Abstract

Psychological Inquiry, 22: 139–157, 2011 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1047-840X print / 1532-7965 online DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2011.567962 REPLY Modeling Mind and Matter: Reductionism and Psychological Measurement in Cognitive Neuroscience Rogier A. Kievit Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Jan-Willem Romeijn Department of Philosophy, Groningen University, Groningen, the Netherlands Lourens J. Waldorp, Jelte M. Wicherts, H. Steven Scholte, and Denny Borsboom Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands According to Karlin (1983), “the purpose of mod- rize their criticism as follows: “Our central objection els is not to fit the data but to sharpen the questions” to the psychometric approach deployed by Kievit et al. (Krukow, Nielsen, & Sassone, 2008, p. 3782). Given is that the formal models only account for correlations the rich and insightful commentaries we received, our between variables (measurements) and do not aid in approach to the reduction problem can be considered explaining phenomena. Cognitive neuroscience is con- a success in this respect. The commenters have taken cerned with the latter” (p. 108). We agree that mech- our ideas and expanded them both in breadth and depth. anistic explanations are a worthwhile goal. This is as They have also