Abstract:

In recent years, more and more researches are being conducted on cognitive neuroscience, and with its widening popularity people become to know more and more about it. Currently, cognitive neuroscience possesses significance in the area of Psychology. As a discipline of it has come into being, the discussions about cognitive neuroscience become heated. It has received both praises and criticisms. Optimistic psychologists believe that people can "read" the human mental activity and reveal the secrets of mind "black box" via the methods and technology of cognitive neuroscience. Some scholars of our country have predicted that optimistically: In many years, cognitive neuroscience will lead the research direction and even the future of psychology. While at the same time, opponents, among whom they are mainly the philosophical and the theoretical psychologists, have their contrary voices. Thus, the writer of this article finds it necessary to discuss the value of cognitive neuroscience, systematically and comprehensively. This article attaches great importance to the criticisms of cognitive neuroscience. According to the philosophical and the theoretical psychologists, cognitive neuroscience is faced with three challenges: (1)neuroscience is "reductive", and it can not fully explain the process of a person's mental activity; (2) Cultural and historical context and many other factors is the most critical factors to understand human psychology and behavior, but cognitive neuroscience has nothing to do with these factors, as a result, it can not really explain the human mind and behavior; (3)the research of it does not function on people’s psychology and behavior but reveal the correlation between neural events and cognitive activities. Beginning with these challenges, and through discussing the combination of the research methods and research levels of cognitive neuroscience, this article probes how to collapse these criticisms, and what will be brought to psychological theory after. Then the value of cognitive neuroscience in psychological theory will present itself, and its importance in psychology research is clarified. Furthermore, the author of this passage points out that: (1) Reductionism can be divided into ontology reductionism, interpretation reductionism and method reductionism. The criticisms of the philosophical and the theoretical psychologists are aimed at ontology reductionism and interpretation reductionism, but cognitive neuroscience belongs to method reductionism which means that it has no threat to cognitive neuroscience. (2) Cognitive neuroscience is closely related to many other areas, such as those in social psychology and cultural psychology, thus the research on cognitive neuroscience will promote a mutual development in these areas. (3) Except revealing the correlation between neural events and cognitive activities, functional neuroimaging techniques play an important position in distinguishing competing cognitive theories, helping the cognitive neuroscientist infer something about the cognitive function of a particular site in the brain and establish a new theory. The author concludes that cognitive neuroscience is one of the disciplines in psychology, it studies only several specific kinds of problems within a limited area, therefore, it should be viewed from a scientific and rational perspective.

Key words: cognitive neuroscience, reductionism, correlation

摘要：

从认知神经科学面临的三个挑战——(1)神经科学是“还原” 的，不能完全解释一个人的心理活动过程；（2）认知神经科学无法真正解释人的心理与行为；（3）认知神经科学只能揭示出神经事件与认知活动或行为活动的相关性——入手来讨论其心理学理论价值，阐明认知神经科学在心理学研究中的重要地位及主流趋势。同时指出，认知神经科学只是心理学学科门类中的一种，它能解决的问题也只限于特定的范围，对它要有科学理性的认识和定位。

关键词: 认知神经科学, 还原主义, 相关性