ABSTRACT
Ernest Nagel’s idea is that if every name that one theory uses connects with another name in a different theory such that each object that the one theory names forms the same set of objects that the second theory names, then the more basic theory “reduces” the higher ordered theory. In the 1960s and 1970s, philosophers argued that the point of reducing psychology to neuroscience is to explain psychological generalizations by showing that they are really the same generalizations of a more basic science, neuroscience. Eliminativists in psychology believe that our common-sense conception of mental events and processes, our “folk psychology,” is false. The clearest way to see why psychology and neuroscience might stay separate is via a discussion of functionalism and multiple realizability. Antireductionists believe that psychology is primary because psychology is more general, therefore, it explains more with its theories.
