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  1. Patchworks and operations.Rose Novick & Philipp Haueis - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (1):1-21.
    Recent work in the philosophy of scientific concepts has seen the simultaneous revival of operationalism and development of patchwork approaches to scientific concepts. We argue that these two approaches are natural allies. Both recognize an important role for measurement techniques in giving meaning to scientific terms. The association of multiple techniques with a single term, however, raises the threat of proliferating concepts (Hempel, 1966). While contemporary operationalists have developed some resources to address this challenge, these resources are inadequate to account (...)
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  • Beyond the Platonic Brain: facing the challenge of individual differences in function-structure mapping.Marco Viola - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2129-2155.
    In their attempt to connect the workings of the human mind with their neural realizers, cognitive neuroscientists often bracket out individual differences to build a single, abstract model that purportedly represents every human being’s brain. In this paper I first examine the rationale behind this model, which I call ‘Platonic Brain Model’. Then I argue that it is to be surpassed in favor of multiple models allowing for patterned inter-individual differences. I introduce the debate on legitimate ways of mapping neural (...)
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  • ‘Species’ without species.Aaron Novick & W. Ford Doolittle - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 87 (C):72-80.
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  • The death of the cortical column? Patchwork structure and conceptual retirement in neuroscientific practice.Philipp Haueis - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 85:101-113.
    In 1981, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel received the Nobel Prize for their research on cortical columns—vertical bands of neurons with similar functional properties. This success led to the view that “cortical column” refers to the basic building block of the mammalian neocortex. Since the 1990s, however, critics questioned this building block picture of “cortical column” and debated whether this concept is useless and should be replaced with successor concepts. This paper inquires which experimental results after 1981 challenged the building (...)
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  • Descriptive multiscale modeling in data-driven neuroscience.Philipp Haueis - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-26.
    Multiscale modeling techniques have attracted increasing attention by philosophers of science, but the resulting discussions have almost exclusively focused on issues surrounding explanation. In this paper, I argue that besides explanation, multiscale techniques can serve important exploratory functions when scientists model systems whose organization at different scales is ill-understood. My account distinguishes explanatory and descriptive multiscale modeling based on which epistemic goal scientists aim to achieve when using multiscale techniques. In explanatory multiscale modeling, scientists use multiscale techniques to select information (...)
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  • Why studying plant cognition is valuable, even if plants aren’t cognitive.David Colaço - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-18.
    Philosophers and scientists propose the idea that plants are cognitive, which has been met with criticisms. These criticisms focus on the fact that plants do not possess the properties traditionally associated with cognition. By contrast, several proponents introduce novel ways to conceptualize cognition. How should we make sense of this debate? In this paper, I argue that the plant cognition debate is not about whether plants meet a set of well-delineated and agreed-upon criteria according to which they count as cognitive. (...)
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  • Getting over Atomism: Functional Decomposition in Complex Neural Systems.Daniel C. Burnston - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (3):743-772.
    Functional decomposition is an important goal in the life sciences, and is central to mechanistic explanation and explanatory reduction. A growing literature in philosophy of science, however, has challenged decomposition-based notions of explanation. ‘Holists’ posit that complex systems exhibit context-sensitivity, dynamic interaction, and network dependence, and that these properties undermine decomposition. They then infer from the failure of decomposition to the failure of mechanistic explanation and reduction. I argue that complexity, so construed, is only incompatible with one notion of decomposition, (...)
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  • Cognition as the sensitive management of an agent’s behavior.Mikio Akagi - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology 35 (5):718-741.
    Cognitive science is unusual in that cognitive scientists have dramatic disagreements about the extension of their object of study, cognition. This paper defends a novel analysis of the scientific concept of cognition: that cognition is the sensitive management of an agent’s behavior. This analysis is “modular,” so that its extension varies depending on how one interprets certain of its constituent terms. I argue that these variations correspond to extant disagreements between cognitive scientists. This correspondence is evidence that the proposed analysis (...)
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