Brain-Based Mechanisms Underlying Causal Reasoning

Abstract

Since well before the time of contemporary psychological and neuroscientiflc research, philosophers and scientists have been fascinated with the concept of causality. Recent advances of neuroscientific techniques, specifically, neuroimaging using functional MRI, have allowed scientists to probe the brain in order to uncover the mechanisms underlying people’s conceptions of causality. In this chapter, we provide an overview of a portion of this recent work, specifically as it pertains to the nature of how people interpret and reason about causality.