Hybrid psychology as a human science

Abstract

Resolving some major philosophical errors in relating behaviour to brain structures and processes can provide a firm foundation for a hybrid science that gives equal weight to both meaning making (Cultural Psychology) and brain activity (Neuroscience). Neuroscientists, however, still fall for two mereological fallacies: the first involving their use of predicates and the second in the projection onto a whole of products of interactions with whole people and it is a fallacy to project them back into that person as constituents. While brains are parts of human bodies it is not clear that they are parts of persons. Clarification is then sought through the identification of four “grammars” linked by three specific principles. Finally, arguments are developed to show that objections to the idea that brains and their constituent organs are tools are misplaced.