No Elimination, no Reduction, no Integration: Then What? Sciences of the Mind, Neuroscience and the Instrumental Model

Since the publication of Neurophilosophy in 1986, several accounts have been offered in philosophy of what the relations between psychology and neuroscience should be -namely, eliminativism, reductionism, and the more recent integrative model which construes psychological explanation as a mere sketch of a mechanistic, neurocognitive explanation.  In this paper a critical discussion of these various attempts is offered. In particular, presenting psychology as a component of the wider, multidisciplinary program of neuroscience comes with the risk of neglecting what the researchers involved in the different sciences of the mind worry about, and the very reason why they value neuroscience as an essential tool to reach the goals constitutive of their disciplines. Accordingly, I suggest an alternative model to understand the usefulness of neuroscience to psychology.