This paper examines attention as a scientific concept, and argues that it has a patchwork structure. On this view, the concept of attention takes on different meanings, depending on the scientific context. I argue that these different meanings vary systematically along four dimensions, as a result of the epistemic goals of the scientific programme in question and the constraints imposed by the scientific context. Based on this, I argue that attention is a general reasoning strategy concept: it provides general, non-specific (...) guidance that aids scientific work. As well as shedding light on attention as a scientific concept, this theory has two wider consequences. First, it demonstrates that the patchwork approach is a fruitful way to think about psychological concepts. Second, it provides novel resources to resist eliminativism about attention. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in artifacts among philosophers. The leading edge is the metaphysics of artifacts and artifact kinds. However, an important question has been neglected. What is the ontological status of the category ‘artifact’ itself? Dan Sperber (2007) argues against its theoretical integrity for the purposes of naturalistic social sciences. In Section 2, I lay out Sperber’s argument, which is based on the observed continuum between natural objects and artifacts. I also review the implicit support for this continuum argument (...) in the philosophical literature on artifacts. In Section 3, I diagnose the fatal weakness affecting continuum-based arguments about categories. They fail to take into account recent thinking about classification in philosophy of science, which has been forced to accommodate continua in biology. In Section 4, I focus specifically on the species problem in philosophy of biology, and on pluralism about species concepts as a response to it. I then identify an analogous artifact problem, and argue that pluralism about artifact concepts is an appropriate and defensible response here as well. Finally, in Section 5, I show that just as species pluralism leads to skepticism about the species category, so artifact pluralism leads to skepticism about the artifact category. I thus arrive at Sperber’s conclusion by an alternate route that does not run afoul of the weakness affecting continuum-based arguments about categories. (shrink)

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 (...) for the full range of complex behaviors of scientific concepts. We adopt show how the patchwork approach’s repertoire of inter-patch relations can expand the resources available to the operationalist. We focus on one especially important type of inter-patch relation: sharing a general reasoning strategy. General reasoning strategies serve two important functions: (1) they bind together distinct patches of scientific concepts, and (2) they provide normative guidance for extending concepts to new domains. (shrink)

In recent years, the explanatory term “scaffold” has been gaining prominence in evolutionary biology. This notion has a long history in other areas, in particular, developmental psychology. In this paper, we connect these two traditions and identify a specific type of explanatory strategy shared between them, namely scaffolding explanations. We offer a new definition of “scaffold” anchored in the explanatory practices of evolutionary biologists and developmental psychologists that has yet to be clearly articulated. We conclude by offering a systematic overview (...) of the various dimensions of scaffolding explanations that further suggests both their usefulness and range of application. (shrink)

Species are considered the basic unit of biological classification and evolution. Hence, they are used as a benchmark in several fields, although the ontological status of such a category has always been a matter of debate. This paper aims to discuss the problem of the definition of species within the new mechanistic approach. Nevertheless, the boundary between entities, activities, and mechanisms remains difficult to establish and always requires an analysis of what is meant by explanation. As a case study, the (...) paper describes the debate concerning the species category by considering different kingdoms: Animals, Bacteria, and Fungi. The inherently biological differences between those groups prevent the use of a single, universally applicable concept of species that could fit the mechanisms responsible for the variability present in these kingdoms. The same issue is encountered within each group, as highlighted through a focus on mammals and microbes. This controversy has given rise to opposite approaches, namely: monism, which looks for a single definition that might account for all species, and pluralism, which admits that different groups of organisms require somewhat different definitions. In order to develop an adequate definition of species, we propose to apply a new mechanistic framework, which considers the ontic-epistemic dimensions of scientific explanation in close parallel. The apt correlation between epistemic and the ontic aspects highlights the way in which the concept of species and the reference to data are strictly co-determined. This suggests that the concept of species is better understandable within a dual ontic-epistemic approach. (shrink)