ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concepts from the general philosophy of science for those interested in cognitive neuroscience. It covers several major topics in the philosophy of science: scientific explanation and underdetermination, reductionism and levels, and scientific realism. The debates in philosophy of science were largely set in the early-to-mid-1900s by a group of philosophers known as the logical positivists. Logical positivists criticized philosophical questions that could be solved by empirical evidence, so claims about strangers' inner minds could not be a proper subject of science. Logical positivism was largely abandoned by philosophers of science who came to doubt their commitments. Instead of this “layer cake” model, many philosophers now prefer the view of sciences as investigating overlapping subject matter according to their own principles, theories, or methods. Cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, and related disciplines may all treat different aspects of the same phenomenon or overlapping phenomena.
