Special sciences (or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis)
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Any function can be implemented by different physical systems.
“It is well known that any function can be implemented by di ff erent physical systems (Bechtel & Mundale, 1999; Fodor, 1974).”
From Hard criteria for empirical theories of consciousness (2021) · cites this paper as Fodor, 1974
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Armstrong, D. M. (1983) · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139171700 · Cited by 1,415 · see citing works
Integrating psychology and neuroscience: functional analyses as mechanism sketches
Piccinini, G., & Craver, C. (2011) · Synthese · doi:10.1007/s11229-011-9898-4 · Cited by 508 · see citing works
Brain disorders? Not really: Why network structures block reductionism in psychopathology research
Borsboom, D., Cramer, A. O. J., & Kalis, A. (2019) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x17002266 · Cited by 468 · see citing works
The cultural evolution of emergent group-level traits
Smaldino, P. E. (2014) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x13001544 · Cited by 211 · see citing works
Hard criteria for empirical theories of consciousness
Doerig, A., Schurger, A., & Herzog, M. H. (2021) · Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1080/17588928.2020.1772214 · Cited by 194 · see citing works
“More precisely, although the software and hardware used in that implementation are sufficient to instantiate Microsoft 2Multiple realization has been a fruitful topic in philosophy (Fodor, 1974; Kripke, 1972; Putnam, 1967, 1988).”
BackgroundMethodO'Connor, T., & Wong, H. Y. (2005) · Nous · doi:10.1111/j.0029-4624.2005.00543.x · Cited by 174 · see citing works
Self-Representation in Nervous Systems.
Churchland, P. S. (2002) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1070564 · Cited by 160 · see citing works
Black-boxing and cause-effect power
Marshall, W., Albantakis, L., & Tononi, G. (2018) · PLOS Computational Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006114 · Cited by 73 · see citing works
Governing Without A Fundamental Direction of Time: Minimal Primitivism about Laws of Nature
Chen, E. K., & Goldstein, S. (2022) · Jerusalem Studies in Philosophy and History of Science · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-96775-8_2 · Cited by 69 · see citing works
“Their relativized account (called the Better Best System Account) perhaps can be used to support Fodor (1974)’s vision of the autonomy of the special sciences (e.g. biology, psychology, economics) from fundamental physics. view, laws of nature hold because of a certain relation obtaining among such…”
BackgroundMultiple realizability and the spirit of functionalism
Cao, R. (2022) · Synthese · doi:10.1007/s11229-022-03524-1 · Cited by 58 · see citing works
Singular and general causal relations: A mechanist perspective
Glennan, S. (2011) · Causality in the Sciences · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574131.003.0037 · Cited by 54 · see citing works
Fish and microchips: on fish pain and multiple realization
Michel, M. (2019) · Philosophical Studies · doi:10.1007/s11098-018-1133-4 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
Consensus-building conversation leads to neural alignment
Sievers, B., Welker, C., Hasson, U., Kleinbaum, A. M., & Wheatley, T. (2020) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/562z7 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
- Authors
- Fodor, J. A.
- Affiliations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Fodor, J. A.
- Venue
- Synthese
- Published
- 1974-10
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 97-115
- ISSN
- 0039-7857 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-0964
- OpenAlex
- W2057683160
- Cited by
- 1,815
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 78 · 2025: 62 · 2024: 67 · 2023: 61 · 2022: 116 · 2021: 104 · 2020: 106 · 2019: 127 · 2018: 108 · 2017: 54 · 2016: 81 · 2015: 72 · 2014: 62 · 2013: 53 · 2012: 38
- FWCI
- 12.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Synthese (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy, Science, and History
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Keywords
- special sciences, disunity of science, working hypothesis, philosophy of science, scientific realism, reductionism, philosophy of biology, philosophy of chemistry, philosophy of physics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
