Recently, some philosophers of science (e.g., Gürol Irzik, Michael Friedman) have challenged the ‘received view’ on the relationship between Rudolf Carnap and Thomas Kuhn, suggesting that there is a close affinity (rather than opposition) between their philosophical views. In support of this argument, these authors cite Carnap and Kuhn’s similar views on incommensurability, theory-choice, and scientific revolutions. Against this revisionist view, I argue that the philosophical relationship between Carnap and Kuhn should be regarded as opposed rather than complementary. In particular, (...) I argue that a consideration of the fundamentally disparate nature of the broader philosophical projects of Carnap (logic of science) and Kuhn (providing a theory of scientific revolutions)renders the alleged similarities between their views superficial in comparison to their fundamental differences. In defense of the received view, I suggest that Carnap and Kuhn are model representatives of two contrasting styles of doing philosophy of science, viz., logical analysis and historical analysis respectively. This analysis clarifies the role played by Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the demise of logical empiricism in the second half of the twentieth-century. (shrink)

I examine the role of inference from experiment in theory building. What are the options open to the scientific community when faced with an experimental result that appears to be in conflict with accepted theory? I distinguish, in Laudan's (1977), Nickels's (1981), and Franklin's (1993) sense, between the context of pursuit and the context of justification of a scientific theory. Making this distinction allows for a productive middle position between epistemic realism and constructivism. The decision to pursue a new or (...) a revised theory in response to the new evidence may not be fully rationally determined. Nonetheless, it is possible to distinguish the question of whether there is reason to pursue a theory from the question of whether that theory, once it has been pursued over time, solves a problem of interest to science. I argue that, in this context, there is a solid way to distinguish between the contexts of pursuit and of justification, on the basis of a theory's evidential support and problem-solving ability. (shrink)

This article is an account of the dynamics of interaction across the social sciences and neurosciences. Against an arid rhetoric of ‘interdisciplinarity’, it calls for a more expansive imaginary of what experiment – as practice and ethos – might offer in this space. Arguing that opportunities for collaboration between social scientists and neuroscientists need to be taken seriously, the article situates itself against existing conceptualizations of these dynamics, grouping them under three rubrics: ‘critique’, ‘ebullience’ and ‘interaction’. Despite their differences, each (...) insists on a distinction between sociocultural and neurobiological knowledge, or does not show how a more entangled field might be realized. The article links this absence to the ‘regime of the inter-’, an ethic of interdisciplinarity that guides interaction between disciplines on the understanding of their pre-existing separateness. The argument of the paper is thus twofold: (1) that, contra the ‘regime of the inter-’, it is no longer practicable to maintain a hygienic separation between sociocultural webs and neurobiological architecture; (2) that the cognitive neuroscientific experiment, as a space of epistemological and ontological excess, offers an opportunity to researchers, from all disciplines, to explore and register this realization. (shrink)

It has been commonplace in epistemology since its inception to idealize away from computational resource constraints, i.e., from the constraints of time and memory. One thought is that a kind of ideal rationality can be specified that ignores the constraints imposed by limited time and memory, and that actual cognitive performance can be seen as an interaction between the norms of ideal rationality and the practicalities of time and memory limitations. But a cornerstone of naturalistic epistemology is that normative assessment (...) is constrained by capacities: you cannot require someone to do something they cannot or, as it is usually put, ought implies can. This much we take to be uncontroversial. We argue that differences in architectures, goals and resources imply substantial differences in capacity, and that some of these differences are ineliminable. It follows that some differences in goals and architectural and computational resources matter at the normative level: they constrain what principles of normative epistemology can be used to describe and prescribe their behavior. As a result, we can expect there to be important epistemic differences between the way brains, individuals, and science work. (shrink)

We review the past and present theoretical and experimental situations relating to wave-particle dualism. New tests aimed at enlightening the individual behavior as awave, then as aparticle, of asingle quantum mechanical system in the same experimental run are presented. The related epistemological, philosophical, and historical backgrounds are presented in a twofold exposition taking into account thepositivistic standard Copenhagen interpretation as well as therealist de Broglian point of view.

This article agrees with Philip Kitcher that we should aim for a well-ordered science, one that answers the right questions in the right ways. Crucial to this is to address questions of use: Which scientific account is right for which system in which circumstances? This is a difficult question: evidence that may support a scientific claim in one context may not support it in another. Drawing on examples in physics and other sciences, this article argues that work on the warrant (...) of theories in philosophy of science needs to change. Emphasis should move from the warrant of theories in the abstract to questions of evidence for use. (shrink)

This paper argues that even when simple analogue models picture parallel worlds, they generally still serve as isolating tools. But there are serious obstacles that often stop them isolating in just the right way. These are obstacles that face any model that functions as a thought-experiment but they are especially pressing for economic models because of the paucity of economic principles. Because of the paucity of basic principles, economic models are rich in structural assumptions. Without these no interesting conclusions can (...) be drawn. This, however, makes trouble when it comes to exporting conclusions from the model to the world. One uncontroversial constraint on induction from special cases is to beware of extending conclusions to situations that we know are different in relevant respects. In the case of economic models it is clear by inspection that the unrealistic structural assumptions of the model are intensely relevant to the conclusion. Any inductive leap to a real situation seems a bad bet. (shrink)

On the relation between experiment and thought experiment in the natural sciences. To understand the reciprocal autonomy and complementarity of thought and real experiment, it is necessary to distinguish between a ‘positive’ (empirical or formal) and a transcendental perspective. Empirically and formally, real and thought experiments are indistinguishable. However, from a reflexive-transcendental viewpoint thought experiment is at the same time irreducible and complementary to real experiment. This is due to the fact that the hypothetical-anticipatory moment is in principle irreducible to (...) physical reality—even though it refers to physical reality and is bound with the empirical use of our understanding. The presence of counterfactuals is the condition of the possibility for thought experiments to become in principle real ones, by means of a series of technical realisations that gradually approximate the idealisations that they contain. (shrink)

ArgumentUsing a striking example from the history of applied psychology, the concept of accident proneness, this paper suggests that historians of science may still find viable the idea of simultaneous discovery or construction of a scientific idea. Accident proneness was discovered independently in Germany and in Britain during the period of World War I. Later on, in 1926, the idea was independently formulated and named in both countries. The evidence shows not only striking simultaneity but true novelty and commensurateness of (...) the two formulations that crystallized at the same time in parallel, but distinctly separate, settings. (shrink)

Three major views of the observation?theory relation are now extant: (1) Observation and theory are mutually independent and observation provides the basis for evaluating theories. (2) Observations are theory?dependent and do not provide objective grounds for evaluating theories. (3) The concept of observation should be extended in a way that includes many so?called ?theoretical?entities? among the observables. Analyses of these views set the stage for a new approach that incorporates lessons learned from discussions of earlier accounts. The central idea of (...) this new approach is that empirical testing requires comparison of results arrived at by derivation from the theory being tested (plus appropriate auxiliary premises) with results derived from an interaction with aspects of nature in the theory's domain. These routes are independent in that each can be pursued without knowledge of the details or results of the alternative route. The approach accounts for the role of empirical results in evaluating theories without requiring that these results be theory?free or more certain than theoretical results. It also provides a basis for understanding the conditions under which a conflict between observation and theory can result in rejection of the observational result. (shrink)

This article outlines a philosophy of science in practice that focuses on the engineering sciences. A methodological issue is that these practices seem to be divided by two different styles of scientific reasoning, namely, causal-mechanistic and mathematical reasoning. These styles are philosophically characterized by what Kuhn called ?disciplinary matrices?. Due to distinct metaphysical background pictures and/or distinct ideas of what counts as intelligible, they entail distinct ideas of the character of phenomena and what counts as a scientific explanation. It is (...) argued that the two styles cannot be reduced to each other. At the same time, although they are incompatible, they must not be regarded as competing. Instead, they produce different kinds of epistemic results, which serve different kinds of epistemic functions. Moreover, some scientific breakthroughs essentially result from relating them. This view of complementary styles of scientific reasoning is supported by pluralism about metaphysical background pictures. (shrink)

The article addresses the issue of dynamics of science, in particular of new sciences born in twentieth century and developed after the Second World War (information science, materials science, life science). The article develops the notion of search regime as an abstract characterization of dynamic patterns, based on three dimensions: the rate of growth, the degree of internal diversity of science and the associated dynamics (convergent vs. proliferating), and the nature of complementarity. The article offers a conceptual discussion for the (...) argument that new sciences follow a different pattern than established sciences and presents preliminary evidence drawn from original data in particle physics, computer science and nanoscience. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give a self-reflective account of the building of Galileo's pendulum in order to discover what were the practical contingencies of building and using the pendulum for demonstrating the law of isochronism. In doing this, the unique Lebenswelt structures of Galilean physics are explicated through the ethnomethodological concepts developed by Harold Garfinkel. The presupposition is that the practical logic of Galilean physics is embedded in the instruments themselves. In building the pendulum and recovering its (...) original use, Galilean physics becomes for ethnomethodologists a first-hand practical discovery. This is not a reconstruction of the mind of the historical Galileo but, rather, an explication of Galileo's practical perspective on the instrument as an intersubjective and interchangeable standpoint available for ethnomethodological analysis. This enables us to study historical facts from the standpoint of the practical logic of the original practice with a pedagogical eye for the instructive reproducibility of science. (shrink)

I defend a pragmatist reinterpretation of Sellars’s famous manifest-scientific distinction. I claim that in order to do justice to this important distinction we must first recognize, despite what philosophers—including, arguably, Sellars—often make of it, that the distinction does not draw an epistemological or metaphysical boundary between different kinds of objects and events, but a pragmatic boundary between different ways in which we interact with objects and events. Put differently, I argue that the manifest-scientific distinction, in my view, can be best (...) understood, not as a metaphysical distinction between apparent and real objects and events, or an epistemological distinction between perceptible and imperceptible objects and events, but rather as a distinction, which is not necessarily rigid over time, between distinct ways in which we collectively deal, in practice, with objects and events. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis essay addresses the historiographical question of how to study scientific instruments and the connections between them without rigidly determining the boundaries of the object under historical scrutiny beforehand. To do this, I will explore an episode in the early history of the tachistoscope — defined, among other things, as an instrument for the brief exposure of visual stimuli in experimental psychology. After looking at the tachistoscope described by physiologist Volkmann in 1859, I will turn to the gravity chronometer, (...) constructed by Cattell at Wundt's Leipzig institute of psychology in the 1880s. Taking Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances as a methodological suggestion to travel from one member to another to find out just how members relate to one another, I will investigate part of the family to which both the tachistoscope and the gravity chronometer turn out to belong. A detailed analysis of these instruments, using both historical sources and historical accounts of psychological instruments, may demonstrate that the instrument is not a standard package that, if well applied, will simply secure good results. Each package needs to be assembled again and again; the particular package that is assembled may differ on different occasions. Thus an alternative is developed to an understanding of instruments as univocally functioning material means. (shrink)

A lot of attention has been devoted to the study of discoveries in high energy physics, but less on measurements aiming at improving an existing theory like the standard model of particle physics, getting more precise values for the parameters of the theory or establishing relationships between them. This paper provides a detailed and critical study of how measurements are performed in recent HEP experiments, taking examples from differential cross section measurements with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. This study (...) will be used to provide an elucidation of the concept of event used in HEP, in order to determine what constitutes an observation and what does not. It will highlight the essential place taken by theory-ladenness in order to produce observational facts, and will show how uncertainty and sensitivity estimates constitute an operational approach to robustness, inside the practice of science, avoiding potential circularity problem traditionally implied by theory-ladenness. This is in contrast to robustness analyses typically considered in the literature. A careful analysis of systematic uncertainty estimates and of statistical tests used to set empirical conclusions from the observations will however demonstrate that quantitative statements obtained from these statistical tests cannot be more than simple guiding arguments for the production of knowledge, but do not determine it. This indicates that the frontier between theory and observation is blurry and that the dichotomy theory-experiment should be revised. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is about the context of Albert Einstein's concerns at the time of a most intense intellectual effort — his own and that of a small group of scientists concerned with classical quantum theory. I describe contemporaneous interactions and differing views about the prospects for and the significance of the First Solvay Congress of 1911 as voiced by major participants. There are two axes around which the paper evolves: the Einstein-Nernst-Lorentz dialogue and the public institutional creation of the (...) “Solvay” stage. In certain ways, this paper is about personal and institutional patronage: the working out of a difficult theoretical impasse requires individual and collective moral support. It is about the forging of the identity of a scientific problem and the personal and institutional setting, the public space, in which this problem was collectively addressed. But I also uncover heuristic playfulness and flexibility which accompanies theoretical change. (shrink)

David Miller has demonstrated to the satisfaction of a variety of philosophers that the accuracy of false quantitative theories is language dependent (cf. Miller 1975). This demonstration renders the accuracy-based mode of comparison for such theories obsolete. The purpose of this essay is to supply an alternate basis for theory comparison which in this paper is deemed the knowledge-based mode of quantitative theory comparison. It is argued that the status of a quantitative theory as knowledge depends primarily on the soundness (...) of the measurement procedure which produced the theory; such soundness is invariant, on my view, under Milleresque translations. This point is the basis for the linguistic invariance of knowledgelikeness. When the aim of science is not construed simply in terms of the truthlikeness or accuracy of theories, but in terms of the knowledge such theories embody, Miller's language dependence problem is overcome. One result of this analysis is that the possibility of objective scientific progress is restored, a possibility that Miller's analysis has prima facie defeated. (shrink)

Social Epistemology, as formulated by Steve Fuller, is based on the suggestion that rational knowledge policy must be held accountable to ‘brute facts’ about the nature of our human cognitive pursuits, whatever these may be. One difficulty for Fuller concerns the conception of the social which underwrites social epistemology. I argue that social epistemology conflates the social with human psychological properties that are available for public scrutiny and, accordingly, that social epistemology is best viewed as a brand of psychologism. Though (...) Fuller's proposal signifies an important step in the ongoing attempt by scholars to eradicate the last traces of Descartes' epistemological device of a disembodiedres cogitans, I conclude that his conception of the social is too weak to serve as the basis for a socially-embedded discipline in anything but name only. (shrink)

It is no longer necessary to defend current historiography of psychology against the strictures aimed at its early text book incarnations in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, Robert Young and others denigrated then standard textbook histories of psychology for their amateurism and their justifications propaganda for specific standpoints in current psychology, disguised as history. Since then, at least some textbooks writers and working historians of psychology have made such criticisms their own. The demand for textbook histories continues nonetheless. (...) Psychology, at least in the United States, remains the only discipline that makes historical representations of itself in the form of “history and systems” courses an official part of its pedagogical canon, required, interestingly enough, for the license in clinical practice.1In the meantime, the professionalization of scholarship in history of psychology has proceeded apace. All of the trends visible in historical and social studies of other sciences, as well as in general cultural and intellectual history, are noe present in the historical study of psychology. Yet despite the visibility and social importance of psychology's various applications, and the prominence of certain schools of psychological thought such as behaviorism and psychoanalysis in contemporary cultural and political debate, the historiography of psychology has continued to hold a marginal position in history and social studies of science. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the value of philosophy of science for history of science. I start by introducing a distinction between two ways of integrating history and philosophy of science: historical philosophy of science and philosophical history of science. I then offer a critical discussion of Imre Lakatos’s project to bring philosophy of science to bear on historical interpretation. I point out certain flaws in Lakatos’s project, which I consider indicative of what went wrong with PHS in the past. (...) Finally, I put forward my own attempt to bring out the historiographical potential of philosophy of science. Starting from Norwood Russell Hanson’s insight that historical studies of science involve metascientific concepts, I argue that philosophical reflection on those concepts can be historiographically fruitful. I focus on four issues and discuss their significance and utility for historiographical practice. (shrink)

This paper takes part in the methodological debate concerning the nature and the justification of hypotheses about computational systems in software engineering by providing an epistemological analysis of Software Testing, the practice of observing the programs’ executions to examine whether they fulfil software requirements. Property specifications articulating such requirements are shown to involve falsifiable hypotheses about software systems that are evaluated by means of tests which are likely to falsify those hypotheses. Software Reliability metrics, used to measure the growth of (...) probability that given failures will occur at specified times as new executions are observed, is shown to involve a Bayesian confirmation of falsifiable hypotheses on programs. Coverage criteria, used to select those input values with which the system under test is to be launched, are understood as theory-laden principles guiding software tests, here compared to scientific experiments. Redundant computations, fault seeding models and formal methods used in software engineering to evaluate test results are taken to be instantiations of some epistemological strategies used in scientific experiments to distinguish between valid and non-valid experimental outcomes. The final part of the paper explores the problem, advanced in the context of the philosophy of technology, of defining the epistemological status of software engineering by conceiving it as a scientifically attested technology. (shrink)

The ideas of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity have been widely applied to the relationship between sciences. This article is an attempt to discuss the reasons why scientific interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity pose specific problems. First of all, certain questions about terminology are taken into account in order to clarify the meaning of the word ?discipline? and its cognates. Secondly, we argue that the specificity of sciences does not lie in becoming disciplines. Then, we focus on the relationship between sciences, and between sciences (...) and technologies: we argue that multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are a common practice among strict sciences and technologies. Finally, we discuss the different meanings of transdisciplinarity when it is applied to sciences. (shrink)

In concluding his ‘Autobiographical notes’, Albert Einstein explained that the purpose of his exposition was to ‘show the reader how the efforts of a life hang together and why they have led to expectations of a definite form’. Einstein's remarks tell of a coherence between personal ‘strivings and searchings’ and scientific activity, which has all but vanished in the midst of the current trend of social constructivism in history of science. As Nancy Nersessian recently pointed out, in the process of (...) illuminating complex relationships between scientific activity and its social context, ‘socio-historical analysis has “black-boxed” the individual scientist’. Has the pendulum swung too far? In reaction to the preceding great-man hagiographie approach to the history of science, the social constructivists have largely ‘thrown the baby out with the bathwater’; consideration of individual scientists' personal approaches to science was unnecessarily expunged with the removal of ‘genius’ as an explanatory tool. (shrink)

A research community must share assumptions, such as about accepted knowledge, appropriate research practices, and good evidence. However, community members also hold some divergent assumptions, which they—and we, as analysts of science—tend to overlook. Communities with different assumed values, knowledge, and goals must negotiate to achieve compromises that make their conflicting goals complementary. This negotiation guards against the extremes of each group’s desired outcomes, which, if achieved, would make other groups’ goals impossible. I argue that this diversity, as a form (...) of value pluralism, regularly influences scientific practice and can make scientific evidence and knowledge more useful and more reliable. As an example, I examine vertebrate paleontology laboratories, which house a variety of workers with different training and priorities, particularly about the meaning of time. Specifically, scientists want to study fully prepared fossils immediately, conservators want to preserve fossils for future use, and preparators mediate between the other groups’ conflicting goals. After all, one cannot study a fossil encased in rock, and one cannot remove that rock without removing information from that specimen. In response, these coworkers articulate their assumptions in everyday deliberations about how scientific evidence should be made and used. I argue that this exchange of assumptions is crucial for a research community to achieve mutually beneficial compromises that benefit current and future knowledge construction. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are well aware that theories are underdetermined by data. But what about the data? Scientific data are selected and processed representations or pieces of nature. What is useless context and what is valuable specimen, as well as how specimens are processed for study, are not obvious or predetermined givens. Instead, they are decisions made by scientists and other research workers, such as technicians, that produce different outcomes for the data. Vertebrate fossils provide a revealing case of this (...) data-processing, because they are embedded in rock that often matches the fossils’ color and texture, requiring an expert eye to judge where the fossil/context interface is. Fossil preparators then permanently define this interface by chiseling away the material they identify as rock. As a result, fossil specimens can emerge in multiple possible forms depending on the preparator’s judgment, skill, and chosen tools. A prepared fossil then is not yet data but potential data, following Leonelli’s relational framework in which data are defined as evidence that scientists have used to support a proposed theory. This paper draws on ethnographic evidence to assess how scientists overcome this underdetermination of specimens, as potential data, in addition to the underdetermination of theories and of data, to successfully construct specimen-based knowledge. Among other strategies, paleontology maintains a division of labor between data-makers and theory-makers. This distinction serves to justify the omission of preparators’ nonstandard, individualized techniques from scientific publications. This separation has benefits for both scientists and technicians; however, it restricts knowledge production by preventing scientists from understanding how the pieces of nature they study were processed into researchable specimens. (shrink)

Van Fraassen believes our current best theories enable us to make accurate predictions because they have been subjected to a selection process similar to natural selection. His explanation for the predictive success of our best theories has been subjected to extensive criticism from realists. I aim to clarify the nature of van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science. Contrary to what the critics claim, the selectionist can explain why it is that we have successful theories, as well as (...) why it is reasonable to expect past successful theories to be successful in the future. I also argue that the plausibility of the realists’ explanation rests on an inaccurate understanding of the nature of predictive success . The predictive success of our best theories is a relative success. (shrink)

Internalism is an explanatory strategy that makes the internal structure and constitution of the organism a basis for the investigation of its external function and the ways in which it is embedded in an environment. It is opposed to an externalist explanatory strategy, which takes its departure from observations about external function and mind-environment interactions, and infers and rationalizes internal organismic structure from that. This paper addresses the origins of truth, a basic ingredient in the human conceptual scheme. I suggest (...) the necessity of pursuing an internalist line of explanation for it, as adopted in the biolinguistic program and generative grammar at large. According to this view, the concept of truth is a presupposition for the way language is used in relation to the world, rather than a function of that use or a consequence of language-world relations. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe societal context within which science is pursued generally acts as a productive force in the generation of knowledge. To analyze this action it is helpful to consider particular modes of mediation through which societal concerns are projected into the very local and esoteric concerns of a particular domain of research. One such mode of mediation occurs through material systems. Here I treat two such systems – the steam engine and the electric telegraph – in the natural philosophy of (...) William Thomson (Lord Kelvin).The steam engine illustratesconceptualmediation. It simultaneously instantiates “labor value” in political economy and “work” in engineering mechanics, thereby identifying the two concepts in the region of their common reference. The partial identification carries with it a structural analogy between a network of concepts from political economy and a similar network in natural philosophy, providing a potent heuristic for the reformulation and further development of dynamics.The electric telegraph illustratesmethodologicalmediation. It projects the interests of engineering and industry into the interests of electromagnetic theory and vice versa, thereby establishing, in Thomson's view, a Baconian unity of truth and utility. As the common reference of theory and practice, the telegraph locates the truth of theoretical knowledge in its utility and the utility of practical knowledge in its truth.These particular cases of conceptual and methodological mediation indicate how the local practices, concepts, and interests of a research specialty, or subculture, draw on and are adapted to those of the larger culture within which they develop. Thus the analysis of mediation leads to an ecological model of the social construction of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Is a policy-friendly philosophy of science possible? In order to respond this question, I consider a particular instance of contemporary philosophy of science, the semantic view of scientific theories, by placing it in the broader methodological landscape of the integration of philosophy of science into STS (Science and Technology Studies) as a component of the overall contribution of the latter to science policy. In that context, I defend a multi-disciplinary methodological integration of the special discipline composing STS against a reductionist (...) interdisciplinary unification, arguing that if STS wants to contribute to policy advising by constructing narratives of science practice feasible for science policy both in terms of descriptive completeness and intelligibility, then it must avoid the explanatory reductionism tendencies of special disciplines in interdisciplinary contexts. This would favour, at the same time, a relaxation of esoteric language. On this basis, it seems that the semantic view is one right candidate among other approaches in the philosophy of science for facilitating the integration of the methodologically different contributions to STS toward policy objectives. In fact, besides offering a more realistic and descriptively complete picture of science practice with respect to its predecessor in the philosophy of science, namely the syntactic view, the semantic view is also able to capture some aspects of science practice that elude even sociological approaches to STS, thus inviting different perspective on the same subject matter. (shrink)

Abstract Since the seventeenth century the dream of rendering human life less arduous and of securing it against the whims of fate through the development and deployment of technological devices has been a factor stimulating scientific research and development. This dream rests on a supposition that we live in a universe governed by deterministic laws in which limits on our ability to predict and control are set only by the imperfection of our knowledge and skill. But recent work in chaos (...) theory combined with reminders that human beings themselves form part of the worldin which they live and seek to control suggests that this supposition is unjustified. If this is the case, then the idea that there is a technological solution to every problem, one which can be found by scientists or experts (the modern heroes) is revealed as a magical attitude which should have no place in rational decision making and whose persistence threatens to turn scientists into the high priests of a cult of technology. (shrink)

The historical debate on representation in cognitive science and neuroscience construes representations as theoretical posits and discusses the degree to which we have reason to posit them. We reject the premise of that debate. We argue that experimental neuroscientists routinely observe and manipulate neural representations in their laboratory. Therefore, neural representations are as real as neurons, action potentials, or any other well-established entities in our ontology.