ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a variety of approaches taken by scientists in their attempt to understand human being and other animals' behaviour. Psychologists may seek any one of three distinct kinds of scientific explanation, each associated with a different goal. The goal of some is to discover the internal operations carried out which, within the black box, convert the environmental input to the behavioural output, without having any concern for their physical embodiment. The chapter explains what might be called 'traditional' assumptions concerning the processing that occurs within the brain: primarily the assumption that at a coarse-grained level of analysis, there are chains of encapsulated units, each carrying out a single operation such as word recognition. A strong case can be made for attempting to examine the brain and other internal organs directly in order to achieve the kind of explanation presently under consideration.
