Account of the Relationship between Psychological Capacities--论文代写范文精选

心理能力,将引用具体的能力，定义和解释了认知心理学的领域。一般来说,心理能力是指一个特定类的能力,可以从很多角度分析除了认知心理学,例如在神经生物学和认知科学。在这篇essay代写范文中,心理能力只会通过能力理解，神经生物学活动将通过流程解释。

Abstract 
This paper addresses the relationship between psychological capacities, as they are understood within cognitive psychology, and neurobiological activities. First, Lycan’s (1987) account of this relationship is examined and certain problems with his account are explained. According to Lycan, psychological capacities occupy a higher level than neurobiological activities in a hierarchy of levels of nature, and psychological entities can be decomposed into neurobiological ones. In the second half of this paper, an alternative account is laid out. This new account uses levels of organization and levels of explanation to create a two-dimensional model. Psychological capacities occupy a high level of explanation relative to the cellular and molecular levels of organization. Consequently, according to this model, psychological capacities are a particular way of describing the activities that occur at the cellular and molecular levels of organization.

Introduction 
This paper proposes a model for understanding the relationship between psychological capacities and neurobiological activities. Here psychological capacities, or just the psychological, will refer specifically to the capacities that are defined and explained within the domain of cognitive psychology. Typically, psychological capacity refers to a certain class of abilities that can be addressed from a number of perspectives besides cognitive psychology, for example, from within neurobiology or cognitive science. In this paper, however, psychological capacity will only refer to capacities understood in psychological terms (i.e., described in psychological language). And neurobiological activities will refer to the processes—and the entities that participate in those processes—that occur within the brain. Herein I am not addressing whether psychology is autonomous from neurobiology or whether psychology can be reduced to neurobiology. These are issues that concern the ultimate status of the science, psychology. The topic in this paper is the relationship between psychological things and neurobiological things, and I begin by assuming that they are related. The question then is, how can each be understood such that it is explicitly consistent with the other? The answer to this question will indicate how they are related.

The standard way of addressing this problem is to say that the relationship between psychological capacities and neurobiological activities is similar to the relationship that exists between the entities described in chemistry and the entities that belong to physics. In the latter case, to put it simply, physics is more basic than chemistry, and the entities that belong to the domain of chemistry are composed of the entities found in physics. Lycan has developed a detailed account of the relationship between psychological capacities and neurobiological acitivites that utilizes this chemistry-physics model and the hierarchical organization that it depends on (1987, see also 1981, 1991). According to his account each psychological capacity can be decomposed into component parts. 

Each of these components can then be similarly decomposed, and if the process is continued, the decomposition will eventually yield neurobiological and neurochemical entities—and still lower level entities if it is further continued.1 Lycan is correct that the hierarchical organization found in nature has a central role in explaining the relationship between psychological capacities and neurobiological activities. But his account contains certain problems that are a result of locating psychological capacities directly on this hierarchy. As an alternative, I outline a model that utilizes a similar hierarchy, but does not locate psychological capacities (as they are described within cognitive psychology) directly on that hierarchy. An additional set of levels, a hierarchy of levels of explanation, is needed to correctly situate the psychological with respect to the neurobiological.

Three Central Features 
Lycan’s account has three central features. The first is the claim that psychological capacities should be understood in teleological terms. Thus, for Lycan, the function of a psychological capacity is the purpose of that capacity with the understanding that this purpose has been established by natural selection. The second feature is what Lycan calls homuncular functionalism. This is the idea that psychological capacities can be decomposed into simpler components, each of which can be thought of as a homunculus that carries out a specific task. Together, this collection of homunculi performs the psychological capacity. Each one of these homunculi, which are basically sub-capacities, can then be explained by another set of homunculi (i.e., sub-sub-capacities), and so on. 

As Lycan says, To characterize the psychologists’ quest in the way I have is to see them as first noting some intentionally or otherwise psychologically characterized abilities of the human subject at the level of data or phenomena, and positing—as theoretical entities—the homunculi or sub-personal agencies that are needed to explain the subject’s having those abilities. Then the psychologists posit further, smaller homunculi in order to explain the previously posited molar behavior of the original homunculi, etc., etc. (1987, 40)

The motivation for analyzing psychological capacities in this way is explanatory. Each of these steps to “smaller” homunculi introduces new sub-capacities that are, individually, contributing less to the performance of the psychological capacity itself. The collection of simpler components explains how the higher level function is performed. The third feature of Lycan’s account is a hierarchy of levels of nature. The basic idea here is familiar. Compositionally, the entities found in nature can be put into a hierarchy. For example, organisms are composed of cells, cells are composed of molecules, molecules are composed of atoms, and so on.2 In this hierarchy, as Lycan points out, the constituents of any particular level can be explained functionally, by referring to their purpose, or structurally, by referring to their parts, which occupy a lower level in the hierarchy. The entities at this lower level can also be characterized functionally or, by dropping down another level, structurally. Thus, as Lycan makes clear, “function” and “structure” occur throughout the levels of nature; the labels are simply relative to a place on the hierarchy.

Lycan’s Account 
The three features just discussed are used by Lycan to generate an account of the relationship between psychological capacities and neurobiology activities. The first step is determining how teleology is related to homuncular functionalism. To accomplish this, Lycan suggests that “teleologicalness of characterizations is a matter of degree” (1987, 43). A psychological capacity that is at the top of a hierarchy created by homuncular functionalism is characterized in very robust teleological terms. As the decomposition proceeds downward, however, the characterizations become progressively less teleological. 

As a result, the jobs that the smallest homunculi perform are more likely to be understood in mechanical terms than in teleological terms (1987, 44).3 The next step is combining homuncular functionalism and the hierarchy of levels of nature. Since they both have a levels structure, they can, in theory, be combined. And Lycan claims that “for single organisms, degrees of teleologicalness of characterization correspond rather nicely to levels of nature” (1987, 45). By this he means that the functions of the entities found at higher levels of nature are the result of natural selection, while the functions of the entities that occur at lower levels are less likely to be thought of in terms of purpose or design. 

Of course, the hierarchy created by homunucular functionalism also has this feature: higher level homunculi are more teleological than lower level ones. Thus, Lycan is able to claim that homuncular functionalism, which was originally a resource dedicated to understanding psychological capacities, is actually a part of the hierarchy of levels of nature. We now have an account of the relationship between psychological capacities and neurobiological activities. The psychological, which are “highly teleological characterizations” at the top of the homuncular functionalism hierarchy, occupy a relatively high level of nature. 

As characterizations are offered that are less teleological—as psychological capacities are decomposed via homuncular functionalism—the move is made to lower levels of nature, eventually reaching a level occupied by neurobiological entities. In outline, this account is represented in figure 1. Because each entity occurs at a level of nature, each can be characterized functionally or structurally, and how this is done is relative to the level of nature that is being focused on. For instance, at level 5 in the figure, entity C1 has some particular function: function F(C1), and C1’s structure is made up of the entities that it is composed of: D1, D2, and D3, which are found at the next level down. 

D1, D2, and D3 are characterized functionally at this lower level of nature, and their structures are explained by the entities that occupy level 3. With respect to the psychological and the neurobiological, psychological capacities are found at a higher level of nature, say level 7 in figure 1, while neurobiological activities occupy one of the lower levels.4 Thus, F(A1) might be the ability, described in functional terms, to comprehend language. And, according to this model, the structure of this ability is found at level 6. Each of these entities at level 6, B1, B2 and B3, has its own function, which is a sub-capacity of language comprehension. Down at level 3 meanwhile, entity E1 is, let’s say, a particular protein found in neurons. Thus, according to Lycan, the relationship between psychological entities and neurobiological ones is this composition relationship that can be observed by looking across levels of nature.（essay代写)

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