Book review: Toward a New Behaviorism, the Case Against Perceptual Reductionism. William R. Uttal, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ., 1998. No. of pages 249. ISBN 0-8058-2738-2. Price $69·95 Hardback
✍ Scribed by Clark G. Ohnesorge
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 67 KB
- Volume
- 12
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In the present era of enthusiasm over the prospect of biologically based theories of human perception and cognition, Uttal's book provides a concise and detailed critique of neuroreductionist strategies and claims as well as a thorough and readable introduction to the epistemological and ontological issues relevant to the discussion. Although the title may seem daunting, this book could and should be enjoyed by a broad cross section of psychologists and others interested in the science of the mind.
The structure of this book is straightforward, it is well written and makes use of clear and simple terminology that the author de®nes up front. In Chapter One Uttal lays out the motivations for reductive explanation generally and presents several varieties of reductive approaches. In the second chapter, an extended and updated version of a previously published paper , he lays out and discusses the limitations on simulations and models as explanatory tools. He addresses this point with respect to epistemological (what we can know on the basis of obtainable facts) and ontological (whether or not there exist suitable obtainable facts) considerations. This chapter is a very clear and readable discussion on the distinction between explanation and description. In Chapter Three, The Case Against Perceptual Reductionism, Uttal explores the problems of connecting psychophysical and neurophysiological ®ndings. This is, of course, the essence of the mind-body problem, and this book is largely an extended treatment of that issue. While Uttal declares himself to be a deeply committed materialist monist (mental processes are just brain processes), he marshals a great deal of evidence in support of his claim that it may be impossible to construct an account of perceptual experience in terms of neural processes. This leaves him in the position of arguing that a dualist epistemology, or separate explanations at the neurological and mental levels, may be necessary. Of course, Uttal is not the ®rst to take this stance (cf. Nagel 1979, Searle 1992). However, his presentation distinguishes itself through its voluminous deployment of relevant experimental ®ndings. Chapter Four extends the anti-reductionist argument to the cognitive domain. While the argument presented here is much the same as in the preceding chapter the subject matter may be more familiar to the general ®eld of psychology. Here Uttal addresses a number of classic theoretical dichotomies: serial Vs parallel processing, bottom-up Vs topdown information ¯ow, pre-attentive Vs attentive processing and analog Vs propositional accounts of mental representation. In each case he shows why these fundamental issues may be unresolvable, and why that may preclude reductive explanation of cognitive mechanisms. Chapters Five and Six are relatively brief; the author introduces his conception of the proper direction for perceptual and cognitive science and summarizes the cautions and limitations on theorizing already presented. Uttal's prescription for cognitive science calls for (not surprisingly) a reemphasis on description and a reduced emphasis on theorizing about underlying mechanisms. Theories ``should come to be considered more akin to summaries and organizations of knowledge than new knowledge generating media'' (pg. 201) It is probably obvious that most, if not all, cognitive scientists will ®nd at least some degree of discomfort in this book, many will ®nd its message overly pessimistic, and some will ®nd it outrageous. No one will read this book, however, and fail to come away with an increased appreciation for the diculty of constructing a neurologically reductive explanation of perceptual and cognitive processes.