Depression is a widespread and debilitating disorder, but developing effective treatments has proven challenging. Despite success in animal models, many treatments fail in human trials. While various factors contribute to this translational failure, standardization practices in animal research are often overlooked. This paper argues that certain standardization choices in behavioral neuroscience research on depression can limit the generalizability of results from rodents to humans. This raises ethical and scientific concerns, including animal waste and a lack of progress in treating human (...) patients. To address these issues, animal ethics committees can establish reasonable expectations for preclinical research and highlight the impact of standardization on generalizability. Such efforts can help improve translation from animal models to human patients and ultimately benefit those suffering from depression. (shrink)

Scientists often respond to failures to replicate by citing differences between the experimental components of an original study and those of its attempted replication. In this paper, we investigate these purported mismatch explanations. We assess a body of failures to replicate in neuroscience studies on spinal cord injury. We argue that a defensible mismatch explanation is one where a mismatch of components is a difference maker for a mismatch of outcomes, and the components are relevantly different in the follow-up study, (...) given the scope of the original study. With this account, we argue that not all differences between studies are meaningful, even if they are difference makers. As our examples show, focusing only on these differences results in disregarding the representativeness of the original experiment’s components and the scope of its outcomes, undercutting other epistemic aims, such as translation, in the process. (shrink)

While the term “reactivity” has come to be associated with specific phenomena in the social sciences, having to do with subjects’ awareness of being studied, this paper takes a broader stance on this concept. I argue that reactivity is a ubiquitous feature of the psychological subject matter and that this fact is a precondition of experimental research, while also posing potential problems for the experimenter. The latter are connected to the worry about distorted data and experimental artifacts. But what are (...) experimental artifacts and what is the most productive way of dealing with them? In this paper, I approach these questions by exploring the ways in which experimenters in psychology simultaneously exploit and suppress the reactivity of their subject matter in order to produce experimental data that speak to the question or subject matter at hand. Highlighting the artificiality of experimental data, I raise the question of what distinguishes a genuine experimental result from an experimental artifact. My analysis construes experimental results as the outcomes of inferences from the data that take material background assumptions as auxiliary premises. Artifacts occur when one or more of these background assumptions are false, such that the data do not reliably serve the purposes they were generated for. I conclude by laying out the ways in which my analysis of data quality is relevant to, and informed by, recent debates about the replicability of experimental results. (shrink)

Microaggressions are, roughly, acts or states of affairs that express prejudice or neglect toward members of oppressed groups in relatively subtle ways. There is an apparent consensus among both proponents and critics of the microaggression concept that microaggressions are “subjective.” We examine what subjectivity amounts to in this context and argue against this consensus. We distinguish between microaggressions as an explanatory posit and microaggressions as a hermeneutical tool, arguing that in either case there is no reason at present to regard (...) microaggressions as subjective and that microaggressions in the hermeneutical sense should be regarded as objective. (shrink)

Scientists represent their world, grouping and organizing phenomena into classes by means of concepts. Philosophers of science have historically been interested in the nature of these concepts, the criteria that inform their application and the nature of the kinds that the concepts individuate. They also have sought to understand whether and how different systems of classification are related and more recently, how investigative practices shape conceptual development and change. Our aim in this paper is to provide a critical overview of (...) some of the key developments in this philosophical literature and identify some interesting issues it raises about the prospects of the so-called “special sciences”, including psychiatry, psychology, and the mind-brain sciences more generally, to discover natural kinds. (shrink)

The debate between the defenders of explanatory unification and explanatory pluralism has been ongoing from the beginning of cognitive science and is one of the central themes of its philosophy. Does cognitive science need a grand unifying theory? Should explanatory pluralism be embraced instead? Or maybe local integrative efforts are needed? What are the advantages of explanatory unification as compared to the benefits of explanatory pluralism? These questions, among others, are addressed in this Synthese’s special issue. In the introductory paper, (...) we discuss the background of the questions, distinguishing integrative theorizing from building unified theories. On the one hand, integrative efforts involve collaboration between various disciplines, fields, approaches, or theories. These efforts could even be quite temporary, without establishing any long-term institutionalized fields or disciplines, but could also contribute to developing new interfield theories. On the other hand, unification can rely on developing complete theories of mechanisms and representations underlying all cognition, as Newell’s “unified theories of cognition”, or may appeal to grand principles, as predictive coding. Here, we also show that unification in contemporary cognitive science goes beyond reductive unity, and may involve various forms of joint efforts and division of explanatory labor. This conclusion is one of the themes present in the content of contributions constituting the special issue. (shrink)

This paper is a loose commentary on Marcinów’s book (2017). The commentary is focused on the objects of psychopathological investigations and the role of psychology / psychiatry tension in the process of singling out, tracking, and describing them. As a consequence, there are limitations of collaborative and integrative efforts between psychologists and psychiatrists where questions of psychopathology are concerned.

In this article, I show the role that the philosopher of cognitive science can cur-rently play in cognitive science research. I argue for the important, and not yet considered, role of the philosophy of cognitive science in cognitive science, that is, the importance of cooperation between philosophers of science with cogni-tive scientists in investigating the research methods and theoretical assump-tions of cognitive science. At the beginning of the paper I point out, how the philosopher of science, here, the philosopher of (...) cognitive science, can participate in interdisciplinary research. I am opting of the cooperation in investigating the so-called reflective problems. Then, I discuss four examples of issues important for the cognitive science, in which the competences possessed by the philosopher are useful. At the ending I point out wider landscape of possible cooperation of philosophers with cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Crime is a serious social problem, but its causes are not exclusively social. There is growing consensus that explaining and preventing it requires interdisciplinary research efforts. Indeed, the landscape of contemporary criminology includes a variety of theoretical models that incorporate psychological, biological and sociological factors. These multi-disciplinary approaches, however, have yet to radically advance scientific understandings of crime and shed light on how to manage it. In this paper, using conceptual tools on offer in the philosophy of science in combination (...) with theoretical work represented in this special volume of Psychology, Crime and Law, I provide some perspective on why explanatory progress in criminology has remained elusive and evaluate some positive proposals for attaining it. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of this paper lies in characterizing the explanations and models used in the field of evolutionary developmental biology throughout its history. While manipulative experiments in controlled conditions have been useful to set the bases of the discipline and are still routinely performed, this approach supposes a tension between the reliability and the representativity of the conclusions. Given the recent changes in the understanding of evolutionary phenomena, different authors currently emphasize the need of avoiding excessive simplifications in experimental approaches, (...) incorporating the complexity of the analyzed systems as a relevant trait in the study of biological diversity. On the other hand, the fragile and contingent nature of evolutionary processes and the impossibility of intervening some of these phenomena underscore the importance of non-manipulative models that allow the elucidation of how-possibly mechanisms. We argue that a pluralism characterized by the integration of different kinds of explanations, models and metaphors used in evo-devo allows to exploit their respective advantages, favours interdisciplinarity and can contribute to form a representative description of evolutionary processes without relinquishing the local and detailed study of actual mechanisms. (shrink)

To explain their role in discovery and contrast them with theory-driven research, philosophers of science have characterized exploratory experiments in terms of what they lack: namely, that they lack direction from what have been called “local theories” of the target system or object under investigation. I argue that this is incorrect: it’s not whether or not there is direction from a local theory that matters, but instead how such a theory is used to direct an experiment that matters. Appealing to (...) contemporary exploratory experiments that involve the use of experimental techniques—specifically, examples where scientists explore the interaction of neural activity and human behavior by magnetically stimulating brains—I argue that local theories of a target system can inform auxiliary hypotheses in exploratory experiments, which direct these experiments. These examples illustrate how local theories can direct the exploration of target systems where researchers do not aim to evaluate these theories. (shrink)

Experimental design is one aspect of a scientific method. A well-designed, properly conducted experiment aims to control variables in order to isolate and manipulate causal effects and thereby maximize internal validity, support causal inferences, and guarantee reliable results. Traditionally employed in the natural sciences, experimental design has become an important part of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Experimental methods are also endorsed as the most reliable guides to policy effectiveness. Through a discussion of some of the central concepts (...) associated with experimental design, including controlled variation and randomization, this chapter will provide a summary of key ethical issues that tend to arise in experimental contexts. In addition, by exploring assumptions about the nature of causation and by analyzing features of causal relationships, systems, and inferences in social contexts, this chapter will summarize the ways in which experimental design can undermine the integrity of not only social and behavioral research but policies implemented on the basis of such research. (shrink)

Accounts of causal explanation are standard in philosophy of science. Less common are accounts of experimentation to investigate causal relations: detailed discussions of the specific kinds of experiments scientists design and run. Silva, Landreth, and Bickle’s account of “connection experiments” derives directly from landmark experiments in “molecular and cellular cognition.” We start with its key components, and then using a detailed case study from recent social neuroscience we emphasize and extend three features of SLB’s account: a division of distinct types (...) of connection experiments, each providing a different type of evidence for a hypothesized causal relationship; the typically downward-looking nature of the experimental search for mediating causes in mainstream neurobiology; and most importantly, the centrality of multiple-experiment research programs, with each experiment designed such that if successful its results can be integrated with the others, toward the goal of confirming multiple-phenomena causal pathways. Our extension of SLB’s account complements existing philosophical work on experimentation in neurobiology. (shrink)

The use of neuroscientific evidence in criminal trials has been steadily increasing. Despite progress made in recent decades in understanding the mechanisms of psychological and behavioral functioning, neuroscience is still in an early stage of development and its potential for influencing legal decision-making is highly contentious. Scholars disagree about whether or how neuroscientific evidence might impact prescriptions of criminal culpability, particularly in instances in which evidence of an accused’s history of mental illness or brain abnormality is offered to support a (...) plea of not criminally responsible. In the context of these debates, philosophers and legal scholars have identified numerous problems with admitting neuroscientific evidence in legal contexts. To date, however, less has been said about the challenges of evaluating the evidence upon which integrative mechanistic explanations that bring together evidence from different areas of neuroscience are based. As we explain, current criteria for evaluating such evidence to determine its admissibility in legal contexts are inadequate. Appealing to literature in the philosophy of scientific experimentation and theoretical work in the social, cognitive and behavioral sciences, we lay the groundwork for reforming these criteria and identify some of the implications of modifying them. (shrink)

The sceptical positions philosophers have adopted with respect to neuroimaging data are based on detailed evaluations of subtraction, which is one of many data analysis techniques used with neuroimaging data. These positions are undermined when the epistemic implications of the use of a diversity of data analysis techniques are taken into account. I argue that different data analysis techniques reveal different patterns in the data. Through the use of multiple data analysis techniques, researchers can produce results that are locally robust. (...) Thus, the epistemology of neuroimaging must take into consideration the details of the different data analysis techniques that are used to evaluate neuroimaging data, and the specific theoretical aims those techniques are deployed towards. _1_ Introduction _2_ Scepticism about Neuroimaging _3_ Data Analysis and Evidence _4_ Deconvolution and Pattern Classification Analysis _4.1_ Deconvolution analysis _4.2_ Region of interest selection _4.3_ Pattern classification analysis _5_ The Strength of Multiple Analyses _6_ Conclusion. (shrink)

Although researchers in psychiatry have been trying for decades to elucidate the pathophysiology underlying mental disorders, relatively little progress has been made. One explanation for this failure is that diagnostic categories in psychiatry are unlikely to track underlying neurological mechanisms. Because of this, the US National Institutes of Mental Health has recently developed a novel ontology to guide research in biological psychiatry: the Research Domain Criteria. In this paper, I argue that while RDoC may lead to better neuroscientific explanations for (...) mental disorders, it is unlikely that this new knowledge will then lead to an improved diagnostic system. I therefore suggest that researchers in psychiatry should work toward the development of two new ontologies: one for research and one for clinical practice. (shrink)

In this article, I explain why stabilizing constructs is important to the success of the Research Domain Criteria Project and identify one measure for facilitating such stability.

Most defenders of the new mechanistic approach accept ontic constraints for successful scientific explanation (Illari 2013; Craver 2014). The minimal claim is that scientific explanations have objective truthmakers, namely mechanisms that exist in the physical world independently of any observer and that cause or constitute the phenomena-to- be-explained. How can this idea be applied to type-level explanations? Many authors at least implicitly assume that in order for mechanisms to be the truthmakers of type-level explanation they need to be regular (Andersen (...) 2012; Sheredos 2015). One problem of this assumption is that most mechanisms are (highly) stochastic in the sense that they “fail more often than they succeed” (Bogen 2005; Andersen 2012). How can a mechanism type whose instances are more likely not to produce an instance of a particular phenomenon type be the truthmaker of the explanation of that particular phenomenon type? In this paper, I will give an answer to this question. I will analyze the notion of regularity and I will discuss Andersen's suggestion for how to cope with stochastic mechanisms. I will argue that her suggestion cannot account for all kinds of stochastic mechanisms and does not provide an answer as to why regularity grounds type-level explanation. According to my analysis, a mechanistic type- level explanation is true if and only if at least one of the following two conditions is satisfied: the mechanism brings about the phenomenon more often than any other phenomenon (comparative regularity) or the phenomenon is more often brought about by the mechanism than by any other mechanism/causal sequence (comparative reverse regularity). (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of an account of explanatory integration that claims that explanations of cognitive capacities by functional analyses and mechanistic explanations can be seamlessly integrated. It is shown that achieving such explanatory integration requires that the terms designating cognitive capacities in the two forms of explanation are stable but that experimental practice in the mind-brain sciences currently is not directed at achieving such stability. A positive proposal for changing experimental practice so as to promote such stability is (...) put forward and its implications for explanatory integration are briefly considered. (shrink)

Neuroscience is a laboratory-based science that spans multiple levels of analysis from molecular genetics to behavior. At every level of analysis experiments are designed in order to answer empirical questions about phenomena of interest. Understanding the nature and structure of experimentation in neuroscience is fundamental for assessing the quality of the evidence produced by such experiments and the kinds of claims that are warranted by the data. This article provides a general conceptual framework for thinking about evidence and experimentation in (...) neuroscience with a particular focus on two research areas: cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology. (shrink)

In this chapter I investigate the kinds of changes that psychiatric kinds undergo when they become explanatory targets of areas of sciences that are not “mature” and are in the early stages of discovering mechanisms. The two areas of science that are the targets of my analysis are cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology.

Much work in contemporary philosophy of mind and neurophilosophy hinges on the concept of ‘representation,’ but that concept inherits a problematic ambiguity from neuroscience, where scientists may distinguish between cognitive and physiological levels of representation only tacitly. First, I explicate two potentially distinct senses of representation corresponding to these levels. I then argue that ambiguity about the nature of representation in philosophy of mind is problematic for at least one prominent philosophical project that aims to use neuroscientific work on representation (...) to defend the existence or explanatory relevance of intentional mental states, namely Schroeder’s (2004) scientific explication of desire in terms of the neurobiology of reward. I argue that philosophical treatments of the relationship between cognitive and neural architecture must attend more carefully to the ambiguity in the concept of representation. I conclude by outlining a strategy for addressing the gap between levels of representation, one that privileges a local or narrow philosophical approach to interpreting scientific concepts and data over a global or general approach. (shrink)

This paper describes one style of functional analysis commonly used in the neurosciences called task-bound functional analysis. The concept of function invoked by this style of analysis is distinctive in virtue of the dependence relations it bears to transient environmental properties. It is argued that task-bound functional analysis cannot explain the presence of structural properties in nervous systems. An alternative concept of neural function is introduced that draws on the theoretical neuroscience literature, and an argument is given to show that (...) this alternative concept of may help to overcome the explanatory limitations of task-bound functional analysis. (shrink)

This paper provides an interpretation of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s notions of epistemic things and historical epistemology . I argue that Rheinberger’s approach articulates a unique contribution to current debates about integrated HPS, and I propose some modifications and extensions of this contribution. Drawing on examples from memory research, I show that Rheinberger is right to highlight a particular feature of many objects of empirical research (“epistemic things”)—especially in the contexts of exploratory experimentation—namely our lack of knowledge about them. I argue that (...) this analysis needs to be supplemented with an account of what scientists do know, and in particular, how they are able to attribute rudimentary empirical contours to objects of research. These contours are closely connected to paradigmatic research designs, which in turn are tied to basic methodological rules for the exploration of the purported phenomena. I suggest that we engage with such rules in order to develop our own normative (epistemological) categories, and I tie this proposal to the idea of a methodological naturalism in philosophy of science. (shrink)

The Morris water maze has been put forward in the philosophy of neuroscience as an example of an experimental arrangement that may be used to delineate the cognitive faculty of spatial memory (e.g., Craver and Darden, Theory and method in the neurosciences, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2001; Craver, Explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). However, in the experimental and review literature on the water maze throughout the history of its use, (...) we encounter numerous responses to the question of “what” phenomenon it circumscribes ranging from cognitive functions (e.g., “spatial learning”, “spatial navigation”), to representational changes (e.g., “cognitive map formation”) to terms that appear to refer exclusively to observable changes in behavior (e.g., “water maze performance”). To date philosophical analyses of the water maze have not been directed at sorting out what phenomenon the device delineates nor the sources of the different answers to the question of what. I undertake both of these tasks in this paper. I begin with an analysis of Morris’s first published research study using the water maze and demonstrate that he emerged from it with an experimental learning paradigm that at best circumscribed a discrete set of observable changes in behavior. However, it delineated neither a discrete set of representational changes nor a discrete cognitive function. I cite this in combination with a reductionist-oriented research agenda in cellular and molecular neurobiology dating back to the 1980s as two sources of the lack of consistency across the history of the experimental and review literature as to what is under study in the water maze. (shrink)

In light of the recent credibility crisis in psychology, this paper argues for a greater emphasis on theorizing in scientific research. Although reliable experimental evidence, preregistration, methodological rigor, and new computational frameworks for modeling are important, scientific progress also relies on properly functioning theories. However, the current understanding of the role of theorizing in psychology is lacking, which may lead to future crises. Theories should not be viewed as mere speculations or simple inductive generalizations. To address this issue, the author (...) introduces a framework called “cognitive metascience,” which studies the processes and results of evaluating scientific practice. This study should proceed both qualitatively, as in traditional science and technology studies and cognitive science, and quantitatively, by analyzing scientific discourse using language technology. By analyzing theories as cognitive artifacts that support cognitive tasks, this paper aims to shed more light on their nature. This perspective reveals that multiple distinct theories serve entirely different roles, and studying these roles, along with their epistemic vices and virtues, can provide insight into how theorizing should proceed. The author urges a change in research culture to appreciate the variety of distinct theories and to systematically advance scientific progress. . (shrink)

Changes in synaptic strength are described as a unifying hypothesis for memory formation and storage, leading philosophers to consider the ‘synaptic efficacy hypothesis’ as a paradigmatic explanation in neuroscience. Craver’s mosaic view has been influential in understanding synaptic efficacy by presenting long-term potentiation as a multi-level mechanism nested within a multi-level structure. This paper argues that the mosaic view fails to fully capture the explanatory power of the synaptic efficacy hypothesis due to assumptions about multi-level mechanisms. I present an alternative (...) approach that emphasizes the explanatory function of unification, accounting for the widespread consensus in neuroscience regarding synaptic efficacy by highlighting the stability of synaptic causal variables across different multi-level mechanisms. (shrink)

Developing tools is a crucial aspect of experimental practice, yet most discussions of scientific change traditionally emphasize theoretical over technological change. To elaborate on the role of tools in scientific change, I offer an account that shows how scientists use tools in exploratory experiments to form novel concepts. I apply this account to two cases in neuroscience and show how tool development and concept formation are often intertwined in episodes of tool-driven change. I support this view by proposing common normative (...) principles that specify when exploratory concept formation and tool development succeed to initiate scientific change. (shrink)

One of the most widely used procedures applied to non-human animals or pre-linguistic humans is the “violation of expectation paradigm”. Curiously there is almost no discussion in the philosophical literature about it. Our objective will be to provide a first approach to the meta-theoretical nature of the assumptions behind the procedure that appeals to the violation of expectation and to extract some consequences. We show that behind them exists an empirical principle that affirms that the violation of the expectation of (...) certain mental rules generates surprise. We then proceeded to discuss the nature of these “mental rules”. We show that, as is often the case with theoretical concepts proposed by theories, they do not have a fixed interpretation. This will allow us to show that the usual relationship found in the developmental psychology literature between this experimental paradigm and cognitive approaches (which interpret experimental results in terms of higher-level mental activities) is not necessary. Finally, we relate this experimental design with the mark test and the inequity aversion test and discuss the possible ampliation of the application of the empirical principle of violation of expectation. (shrink)

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to researchers from the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search Team for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. In this paper, I provide a historical analysis of the supernova cosmology evidence put forward by these teams for the accelerating universe, in terms of an iterative model of scientific progress developed by Hasok Chang in the context of his study of the development of measurement standards. I argue, using (...) the key concept of epistemic iteration, that the iterative model adequately accounts for evidence production in experimental science as well. In order to apply Chang’s model to the experimental evidence for the accelerating universe, I introduce the concept of endorsement as a particular mode of progress, and argue that supernova scientists produced an endorsed measurement system to claim evidence for their discovery. Furthermore, I show that the credibility of the evidence was not based on a particular measurement, rather, what proved to be decisive was the “robust consistency” of many individual results. (shrink)

The current view of the relationship between areas of the mind-brain sciences is one where cross-disciplinary collaboration is required to advance claims about the mind-brain that stand on firm epistemic footing. My goal in this dissertation is to analyze what it means for information from different areas of science to fit together to produce strong epistemic claims by addressing how and to what extent claims about the mind-brain are corroborated in scientific practice. Philosophers of science have advanced various concepts of (...) the notion of fitting together information from different areas of science and its relation to scientific progress (e.g., Bickle, 1998, 2003, 2006; Darden and Maull, 1977; Mitchell, 2002, 2003; Mitchell and Dietrich, 2006; Nagel 1949, 1970, 1979; Piccinini and Craver, 2011; and Roskies, 2010). However, each concept of fitting together is vague and subject to multiple clarificatory questions. To get a handle on the notion of fitting together, I introduce the term ‘interdisciplinary corroboration’ as a placeholder for the various accounts of fitting together to facilitate my investigation of how claims about the mind-brain are corroborated in scientific practice. I argue review papers are a good place to begin analyzing interdisciplinary corroboration; accordingly, I conduct a two-part analysis of a review paper by Eichenbaum (2013) entitled ‘Memory on Time’. I use the lessons from my analysis to develop and advance a methodology for philosophers of science interested in knowledge production for evaluating review papers for corroboration in the mind-brain sciences. (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.

Do neurobiologists aim to discover natural kinds? I address this question in this chapter via a critical analysis of classification practices operative across the 43-year history of research on long-term potentiation (LTP). I argue that this 43-year history supports the idea that the structure of scientific practice surrounding LTP research has remained an obstacle to the discovery of natural kinds.

The past decade has witnessed a growing awareness of conceptual and methodological hurdles within psychology and neuroscience that must be addressed for taxonomic and explanatory progress in understanding psychological functions to be possible. In this paper, I evaluate several recent knowledge-building initiatives aimed at overcoming these obstacles. I argue that while each initiative offers important insights about how to facilitate taxonomic and explanatory progress in psychology and neuroscience, only a “coordinated pluralism” that incorporates positive aspects of each initiative will have (...) the potential for success. (shrink)

Recent extensions of mechanistic explanation into psychology suggest that cognitive models are only explanatory insofar as they map neatly onto, and serve as scaffolding for more detailed neural models. Filling in those neural details is what these accounts take the integration of cognitive psychology and neuroscience to mean, and they take this process to be seamless. Critics of this view have given up on cognitive models possibly explaining mechanistically in the course of arguing for cognitive models having explanatory value independent (...) of how well they align with neural mechanisms. We can have things both ways, however. The problem with seamless integration accounts is their seamlessness, not that they take cognitive models to be mechanistic. A non-componential view of mechanisms allows for cognitive and neural models that cross cut one another, and for cognitive models that don’t decompose into parts. I illustrate the inadequacy of seamless accounts of integration by contrasting how “filter” models of attention in psychology and of sodium channels in neuroscience developed; by questioning whether the mappings generated by neuroimaging subtraction studies achieve integration; and by reinterpreting the evidence for cognitive models of memory having been successfully integrated with neural models. I argue that the integrations we can realistically expect are more partial, patchy, and full of loose threads than the mosaic unity Craver describes. (shrink)

John Bickle recently proposed a metascientific reading of certain neuroscientific practices related to phenomena traditionally studied by psychology. According to this view, the dominant explanatory proceeding in neuroscience is to apply empirical reductions to explain psychological phenomena in cellular and molecular terms, relegating the role of psychology to a mere heuristic, without explanatory power. Thus, according to the strength of the conclusions reached by this method, it puts in check the value of psychological functional explanations. In this work, we seek (...) to reformulate some of these challenging proposals in philosophy of neuroscience. To this end, the main weaknesses of Bickle's proposal will be shown. Also, here will put into perspective some (reductionist, eliminativists?) features of ruthless reductionism, showing that this model maybe represent only a reading of the pragmatic use of certain methods in neuroscience, rather than a statement of principles generalizable to all cognitive science. (shrink)

In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...) of explanatory pluralism both within philosophy of science and psychiatry – namely moderate/temporary pluralism, anything goes pluralism, isolationist pluralism, integrative pluralism and interactive pluralism. Next, I discuss the pros and cons of these different understandings of explanatory pluralism. Finally, I raise the question of how to implement or operationalize explanatory pluralism in scientific practice; how to structure the “genuine dialogue” or shape “the pluralistic attitude” Campaner is referring to. As tentative answers, I explore a question-based framework for explanatory pluralism as well as social-epistemological procedures for interaction among competing approaches and explanations. (shrink)

In 2007, ten world-renowned neuroscientists proposed “A Decade of the Mind Initiative.” The contention was that, despite the successes of the Decade of the Brain, “a fundamental understanding of how the brain gives rise to the mind [was] still lacking” (2007, 1321). The primary aims of the decade of the mind were “to build on the progress of the recent Decade of the Brain (1990-99)” by focusing on “four broad but intertwined areas” of research, including: healing and protecting, understanding, enriching, (...) and modeling the mind. These four aims were to be the result of “transdisciplinary and multiagency” research spanning “across disparate fields, such as cognitive science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.” The proposal for a decade of the mind prompted many questions (See Spitzer 2008). In this chapter, I address three of them: (1) How do proponents of this new decade conceive of the mind? (2) Why should a decade be devoted to understanding it? (3) What should this decade look like? (shrink)

What role does the concept of representation play in the contexts of experimentation and explanation in cognitive neurobiology? In this article, a distinction is drawn between minimal and substantive roles for representation. It is argued by appeal to a case study that representation currently plays a role in cognitive neurobiology somewhere in between minimal and substantive and that this is problematic given the ultimate explanatory goals of cognitive neurobiological research. It is suggested that what is needed is for representation to (...) instead play a more substantive role. (shrink)

This paper asks (a) how new scientific objects of research are onceptualized at a point in time when little is known about them, and (b) how those conceptualizations, in turn, figure in the process of investigating the phenomena in question. Contrasting my approach with existing notions of concepts and situating it in relation to existing discussions about the epistemology of experimentation, I propose to think of concepts as research tools. I elaborate on the conception of a tool that informs my (...) account. Narrowing my focus to phenomena in cognitive neuropsychology, I then illustrate my thesis with the example of the concept of implicit memory. This account is based on an original reconstruction of the nature and function of operationism in psychology. (shrink)

Reductionism encompasses a set of ontological, epistemological, and methodological claims about the relation of different scientific domains. The basic question of reduction is whether the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from one scientific domain (typically at higher levels of organization) can be deduced from or explained by the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from another domain of science (typically one about lower levels of organization). Reduction is germane to a variety of issues in philosophy of science, including the structure of (...) scientific theories, the relations between different scientific disciplines, the nature of explanation, the diversity of methodology, and the very idea of theoretical progress, as well as to numerous topics in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, such as emergence, mereology, and supervenience. (shrink)

Over the past three decades, philosophy of science has grown increasingly “local.” Concerns have switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is a natural result. This emerging area was also spurred by remarkable recent growth in the neurosciences. Cognitive and computational neuroscience continues to encroach upon issues traditionally addressed within the humanities, including the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, and normativity. Empirical discoveries about brain structure and function suggest (...) ways that “naturalistic” programs might develop in detail, beyond the abstract philosophical considerations in their favor. -/- The literature distinguishes “philosophy of neuroscience” and “neurophilosophy.” The former concerns foundational issues within the neurosciences. The latter concerns application of neuroscientific concepts to traditional philosophical questions. Exploring various concepts of representation employed in neuroscientific theories is an example of the former. Examining implications of neurological syndromes for the concept of a unified self is an example of the latter. In this entry, we will assume this distinction and discuss examples of both. (shrink)

The article advances a new way of thinking about classifications in general and the classification of mental disorders in particular. By applying insights from measurement practice to the context of classification, I defend a notion of epistemic accuracy that allows one to evaluate and improve classifications by comparing different classifying methods to each other. Progress in classification arises from the mutual development of classification systems and classifying methods. Based on this notion of accuracy, the article illustrates with an example how (...) psychiatric classifications can be improved via circumscribed comparisons of different perspectives on mental disorders, without relying on complete models of their complex aetiology. When applying this strategy, the traditional opposition between symptom-based and causal approaches is of little consequence for making progress in the epistemic accuracy of psychiatric classification. (shrink)

Animal models have received particular attention as key examples of material models. In this paper, we argue that the specificities of establishing animal models—acknowledging their status as living beings and as epistemological tools—necessitate a more complex account of animal models as materialised models. This becomes particularly evident in animal-based models of diseases that only occur in humans: in these cases, the representational relation between animal model and human patient needs to be generated and validated. The first part of this paper (...) presents an account of how disease-specific animal models are established by drawing on the example of transgenic mice models for Alzheimer’s disease. We will introduce an account of validation that involves a three-fold process including from human being to experimental organism; from experimental organism to animal model; and from animal model to human patient. This process draws upon clinical relevance as much as scientific practices and results in disease-specific, yet incomplete, animal models. The second part of this paper argues that the incompleteness of models can be described in terms of multi-level abstractions. We qualify this notion by pointing to different experimental techniques and targets of modelling, which give rise to a plurality of models for a specific disease. (shrink)

This paper revisits the debate between Harry Collins and Allan Franklin, concerning the experimenters’ regress. Focusing my attention on a case study from recent psychology (regarding experimental evidence for the existence of a Mozart Effect), I argue that Franklin is right to highlight the role of epistemological strategies in scientific practice, but that his account does not sufficiently appreciate Collins’s point about the importance of tacit knowledge in experimental practice. In turn, Collins rightly highlights the epistemic uncertainty (and skepticism) surrounding (...) much experimental research. However, I will argue that his analysis of tacit knowledge fails to elucidate the reasons why scientists often are (and should be) skeptical of other researchers’ experimental results. I will present an analysis of tacit knowledge in experimental research that not only answers to this desideratum, but also shows how such skepticism can in fact be a vital enabling factor for the dynamic processes of experimental knowledge generation. (shrink)

The source of endless speculation and public curiosity, our scientific quest for the origins of human consciousness has expanded along with the technical capabilities of science itself and remains one of the key topics able to fire public as much as academic interest. Yet many problematic issues, identified in this important new book, remain unresolved. Focusing on a series of methodological difficulties swirling around consciousness research, the contributors to this volume suggest that ‘consciousness’ is, in fact, not a wholly viable (...) scientific concept. Supporting this ‘eliminativist‘ stance are assessments of the current theories and methods of consciousness science in their own terms, as well as applications of good scientific practice criteria from the philosophy of science. For example, the work identifies the central problem of the misuse of qualitative difference and dissociation paradigms, often deployed to identify measures of consciousness. It also examines the difficulties that attend the wide range of experimental protocols used to operationalise consciousness—and the implications this has on the findings of integrative approaches across behavioural and neurophysiological research. The work also explores the significant mismatch between the common intuitions about the content of consciousness, that motivate much of the current science, and the actual properties of the neural processes underlying sensory and cognitive phenomena. Even as it makes the negative eliminativist case, the strong empirical grounding in this volume also allows positive characterisations to be made about the products of the current science of consciousness, facilitating a re-identification of target phenomena and valid research questions for the mind sciences.​. (shrink)

The central task of cognitive neuroscience to map cognitive capacities to neural mechanisms faces three interlocking conceptual problems that together frame the problem of cognitive ontology. First, they must establish which tasks elicit which cognitive capacities, and specifically when different tasks elicit the same capacity. To address this operationalization problem, scientists often assess whether the tasks engage the same neural mechanisms. But to determine whether mechanisms are of the same or different kinds, we need to solve the abstraction problem by (...) determining which mechanistic differences are and are not relevant, and also the boundary problem by distinguishing the mechanism from its background conditions. Solving these problems, in turn, requires understanding how cognitive capacities are elicited in tasks. These three problems, which have been noted and discussed elsewhere in the literature, together form a ‘cycle of kinds’ that frames the central problem-space of cognitive ontology. We describe this cycle to clarify the intellectual challenges facing the cognitive ontologist and to reveal the kind of iterative process by which ontological revision in cognitive neuroscience is likely to unfold. (shrink)