Marshall College in the Department of Psychology. His research interests include behavioral neuroscience and psychopharmacology. He is the author of more than 50 articles and book chapters.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience
- Contributors
- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience
- Introduction
- Molecules, Systems, and Behavior: Another View of Memory Consolidation
- Biological Clocks: Explaining with Models of Mechanisms
- Methodology and Reduction in the Behavioral Neurosciences: Object Exploration as a Case Study
- The Science of Research and the Search for Molecular Mechanisms of Cognitive Functions
- The Lower Bounds of Cognition: What Do Spinal Cords Reveal?
- Lessons for Cognitive Science from Neurogenomics
- Learning, Neuroscience, and the Return of Behaviorism
- fMRI: A Modern Cerebrascope? The Case of Pain
- The Embedded Neuron, the Enactive Field?
- The Role of Neurobiology in Differentiating the Senses
- Enactivism's Vision: Neurocognitive Basis or Neurocognitively Baseless?
- Space, Time, and Objects
- Neurocomputational Models: Theory, Application, Philosophical Consequences
- Neuroanatomy and Cosmology
- The Emerging Theory of Motivation
- Inference to the Best Decision
- Emergentism at the Crossroads of Philosophy, Neurotechnology, and the Enhancement Debate
- What's “Neu” in Neuroethics?
- Confabulations about People and Their Limbs, Present or Absent
- Delusional Experience
- The Case for Animal Emotions: Modeling Neuropsychiatric Disorders
- Levels, Individual Variation, and Massive Multiple Realization in Neurobiology
- Neuro‐Eudaimonics or Buddhists Lead Neuroscientists to the Seat of Happiness
- The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity
- Index