A more moderate, less imperialistic form of antireductionism is the autonomy view, (C) in figure
10.2, where the dotted lines indicate that explanations at each level can proceed independently. This
view is popular among sociologists, economists, and anthropologists who want to maintain their
independence from psychology without making strong claims of social constructivism. Similarly,
some psychologists and philosophers of mind have wanted to defend psychology from the rapidly
increasing incursion of neuroscience. The autonomy view is dwindling in plausibility, as cognitive,
social, clinical, and developmental psychology are being increasingly tied to neural processes.
Similarly, at the social level, economics is coming to be influenced by behavioral and neural
approaches.
My own preferred view is the highly interactive one (D), in which there are causal interactions and
hence explanatory relations among all levels. This view is not reductionist, because it rejects the oneway
causal connections shown in (A), nor is it antireductionist, because it recognizes that molecular
processes are part of the explanation of neural events, neural processes are part of the explanation of
psychological events, and psychological processes are part of the explanation of social events. I hope
that increased knowledge about interconnected multilevel mechanisms will be useful for explaining
human thinking, and, further, for creating new ways to approach difficult social problems. Then
philosophy and neuroscience will serve not only to interpret the world, but also to help change it.