Among the many drivers of the 21st-century ‘practice turn’ in philosophy of science are a shift from theory construction to modelling; another was the thesis that psychoneural identity claims function as dispensable heuristics guiding discovery. An examination of the history of research on reward and motivation suggests otherwise. What are often taken to be conjectures about psychoneural identities are better understood as appeals to familiar forms of mechanistic reasoning about constitution and localisation. A clearer understanding of scientific representation does not necessarily support the rejection of traditional identity theories.
