Synthese (2007) 159:315–328 DOI 10.1007/s11229-007-9240-3 Functional integration and the mind Jakob Hohwy Published online: 26 September 2007 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007 Abstract Different cognitive functions recruit a number of different, often over- lapping, areas of the brain. Theories in cognitive and computational neuroscience are beginning to take this kind of functional integration into account. The contributions to this special issue consider what functional integration tells us about various aspects of the mind such as perception, language, volition, agency, and reward. Here, I consider how and why functional integration may matter for the mind; I discuss a general the- oretical framework, based on generative models, that may unify many of the debates surrounding functional integration and the mind; and I briefly introduce each of the contributions. Keywords Functional integration · Functional segregation · Interconnectivity · Phenomenology · fMRI · Generative models · Predictive coding 1 Introduction Across the diverse subdisciplines of the mind sciences, there is a growing awareness that, in order to properly understand the brain as the basis of the mind, our theorising and experimental work must to a higher degree incorporate the fact that activity in the brain, at the level of individual neurons, over neural populations, to cortical areas, is characterised by massive interconnectivity. In brain imaging science, this represents a move away from ‘blob-ology’, with a focus on local areas of activity, and towards functional integration, with a focus on the functional and dynamic causal relations between areas of activity. Similarly, in J. Hohwy (B) Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia e-mail:
[email protected] 123 316 Synthese (2007) 159:315–328 theoretical neuroscience there is a renewed focus on the computational significance of the interaction between bottom-up and top-down neural signals.