In search of the neurobiological basis of decision making: Explanation, reduction and emergence

Abstract

In recent years, the study of decision making has provided a paradigmatic case of "crossbreeding" of different disciplines. The integration of economics, psychology and neurosciences within neuroeconomics calls for more accurate and comprehensive models of human rationality, which may be obtained by combining diverse theoretical approaches and experimental techniques. In this respect, neuroeconomics contributes to a naturalistic, brain-based, explanation at human agency. However, although contemporary naturalism insists on the unitary aspect of reality, we stress that supporting unitary study of nature is not the same as supporting a single, fundamental discipline to which all higher-order analyses could (or should) be reduced. We argue far integration, rather than reduction, as the best approach to a naturalistic explanation of human decision making, and we claim that supporting epistemalogical pluralism does not mean being committed to any specific ontological position. However, we suggest that an "emergentist" ontology is the best candidate to integrate the epistemological analysis here endorsed.