From Causations to Translations: What Biochemists can Contribute to the Study of Behavior

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between observations of phenomena at the behavioral level, and at the biochemical and physiological levels. It argues that a complete description of an organism and its behavior demands the integration of these levels, and it raises the question of the nature of such an integration. It begins by discussing the nature of “levels” of biological experimentation and explanation. It shows that purely “systems” explanations of behavioral observations cannot be complete, nor can they distinguish between alternative models. They also run the danger of reification, and the general tendency to reify explanations of behavior, especially among sociobiologists, is analyzed.

The fallacy of reductionist explanations of behavior, in which behavioral events are seen as “caused by” antecedent biochemical ones, is then discussed. Various conventional ways of springing the reductionist trap, especially those which see causes as running both “up” and “down” between levels, are shown to be inadequate or to lead to paradox, and the inadequacy of a purely correlational approach is described.

The alternative proposed herein is a nonreductive version of the identity hypothesis in which biochemical events are seen not as causing behavioral events but as synonymous with them, but in a different language system. It is proposed that the word “cause” can only be properly applied within a given level and that the relationships between epistemologically defined levels are best describes as traditional, as between different languages. Examples of how this mode of understanding may work in practice are given, and, finally, its relationship to the experimental work in the search for the biochemical events which occur during learning and memory formation, the storage of the “engram”, are discussed.