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| About site: Philosophy/Philosophy of Mind/Philosophers - Bechtel, William |
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| About site: http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/~bill/billhome.html |
Title: Philosophy/Philosophy of Mind/Philosophers - Bechtel, William Editor of the journal Philosophical Psychology, and Professor of Philosophy at UCSD.
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William Bechtel's Home Page
William Bechtel
I am Professor of Philosophy in the Department
of Philosophy and a faculty member in the interdisciplinary programs in Science Studies and Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego.
As a philosopher of science, my research explores issues in the philosophy
of the life sciences, including cell biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, and
cognitive science. I am particularly excited about the project of constructing
a mechanistic philosophy of science, which takes the view that phenomena are
often explained by specifying mechanisms. This is in accord with how life scientists
actually work, but contrasts with the assumption in traditional philosophy of
science that explanation involves deduction from laws. On my analysis, a mechanistic
model specifies a decomposition of a phenomenon in terms of component operations
localized in component parts of a mechanism. The orchestrated activity of a
mechanism often reflects complex, non-linear organization of its components and the ways in which the mechanism is situated in a larger environment.
Mechanistic explanations are reductive insofar as they decompose a system into
component parts and operations to explain its behavior. But insofar as the phenomenon
of interest arises only when the mechanism is appropriately organized and is
operating under appropriate environmental conditions, mechanistic explanation
but also take these higher-level factors into account. This has led me to claim
that mechanistic explanation provides for both reduction and the autonomy of
higher-level inquiries.
A second focus of my research is how scientists discover and reason about mechanisms.
For example, scientists often rely on figures and diagrams and reasoning involves mentally or externally simulating the functioning of the mechanism. I am currently exploring
the nature of such reasoning and how it differs from the sorts of reasoning
with linguistic representations for which canons of logic have been articulated.
I am also examining problems raised by scientists’ reliance on research
instruments and techniques for identifying component parts, their operations,
and their organization. New instruments and techniques are prone to produce
artifacts, and a challenge for scientists is to distinguish artifacts from genuine
findings. Since it is often not well understood how instruments and techniques
themselves work at the time they are invoked in science, the criteria scientists
employ to evaluate them are necessarily indirect. I have argued that one criterion
is whether the results fit plausible mechanistic models of the phenomenon.
Third, scientific investigation typically occurs within the context of institutions
and communities. Professional societies and journals do not just happen—they
require constructive effort by scientists. They often are the result of deliberation
by scientists about the kind of research they endorse and what types of colleagues
they want to associate with. These institutions, however, also help define the
opportunities for career development by scientists. I have examined how research
at the intersection of established disciplines gives rise to new institutions.
My approach to these issues in philosophy of science is naturalistic. I appeal
to the actual practice of science, particularly as observed in its history,
to answer such questions as what counts as a mechanistic explanation, how new
techniques are developed to investigate them, and the role institutions play
in shaping investigations. Much of my work over the past two decades focused on the creation of modern cell biology in the mid-twentieth
century. New techniques such as cell fractionation and electron microscopy enabled
the decomposition of the cytoplasm of cells into component organelles and their
operations. The main results of this investigation appeared in Discovering Cell Mechanisms (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
I have also been engaged in an examination of the development of
cognitive science, neuroscience, and cognitive neuroscience in the 20th century. Cognitive neuroscience emerged in the last 15 years of the 20th century when new imaging
techniques (PET, fMRI) as well as new modeling techniques (neural networks)
made it possible to develop neurally-grounded mechanistic models of cognition. I discuss the development of mechanistic models of mental processes (including research in neuroscience and psychology from the 19th and 20th centuries but emphasizing recent cognitive neuroscience) in Mental Mechanisms (to be published in August, 2007 by Routledge).
A major concern of my recent work is with the types of organization and dynamics involved in living systems which must maintain themselves in states far from thermodynamic equilibrium. As a result of this requirement, living systems, unlike humanly-engineered mechanisms, are inherently active systems and involve complex non-linear interaction of components. The various mechanisms for maintaining circadian rhythms in different life forms provide rich examples of such mechanisms and are increasingly are the focus of my research.
In addition to my research, I have played an active role in a variety of professional organizations. I am currently Chair of the Cognitive Science Society and Editor of the journal Philosophical Psychology. I am past presedent of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and the Central States Philosophical Association.
In March-April 2003 I presented the Cardinal Mercier Lectures at the Catholic
University of Louvain. These lectures, entitled Philosophy Engages Cognitive
Neuroscience, focused on the implications of adopting a naturalistic
and mechanistic perspective on the mind/brain. Revised and augmented versions of these lectures appeared in Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience (Routledge, 2007)
I directed a project initially funded by the Fund for the Improvement
of PostSecondary Education (FIPSE) that generated a modular interactive
webtexts for teaching. The initial focus of the project was a interdisciplinary
research methods course for cognitive science majors, but I extended it into a more general course on scientific reasoing. The course
materials for the cognitive science research methods course are available
at the Inquiry website
at Washington University. Those for the scientific reasoning course are
available at the UCSD
Inquiry Website. To access more than the sample site, please send me
email.
Together with Cees van Leeuwen, I edit Philosophical
Psychology,
an interdisciplinary journal focusing on foundational issues in psychology,
especially experimental cognitive psychology. In this I am assisted by Mitchell Herschbach, who was previously Editorial Assistant and now serves as Book Review Editor, and Joyce Havstad, now Editorial Assistant. For correspondence concerning the journal, please email:pp@mechanism.ucsd.edu.
Together with George
Graham, I edited A
Companion to Cognitive Science, a one volume overview of cognitive
science, published in July 1998 by Basil Blackwell. An expanded
set of Biographies
of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science is available on this site.
Together with current and former
graduate students Pete Mandik, Jennifer Mundale, and Robert Stufflebeam,
I edited Philosophy
and the Neurosciences: A Reader, published by Basil
Blackwell.
 
 
William Bechtel, Department of Philosophy-0119, University of California,
San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, LaJolla, CA 92093
E-mail: bill AT mechanism.ucsd.edu
Phone: (858) 822-4461
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Editor | of | the | journal | Philosophical | Psychology, | and | Professor | of | Philosophy | at | UCSD. |
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http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/~bill/billhome.html
Bechtel, William 2008 November
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Editor of the journal Philosophical Psychology, and Professor of Philosophy at UCSD.
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