Codes, Functions, and Causes: A Critique of Brette's Conceptual Analysis of Coding

In a recent article [1], Brette argues that coding as a concept is inappropriate for explanations of neurocognitive phenomena. Here, we argue that Brette's conceptual analysis mischaracterizes the structure of causal claims in coding and other forms of analysis-by-decomposition. We argue that analyses of this form are permissible, conceptually coherent, and offer essential tools for building and developing models of neurocognitive systems like the brain. Brette identifies three properties of coding: correspondence, representation, and causality. Brette grants correspondence but rejects both representation and causality for the neural code. While we disagree with his analyses of representation and causality, we limit our critique to the latter.