Balzer, Wolfgang, C. Ulises Moulines, and Joseph Sneed (1987). An Architectonic for Science. Dordrecht: Reidel.

This book provides the most comprehensive and rigorously formal presentation of the structuralist program in philosophy of science. It is difficult reading, presupposing a good grasp of set theory. But its authors use the formal resources with great ingenuity and stressed reconstructions of actual, detailed cases from the history of science to a degree unmatched in Anglo-American philosophy of science. The almost total ignorance of this work by Anglo-American philosophers of science is puzzling and inexcusable. In German academic circles, structuralism has become a pitched political battle. These sociological factors obscure what should be better-known work.

Bickle, John (1998). Psychoneural Reduction: The New Wave. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

This book develops "new wave" reductionism in both intuitive and formal (set-theoretic) fashion and attempts to show how the resulting account differs from "classical" psychoneural reductionist projects (i.e., those built on Ernest Nagel’s 1961 ideas about intertheoretic reduction). Philosophers of mind will probably find the attempt to address the antireductionist challenges (chapter 4) of greatest interest. In chapter 5 I seek to bring some empirical details to bear on the "put up or shut up" challenge to reductionists. The "revisonary" physicalist solution to the reformulated mind-body problem (in chapter 6) builds on these empirical details and a comparison with the paradigm classical-thermodynamics-to-statistical mechanics and microphysics reduction. (I treat the latter within the context of my Hooker/structuralist theory of intertheoretic reduction in chapters 2 and 3.)

Bickle, John (1999). "Multiple Realizability." In E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  

This on-line encyclopedia entry reviews highlights in the literature on multiple realizability. Specific topics include Putnam’s early arguments, Fodor’s elaborations and the continuing legacy of these arguments in current philosophy of mind, early reductionist replies, the distinction between multiple realizability across structure types and within a token system over time, and more recent replies to the arguments. The entry also contains a bibliography and a list of other internet resources pertinent to the topic. The presentation is non-technical and intended to be comprehensible by undergraduates as well as graduate students and those writing on these topics.

Bickle, John (forthcoming). "Philosophy of Mind and the Neurosciences." To appear in S. Stich and T. Warfield (eds.), A Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind. London: Basil Blackwell.

This article is an "opinionated" account of the relationship between contemporary neuroscience and philosophy of mind. I seek to extend my earlier reply (Bickle 1998, chapter 5) to the anti-reductionist "put up or shut up" challenge by introducing more recent discoveries pertaining to the "learning-long term potentiation" link, including cutting edge work on the intracellular, molecular and genomic mechanisms of this important type of synaptic plasticity. I also take on a challenge to reduction based on the purported functional-teleological aspects of higher-level explanations. I present two recent results from single-cell neurophysiology that have implications for recent philosophical issues pertaining to consciousness. I close the essay by addressing the difference between the promise and the actual state of interdisciplinary work within philosophy and neuroscience, and propose a role that philosophers can play in actual neuroscientific investigation.

Block, Ned (1978). "Troubles with Functionalism." In C.Savage (ed.), Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, vol. 9: Perception and Cognition: Issues in the Foundations of Psychology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 281-325.

This essay is a modern classic in the literature on functionalism. This is the essay where Block distinguishes "analytic" from "psycho-" functionalism, raises the "absent qualia" thought experiment involving the population of China serving as an artificial brain, and chides "psychofunctionalism" for its "human Chauvinism." It remains a must-read for anyone seeking to understand philosophy of mind’s development in the second half of the 20^th century.

Chalmers, David (1996). The Conscious Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This book provides the most serious challenge to physicalism (standardly construed) since Saul Kripke’s, Thomas Nagel’s, and Frank Jackson’s work two decades earlier. Chalmer’s characterization of the "hard problem" of consciousness and the "pan-psychism" suggested in the final chapters produced the bombast. But much of the critical literature ignored (and continues to ignore) the impressive philosophy of language and modal metaphysics developed throughout the middle chapters.

Churchland, Patricia (1986). Neurophilosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

This book seeks to introduce neuroscience to philosophers and philosophy of science to neuroscientists. The first five chapters are a neuroscience primer, reporting work that Churchland deems richest in potential philosophical content and implications. This includes neuroscience’s early history, the basic physiology of neural conductance and transmission, functional neuroanatomy, experimental techniques, and a collection of neurological and neuropsychological disorders. The philosophy of science includes its history (with an extended discussion of logical positivism and its demise and legacy in Anglo-American analytic philosophy), a chapter on intertheoretic reduction (presenting a simplified version of Hooker’s 1981 theory), and replies to "dualist" and "functionalist" arguments against reduction. The final substantive chapter provides three examples of "neurofunctional" theories that Churchland advocates as potentially "unified" accounts of cognition. Although the neuroscience is now dated, the philosophy of science is selective, and the potential "unifying" neurofunctional approaches didn’t pan out quite the way Churchland hoped, this book should be on everybody’s reading list. Although it had plenty of historical and contemporary influences, in retrospect it is the book that marked the beginning of "philosophy of neuroscience."

Churchland, Paul (1981). "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes." Journal of Philosophy 78: 67-90

The paper brought Churchland-style eliminative materialism to a larger philosophical audience. The account is built squarely on a concept of intertheoretic reduction, although the underlying account is not developed in this essay. Churchland provides explicit arguments for the predicted future "bumpy" reduction of folk psychology to some neuroscientific successor. He challenges functionalism by showing how its "strategem" could have been used to "save" medieval alchemy. And he offers brilliantly creative scenarios for imagining a world that has gone "beyond folk psychology" not only in its science of mind but in its daily interactions as well. This paper also established Churchland as one of the best stylists in contemporary philosophy.

Churchland, Paul (1985). "Reduction, Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States." Journal of Philosophy 82: 8-28.

Although this paper’s explicit focus is arguments against psychophysical reduction based upon the qualitative characteristics of some mental states, Churchland is a bit more explicit here about his underlying account of reduction. (This is the paper where he presents the schematic of Hooker’s 1981 account adapted in section 5 above.) He also extends his "plasticity of perception" arguments, suggesting that we can "directly introspect" our brain states by learning to apply neuroscientific theory noninferentially to our introspective states, much as trained musicians learn to apply musical theory to their auditory states and thereby enrich their auditory experience.

Churchland, Paul (1989). A Neurocomputational Perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

This collection of essays pulls together some of Churchland’s more influential pieces in philosophy of mind throughout the 1980s (including his 1981 and 1985) and develops his "neurocomputational" approach to philosophy of science. The latter mobilizes resources from parallel distributed processing/"connectionist" artificial intelligence. Using especially the concepts of vector representation and transition through a state space, Churchland provides ingenious accounts of theory structure, explanation, and conceptual change. As he puts it in the book’s introduction, these scientific resources provide "a detailed articulation of something I had been arguing for and seeking since 1971: a genuine alternative cognitive paradigm, one firmly grounded in neuroscience, one that might eventually be developed so as to reduce or displace the sentential paradigm of folk psychology" (p. xiv). The philosophy of science community has by and large ignored these developments. Such is the nature of practitioners defending the "entrenched paradigm" in a time of Kuhnian crisis. Don’t make their mistake.

Enç, Berent (1983). "In Defense of Identity Theory." Journal of Philosophy 80: 279-298.

This is a a seriously underappreciated and undercited essay. Enç anticipated and actually developed a number of themes that within a few years became central to debates in philosophy of mind—and were usually attributed to someone else. One of his targets is the multiple realizability argument. He is sensitive to the distinction between two senses of multiple realizability (see section 6 above) and suggests that the thermodynamics-to-statistical mechanics and microphysics example contains the more radical sense. Enç’s discussion is also sensitive to issues pertaining to levels of theory and explanation. This paper is a crucial precursor to my "new wave" reductionism (Bickle 1998).

Feigl, Herbert (1967). The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’: The Essay and a Postscript. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

This book reprints Feigl’s famous essay and includes a postscript written one decade later. Feigl’s views on the mind-body problem always diverged from standard logical positivist treatment, though he remained committed to many positivist methods. For the topics covered in this entry, the most interesting point in this work is Feigl’s reluctant shift in the "Postscript" toward a more Feyerabendian view (Feyerabend 1962, 1963).

Feyerabend, Paul K. (1962). "Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism." In H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 3: Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 28-97.

This is the early Feyerabend’s most often-cited essay. It introduces the concept of "incommensurability" and challenges key assumptions of logical empiricist accounts of explanation, reduction and scientific progress. Cases from the history of science play a central role in the arguments, a trait for which Feyerabend and other "radical empiricists" became notorious. Those who only know Feyerabend’s work from Against Method and later might be surprised to discover that Feyerabend began his career addressing fairly standard issues in philosophy of science. His application of his philosophy of science to the mind-body problem is explicit in this essay. It generates the first serious plumb for eliminative materialism.

Feyerabend, Paul K. (1963). "Mental Events and the Brain." Journal of Philosophy 60: 295-296.

This brief note draws out an eliminative materialist position from the philosophy of science developed in Feyerabend (1962). The presentation is cryptic and almost incomprehensible without prior knowledge of Feyerabend’s views.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1974). "Special Sciences." Synthese 28: 77-115.

Fodor’s classic attack on "reductionism" and "type physicalism" still makes for informative reading. His examples of irreducible laws from the special sciences are well-known. But Fodor’s argument is more sophisticated than is often realized. He bases the attack on reductionism not only on multiple realizability. Reductionism/type physicalism requires a kind predicate—one that figures in laws in that science (e.g., in the laws of physics)—to be nomically coextensive with the reduced kind predicate in the special science. Multiple realizability suggests strongly that no such lower level kind predicate will be found. This essay also articulates the sense of "scientific autonomy" that dominated subsequent philosophical discussions of functionalism. Finally, Fodor suggests the distinction between multiple realizability across structure types and within a token system across times. This essay remains a must read for those engaged in the debate on psychophysical reductionism, both for and against. Its themes continue to influence discussions, at least implicitly. (Reprinted as chapter 5 in Fodor 1981.)

Fodor, Jerry A. (1975). The Language of Thought. New York: Thomas Crowell.

This is a book-length treatment of many of the ideas developed in Fodor (1974). The introductory chapter is virtually a reprint of the (1974) essay. Later chapters contain empirical results from cognitive psychology and Chomskian linguistics to bolster the arguments. According to Fodor, the language of thought hypothesis is the "only game in town" for doing cognitive science.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1981). RePresentations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

This is an important collection of essays. "Special sciences" (chapter 5) and "Computation and reduction" (chapter 6) bear most directly on the topics of this entry. They remain central to recent nonreductive physicalism, although the latter camp have by and large rejected Fodor’s positive account (functionalism and the Representational Theory of Mind). In addition, the introductory chapter is the best presentation of where mainstream philosophy of mind stood circa 1981, and chapter 9 ("Methodological solipsism considered as a research strategy in cognitive psychology") generated a huge literature. The final chapter on innateness (chapter 10) sets the stage for Fodor’s more recent work on semantics.

Hooker, Clifford A. (1981). "Towards a General Theory of Reduction. Part I: Historical and Scientific Setting. Part II: Identity in Reduction. Part III: Cross-Categorial Reduction." Dialogue 20: 38-59, 201-236, 496-529.

In this three-part essay Hooker develops his alternative to the logical empiricist account of intertheoretic reduction. The treatment is comprehensive and embedded within both a philosophy of science and a realist metaphysics of properties. Unfortunately, Hooker never took back up in print some issues that he admittedly left hanging here. The basic model (schematized in section 5 above) is the subject of Part I. In Part II he deals with some complexities about cross-theoretic property identities (especially as a "working hypothesis" in reductionist methodology). Part III concerns reductions involving multiple realizability (which Hooker refers to as "cross-classification"), with an extended discussion of classical-to-molecular genetics. The "coevolutionary research methodology" often attributed to Patricia Churchland actually got developed first in this essay. This is a rich work that should have established Hooker as one of the very top philosophers of science. Beyond that of a few devotees (like myself), however, it did not receive the attention it deserved.

Horgan, Terence (1993). "Nonreductive Physicalism and the Explanatory Autonomy of Psychology." In S. Wagner and R. Warner (eds.), Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 295-320.

Horgan’s essay is one of the clearest and best defenses of nonreductive materialism, now the most popular solution to the traditional mind-body problem among Anglo-American philosophers. For the topics covered in this entry, perhaps the most interesting fact about this essay is its uncritical adoption of Fodor’s (1974) anti-reductionist arguments. Horgan also stresses some important methodological worries about reductionism. (For one reductionist reply, see Bickle 1998, chapter 4.) Unlike many of his nonreductive physicalist cohorts, Horgan has never been content with "supervenience" as the full account of mind-body relations. In the final section of this essay he unleashes a number of worries about that relation, many of which he has developed more fully in more recent writings.

Jackson, Frank (1983). "Epiphenomenal Qualia." Philosophical Quarterly 32: 127-136.

This is the paper in which Jackson unveiled his famous thought experiment about Mary, the future neuroscientist who knows everything there is to know about the physical properties of human vision but has never experienced color sensations. When she first encounters a red object in her visual field, does she learn a new fact? The resulting "knowledge argument" concluded that physical science could never explain the qualitative characteristics of color sensations, and so was essentially incomplete as a theory of mind. The literature on this argument is enormous. (Indeed, from the later 1980s through the early 1990s, it was rare to attend a philosophy conference that didn’t contain a paper on this argument.) Although attention to it has waned lately, this paper remains a fabulous intuition pump.

Kandel Eric and Larry Squire (2000). Memory: From Mind to Molecules. New York: W.H. Freeman.

This is the best book available at present for nonspecialists on recent research on memory at every level of neuroscientific investigation. The presentation is not overly technical, but the authors don’t spare scientific details. Kandel is one of the world’s foremost cellular neuroscientists; Squire is one of the world’s foremost neuropsychologists.

Kim, Jaegwon (1993). Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This is a collection of Kim’s important essays on the topics composing the title. Although Kim was instrumental in developing concepts of supervenience, for over a decade he has criticized the use of these concepts to ground a nonreductive physicalism. This collection includes some of his most important articles that articulated this criticism., including "The Myth of Nonreductive Physicalism" (chapter 14), "Multiple Realizability and the Metaphysics of Reduction (chapter 16), and "The Nonreductionist’s Trouble with Mental Causation" (chapter 17). It also features an article that developed Kim’s "explanatory exclusion" argument, which concludes that lower-level explanations of a phenomenon "screen off" higher level explanations ("Mechanism, Purpose, and Explanatory Exclusion," chapter 13). All the essays reflect Kim’s remarkable ability to hone in directly on the central point of complex issues and arguments. This is a well-chosen collection from one of the most important philosophers of the late-20^th and early-21^st century.

Kolb, Bryan and Ian Whishaw (1996). Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, 4^th ed. New York: W.H. Freeman.

This work remains the most popular textbook for undergraduate courses in neuropsychology for very good reasons. It is comprehensive, covering deficits in both neural regions and areas and in specific higher functions (including memory, language, emotions, and attention/consciousness). It is clearly written, describing lots of case studies and using numerous graphics and illustrations (no color graphics, however). And it contains excellent suggested readings and bibliographies (up to date through 1996, but almost certainly another edition will be in the works: one has been produced every fifth or sixth year since original publication in 1980). This is an excellent work to acquire a good background in both the experimental and clinical aspects of neuropsychology.

Kuhn, Thomas (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This monograph is now a classic in philosophy of science. Kuhn brings numerous historical cases to bear in what becomes a criticism of fundamental assumptions of the logical empiricist program. Kuhn introduces his famous notion of a "paradigm" here, and using the historical examples and the paradigm concept he describes historical transitions in scientific disciplines from pre-paradigm through normal science, crisis science, and scientific revolution. This book is less careful than Kuhn became in later writings to clarify the arational, sociological, and political influences at work in scientific development. He later distanced himself from some bolder interpretations of claims in this work.

Lewis, David (1969)."Review of Art, Mind, and Religion." Journal of Philosophy 66: 23-35.

This is Lewis’s review of Caplan and Merrill’s book that contained Hilary Putnam’s article, "Psychological Predicates." This is the article in which Putnam stressed the "multiple realizability" objection to the mind-brain identity theory (section 6 above). Lewis counters by developing the idea that reductions are domain specific (although he doesn’t use that term). Lewis’s argument does not appeal to science (as later reductionists did), but instead to a common sense example that people less familiar with the history of science might find more comprehensible. Note that Lewis here also saw the distinction between two senses of multiple realizability (see section 6 above).

Mayr, Dieter (1976). "Investigations of the Concept of Reduction. I." Erkenntnis 10: 275-294.

This paper presents a "structuralist" account of intertheoretic reduction that tries to capture the Kuhnian concept of "anomaly" within a set-theoretic formalism. The set theory is somewhat dense, but the underlying account of theory structure makes some simplifications to the full structuralist account. (Compare the account here with the "full" structuralist account in Balzer et al. 1987!) Bickle (1998, chapter 3) shows how Mayr’s account nicely illuminates the point that is truly at issue between Nagel and Kuhn (it is Nagel’s condition of derivability, not connectability). Mayr’s treatment of Mercury’s perihelion is very nice.

Moulines, C. Ulises (1984). "Ontological Reduction in the Natural Sciences." In W. Balzer, D. Pearce, and H. Schmidt (eds.), Reduction in Science Dordrecht: Reidel, 51-70.

This paper is an excellent combination of structuralist formalism conjoined with knowledge about historical cases of scientific reduction. According to Moulines, "ontological reductive links" (ORLs) obtain between elements of the models comprising the reduced and reducing theory. The global theory reduction relation is partly constructed out of these. Bickle (1998, chapter 3) argues that Moulines’ concept provides structuralist-inspired accounts of reduction with an answer to Schaffner’s (1967) "too weak to be adequate" challenge. (This term is from Bickle 1998, chapter 3.) These elements admittedly bring nonformalizable "pragmatic" considerations into structuralist treatments of reduction, and so indicate the limits of strictly formal approaches. Moulines’ distinction between "homogeneous" and "heterogeneous" ORLs also provides a resource for specifying more precisely the intertheoretic reduction spectrum between "smooth" and "bumpy" endpoints.

Nagel, Ernest (1961). The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.

This book is the comprehensive statement of the logical empiricist program in philosophy of science: the program’s "high water mark." Chapter 11 provides the classic account of intertheoretic reduction as deduction of the reduced from the reducing theory via bridge principles. This is also where Ernest Nagel applies his account to the classical thermodynamics-to-statistical mechanics and microphysics case. Since Nagel’s view of reduction remains prevalent throughout the philosophy of mind (even though it has been the target of intensive criticism in philosophy of science since its appearance), this chapter remains required reading for anyone seeking to understand even recent debates on the topic.

Nagel, Thomas (1974). "What is It Like to Be a Bat?" Philosophical Review 83: 435-450.

This is Thomas Nagel’s classic essay where he presents a thought experiment to illuminate the distinction between "subjective" and "objective" knowledge, and to argue that the "objective" methodology of science seems to take us increasingly far away from the "subjective" facts of conscious experience. This essay is often cited in the recent dualist literature, but Nagel’s "plumb" for dualism here is vague and noncommittal at best. (See the essay’s final paragraphs.)

Nagel, Thomas (1989). The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This book contains Thomas Nagel’s continued reflections on the subjective/objective distinction. The mind-body dualism is presented and defended much more explicitly here than in his (1974) essay. Philosophy of mind isn’t Nagel’s only concern. From his account of subjectivity he also stresses implications for epistemology and ethics.

Place, Ullin T. (1956). "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?" British Journal of Psychology 47: 44-50.

This is the paper in which modern "mind-brain identity theory" was born, although it is often missed that Place only advocated an identity theory for conscious sensations. (He was explicitly a dispositional behaviorist about cognitive states like beliefs and desires.) In this essay Place clearly distinguished between the "is of definition" and the "is of composition," and set identity theory on its current course of advocating an "empirical" rather than an "analytic" hypothesis. Some now-familiar identities from both common sense and science first appeared in this essay. In a late section Place characterizes the "phenomenological fallacy" as the mistake of supposing that when a subject describes his experience he is describing the literal properties of "internal" objects and events.

Popper, Karl (1962). "Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge." In K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations. New York: Basic Books, 215-250.

This essay presents some of Popper’s later work on the nature of scientific progress. Although it doesn’t present an account of intertheoretic reduction explicitly, a "theory replacement" account can be inferred from it. However, Popper never advocated the arational, sociological picture of scientific theory change that Feyerabend and Kuhn championed. Like those two writers, however, Popper’s explicit target is the logical empiricist view of scientific progress.

Posner, Michael and Marcus Raichle (1994). Images of Mind, New York: Scientific American Library.

This beautiful monograph presents the technical details and methodological use of neural imaging procedures, including positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Its excellent discussions and graphics describe the basic physics of these techniques and the wide variety of psychological phenomena for which they have been used. The color images alone are worth the book’s price. This is must reading for anyone who wishes to grasp how these imaging techniques work and what their experimental and clinical use has revealed.

Putnam, Hilary (1967). "Psychological Predicates." In W. Caplan and D. Merrill (eds.), Art, Mind and Religion. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

This is the essay where Putnam stresses the "multiple realizability" challenge against the "brain state theorist" (mind-brain identity theory). He also argues against behaviorist theories and defends a functionalism built on the concept of a "probabilistic automaton." The discussion is nontechnical. This paper remains the best presentation for nonspecialists of Putnam’s influential early functionalism (which he himself rejected later). This paper was reprinted numerous times under the title "The Nature of Mental States." It is reprinted as chapter 21 in Putnam (1975).

Putnam, Hilary (1975). Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2: Mind, Language and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This collection contains, among much else, Putnam’s principal papers from the 1960s where he developed his early version of "Turing machine functionalism" as an alternative to both philosophical behaviorism and then-popular mind-brain identity theories. The key essays are chapters 18-21 (respectively, "Minds and Machines," "Robots: Machines or Artificially Created Life?," The Mental Life of Some Machines," and "The Nature of Mental States"). The essays range in scope and technical presuppositions, but themes that became paradigmatic of functionalism emerge: multiple realizability and its implications against reduction, the computer metaphor of mind, and the emerging connections between philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence.

Richardson, Robert (1979). "Functionalism and Reduction." Philosophy of Science 46: 533-558

Richardson gives the anti-reductionist arguments from Putnam and Fodor’s early developments of functionalism an effective shakedown in this important and often-cited essay. It is typically remembered for pointing out that Ernest Nagel’s influential (1961) theory of intertheoretic reduction did not require biconditional bridge laws, but only conditional ones in which the lower level kind is sufficient for the higher-level kind’s obtaining (but not necessary). This fact makes even Nagel’s account of reduction immune from multiple realizability challenges. But this article is also noteworthy for pointing out important comparisons between issues that had dominated philosophy of biology and those that were "hot" in the philosophy of psychology at its time of publication.

Rorty, Richard (1970). "In Defense of Eliminative Materialism." Review of Metaphysics 24: 112-121.

In short compass, Rorty here draws together themes from his work in philosophy of mind during the late-1960s. This is Rorty still working squarely within the "analytic" tradition that he later roundly rejected. Talk about beliefs and sensations is on a par with talk about witches and demons by scientifically ignorant cultures and the "subjectivity" of the mental is based on linguistic and cultural practices that would be replaced if, e.g., cerebrascopes came into common parlance. Rorty’s work at this stage was influenced by a radical interpretation of some of Wilfrid Sellars’ ideas.

Schaffner, Kenneth (1967). "Approaches to Reduction." Philosophy of Science 34: 137-147.

This is a very influential article in the reduction literature, and rightly so. In a very compact yet accessible treatment, Schaffner surveys the four dominant approaches to reduction at the time, relates them by way of their strengths and weaknesses, and proposes an alternative designed to capture the strengths of each while avoiding the weaknesses. He even includes a brief "scientific interlude" that presents the transmission-to-molecular genetics example circa the time of publication. Not only is this an informative and insightful review; it should also be used as a model for writing tight yet comprehensive articles.

Schaffner, Kenneth (1992). "Philosophy of Medicine." In M. Salmon, J. Earman, C. Glymour, J. Lennox, P. Machamer, J. McGuire, J.Norton, W.Salmon, and K. Schaffner (eds.), Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 310-344.

The topic here is "philosophy of medicine" but the bulk of this essay is an account of the author’s General Reduction-Replacement paradigm and a useful attempt to capture some of the actual details of a real psychology-to-neurobiology reduction (associative learning-to-presynaptic intracellular/molecular mechanisms). It contains lots of useful insights about intertheoretic reduction in general and the complexities of this relationship in current neuroscience. Schaffner is one of few philosophers who realizes that mainstream neuroscience is now dominated by the cellular/molecular level, and who is trying to come to grips with this fact about actual scientific practice.

Searle, John (1985). Minds, Brains, and Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

This book is an edited "transcript" of John Searle’s 1984 Reith lectures, broadcast over the BBC. It retains the colloquial tone of a public lecture series coupled with Searle’s often cantankerous style and wit. Familiar Searlean themes predominate:. Mental states are caused by and realized in brain states, so common sense realism about the mental and emerging neuroscience are both true. Consciousness, intentionality, subjectivity, and mental causation are real, ineliminable features of mental states, so any acceptable theory of mind must accommodate them. The Chinese Room thought experiment refutes strong artificial intelligence. The "compatibilist" solution to the free will-determinism problem is hopeless. Nothing here will be novel for Searle’s fans or foes, but the book provides an interesting bridge between Searle’s first book on philosophy of mind and his more recent work.

Smart, J.J.C. (1959). "Sensations and Brain Processes." Philosophical Review 68: 141-156.

Although Place’s (1956) article preceded this essay, this one brought the mind-brain identity theory as a contingent hypothesis to the attention of the larger philosophical community. The essay consists of an early statement of Smart’s "topic-neutral translation" approach followed by his replies to several philosophical objections. The last section stresses the difference between Place and Smart on whether the "identity" hypothesis is a "scientific" question. According to Smart, the hypothesis is not one that any conceivable experiment could verify or disconfirm. Rather, it is defensible on grounds of ontological simplicity.

Smart, J.J.C. (1963). "Materialism." Journal of Philosophy 60: 651-662.

This brief essay is noteworthy primarily due to Smart’s capitulation to Feyerabend’s "radical empiricist" methodology and "eliminativist" conclusion. Smart quickly saw that his "topic neutral translations" left out some central features of the "ordinary language" conception of mental states and that Feyerabend’s resources and arguments provided one (albeit a quite radical) way out.

Smart, J.J.C. (1967). "Comments on the Papers." In C. Presley (ed.), The Identity Theory of Mind. St. Lucia, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.

Smart struggles to save his "topic neutral translational" approach to the identity theory in this reply to criticisms presented at an international conference. His plumb for Feyerabendian resources and conclusion becomes more pronounced, especially in his reply to Bradley’s paper. Smart identity theorists (pun intended) should take a lesson from Smart’s squirming: dualism or eliminative materialism may be the stark choices we face about folk psychology’s conception of the mind.

Sneed, Joseph (1971). The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics. Dordrecht: Reidel.

This dense, difficult book by a mathematical physicist with substantial training in set theory and deep interests in the foundations of his discipline provided an important motivation for later developments in "structuralist" philosophy of science. See especially Balzer et al. (1987).

Stegmüller, Wolfgang (1976). The Structure and Dynamics of Theories. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

This translation of (part of) Stegmüller’s early book provided the initial statement of the "structuralist" program. His overarching goal is a set-theoretic formulation of a Kuhnian alternative to logical empiricist views. The set-theoretical approach is inspired by Suppes (1956). Although the structuralist program moved quickly beyond this book in both its technical and conceptual apparati, this work remains an excellent source for the program’s continuing goals and promise.

Suppes, Patrick (1956). Introduction to Logic. Princeton: van Nostrand.

The "semantic" view of theories was born in the final three chapters of this textbook (although Suppes never uses this term). Suppes’ specific concern is to axiomatize theories that assume more than first-order logic. His alternative is to construe theories as sets of models (with this notion drawn from model theory in formal semantics). One axiomatizes a theory by providing a set-theoretic definition of its class of models. Suppes in turn characterizes intertheoretic reduction as isomorphism (the set-theoretic analog of "sameness of structure") between the two classes of models. He illustrates this notion with an explicit treatment in its terms of (a portion of) the classical-thermodyanmics-to-statistical mechanics reduction.

Suppes, Patrick (1965). "What is A Scientific Theory?" In S. Morgenbesser (ed.), Philosophy of Science Today. New York: Basic Books, 55-67.

This essay is a completely informal, nontechnical introduction to Suppes’ model-theoretic account of the structure of scientific theories. It constitutes an excellent introduction to the "semantic" view of theories in general and that view’s potential to provide a precise account of the intertheoretic reduction relation.

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