Philosophical analysis of scientific explanation has undergone a great shift from armchair theorising to empirically inspired and informed theories. On the forefront of this shift has been work on explanation in the special sciences.

This workshop, organised by the research group on Mechanistic and Representational Explanation in Cognitive Neuroscience (MeReX) aims to showcase both empirical neuroscientific work, which can serve as the basis of philosophical theorising, and philosophical work engaging with empirical case studies in neuroscience. Our focus is on exploring the explanatory practices in cognitive neuroscience under the headings of mechanistic explanation, representational explanation and computational explanation.

We especially welcome work focusing on less commonly discussed (but representative) cases and patterns of explanation.

Dates: 19th-21st February 2025
Venue: Technical University Berlin, Germany

• Mazviita Chirimuuta (Edinburgh, philosophy,)
• Fatma Deniz (TU Berlin, neuroscience)
• Grace Lindsay (NYU, neuroscience)
• Jonathan Najenson (Israel Institude of Technology, philosophy)
• Nicholas Shea (London, philosophy)
• Markus Werkle-Bergner (Berlin, neuroscience)

We  invite submissions for presentations suitable for 45-minute slots (30  min talk + 15 min Q&A). Interested applicants should submit a  500-word  abstract making the topic and argument transparent. The submissions should be prepared for blind review.

Submission deadline: 29th September 2024

Notification of decision: 1st November 2024

The MeReX team: Matej Kohar (TU Berlin), Beate Krickel (TU Berlin), Nir Fresco (BGU), Asaf Einav(BGU), Peter Schulte (Umea).

This workshop is financed by DFG project "Mechanistic and Representational Explanation in Cognitive Neuroscience" (Grant no. 520194884).