In the past decades, reductionism has dominated both research directions and funding policies in clinical psychology and psychiatry. The intense search for the biological basis of mental disorders, however, has not resulted in conclusive reductionist explanations of psychopathology. Recently, network models have been proposed as an alternative framework for the analysis of mental disorders, in which mental disorders arise from the causal interplay between symptoms. In this target article, we show that this conceptualization can help explain why reductionist approaches in psychiatry and clinical psychology are on the wrong track. First, symptom networks preclude the identification of a common cause of symptomatology with a neurobiological condition; in symptom networks, there is no such common cause. Second, symptom network relations depend on the content of mental states and, as such, feature intentionality. Third, the strength of network relations is highly likely to depend partially on cultural and historical contexts as well as external mechanisms in the environment. Taken together, these properties suggest that, if mental disorders are indeed networks of causally related symptoms, reductionist accounts cannot achieve the level of success associated with reductionist disease models in modern medicine. As an alternative strategy, we propose to interpret network structures in terms of D. C. Dennett's (1987) notion of real patterns, and suggest that, instead of being reducible to a biological basis, mental disorders feature biological and psychological factors that are deeply intertwined in feedback loops. This suggests that neither psychological nor biological levels can claim causal or explanatory priority, and that a holistic research strategy is necessary for progress in the study of mental disorders.

The term “moral bioenhancement” conceals a diverse plurality encompassing much potential, some elements of which are desirable, some of which are disturbing, and some of which are simply bland. This article invites readers to take a better differentiated approach to discriminating between elements of the debate rather than talking of moral bioenhancement “per se,” or coming to any global value judgments about the idea as an abstract whole (no such whole exists). Readers are then invited to consider the benefits and distortions that come from the usual dichotomies framing the various debates, concluding with an additional distinction for further clarifying this discourse qua explicit/implicit moral bioenhancement.

The Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH) argues that there is a moral imperative that psychiatric treatments should be made available to all communities across the world. But psychiatric theories, categories and interventions emerged in the Western world are based on a set of assumptions about the nature of the self and society, nature and the supernatural, health and healing that are not universally accepted. In this paper we argue that there is a stronger moral case for caution with regard to the export of psychiatric thinking. Without a critical interrogation of such thinking the MGMH is at risk of doing a great deal of harm to the diverse, and sometimes fragile, systems of care that already exist across the world.

Systems biology aims to integrate multiple biological data types such as genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics across different levels of structure and scale; it represents an emerging paradigm in the scientific process which challenges the reductionism that has dominated biomedical research for hundreds of years. Systems biology will nevertheless only be successful if the technologies on which it is based are able to deliver the required type and quality of data. In this review we discuss how well positioned is proteomics to deliver the data necessary to support meaningful systems modelling in parasite biology. We summarise the current state of identification proteomics in parasites, but argue that a new generation of quantitative proteomics data is now needed to underpin effective systems modelling. We discuss the challenges faced to acquire more complete knowledge of protein post-translational modifications, protein turnover and protein-protein interactions in parasites. Finally we highlight the central role of proteome-informatics in ensuring that proteomics data is readily accessible to the user-community and can be translated and integrated with other relevant data types.

Developing reduced-input agroecosystems is a challenge to researchers and practitioners in a number of disciplines. In particular, because of the complexity of managerial inputs, understanding the effects of decreases in levels of one or several inputs presents a difficult experimental problem. Moderate reductionism is proposed as an appropriate hierarchical analysis, which first characterizes system level behavior and then explains it in terms of system components and their interactions. An example is given using reduced nitrogen fertilizer inputs; higher nitrogen use efficiency at lower levels of input is explained by increased nutrient recycling between soil and plant subsystems. Transition from conventional to reduced-input management involves changes in both economic and ecological properties of agroecosystems. Biological, chemical and physical changes, including increased species diversity, tighter nutrient recycling, and longer-term perennial effects, may parallel ecological succession. Hypothetical trends for several such changes are discussed.

Contemporary neuroscience links together soma and society in complex ways, casting the brain as the locus of a matrix of reciprocal interactions between soma and society. Accordingly, critiques of such research which revolve around its perceived ‘reductionism’ and ‘determinism’ are rendered somewhat problematic. That is not to say, however, that a critical sociology of neuroscience is redundant. Drawing on interviews with different kinds of neuroscientists investigating psychopathologies associated with antisocial behaviour (specifically, antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy), this article draws attention to the degree to which, by assigning roles to both ‘biology’ and ‘environment’ in the development of antisociality, neuroscience complicates the ontology of these categories, while at the same creating possibilities for the emergence of new kinds of deviancy, and legitimating social intervention in ‘risky’ children. In aligning somatic and societal narratives for the development of psychopathology, contemporary neuroscience may resist older sociological criticisms of biological reductionism, yet, in so doing, generate new claims with novel ethical and political valence.

In this conversation, the world-renowned neurobiologist Yadin Dudai discusses the latest advances in memory research, specifically the discovery of memory ‘erasure’ associated with the inhibition of an enzyme called PKMzeta. The conversation tackles the reductionist method in scientific inquiry, the mind/brain dilemma, the problematics of animal models in memory research, and the therapeutic implications of this groundbreaking discovery.

Our understanding of the sense of taste is largely based on research designed and interpreted in terms of the traditional four “basic” tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, and now a few more. This concept of basic tastes has no rational definition to test, and thus it has not been tested. As a demonstration, a preliminary attempt to test one common but arbitrary psychophysical definition of basic tastes is included in this article; that the basic tastes are unique in being able to account for other tastes. This definition was falsified in that other stimuli do about as well as the basic words and stimuli. To the extent that this finding might show analogies with other studies of receptor, neural, and psychophysical phenomena, the validity of the century-long literature of the science of taste based on a few “basics” is called into question. The possible origins, meaning, and influence of this concept are discussed. Tests of the model with control studies are suggested in all areas of taste related to basic tastes. As a stronger alternative to the basic tradition, the advantages of the across-fiber pattern model are discussed; it is based on a rational data-based hypothesis, and has survived attempts at falsification. Such “population coding” has found broad acceptance in many neural systems.

A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and that, to save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism.

We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical skepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical), then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not choose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naïve and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics.

The article looks at some strengths and weaknesses of attempts at socialising the concepts of knowledge and epistemology. Roughly speaking, such socialising is the result of considering these concepts from the sociological point of view. Four consequences of doing so are pointed out. This is followed by a discussion of a number of flaws identified in much of the constructivist literature on the issue. Constructivists have doubtless played an important role in demystifying the notions of knowledge and epistemology. Yet at times they have gone too far by drawing conclusions from their analyses which these analyses are incapable of supporting. At the end of the article, an alternative avoiding the difficulties posed by such conclusions is briefly sketched.

There are many ways of describing and explaining the properties of living systems; causal, functional, and reductive accounts are necessary but no one account has primacy. The history of biology as a discipline has given excessive authority to reductionism, which collapses higher level accounts, such as social or behavioural ones, into molecular ones. Such reductionism becomes crudely ideological when applied to the human condition, with its claims for genes “for” everything from sexual orientation to compulsive shopping. The current enthusiasm for genetics and ultra-Darwinist accounts, with their selfish-gene metaphors for living processes, misunderstand both the phenomena of development and the interactive role that DNA and the fluid genome play in the cellular orchestra. DNA is not a blueprint, and the four dimensions of life (three of space, one of time) cannot be read off from its one-dimensional strand. Both developmental and evolutionary processes are more than merely instructive or selective; the organism constructs itself, a process known as autopoiesis, through a lifeline trajectory. Because organisms are thermodynamically open systems, living processes are homeodynamic, not homeostatic. The self-organising membrane-bound and energy-utilising metabolic web of the cell must have evolved prior to so-called naked replicators. Evolution is constrained by physics, chemistry, and structure; not all change is powered by natural selection, and not all phenotypes are adaptive. Finally, therefore, living processes are radically indeterminate; like all other living organisms, but to an even greater degree, we make our own future, though in circumstances not of our own choosing.

In biological psychiatry, the biopsychosocial model is broadly supported. This does not mean a rejection of materialism, but of reductionism. Psychological (and social) psychiatry is deemed to be a necessary supplement to biological psychiatry.

This is one of the lessons made avalaible by Freud. In addition, there are other lessons to be taken from his work. From his view on the mind-body relationship a useful strategy for theory construction can be abstracted:

1. specify the relevant (neuro)physiologiocal mechanims,
2. specify the relevant mental mechanisms,
3. look for that output of the neurophysiological mechanisms that can also serve as the input of the mental mechanisms, and conversely. Especially the third directive will be of use for adherents of the biopsychosocial model.

We may also learn from Freud's mistakes. He rightly used his interactionistic but non-dualistic arguments for the vindication of a relatively autonomous psychological psychiatry. However, he wrongly delayed biological-psychiatric tasks to an indefinite future.

Investigations of the function of consciousness in human information processing have focused mainly on two questions: (1) Where does consciousness enter into the information processing sequence, and (2) how does conscious processing differ from preconscious and unconscious processing? Input analysis is thought to be initially “preconscious” and “pre-attentive” - fast, involuntary, and automatic. This is followed by “conscious,” “focal-attentive” analysis, which is relatively slow, voluntary, and flexible. It is thought that simple, familiar stimuli can be identified preconsciously, but conscious processing is needed to identify complex, novel stimuli. Conscious processing has also been thought to be necessary for choice, learning and memory, and the organization of complex, novel responses, particularly those requiring planning, reflection, or creativity.

The present target article reviews evidence that consciousness performs none of these functions. Consciousness nearly always results from focal-attentive processing (as a form of output) but does not itself enter into this or any other form of human information processing. This suggests that the term “conscious process” needs reexamination. Consciousness appears to be necessary in a variety of tasks because they require focal-attentive processing; if consciousness is absent, focal-attentive processing is absent. From a first-person perspective, however, conscious states are causally effective. First-person accounts are complementary to third-person accounts. Although they can be translated into third-person accounts, they cannot be reduced to them.