Results for 'Eileen P. Sullivan'

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  1. Losing control: the hidden role of motor areas in decision-making.Owen P. O'Sullivan - 2014 - Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences 7 (2):45-49.
    Decision-making has traditionally been viewed as detached from the neural systems of sensory perception and motor function. Consequently, motor areas have played a relatively minor role in discussions surrounding the control processes and neural origins of decision-making. Empiric evidence, catalysed by technological advances in the past two decades, has proven that motor areas have an integral role in decision-making. They are involved in the generation, modulation, maintenance and execution of decisions and actions. They also take part in a complex hierarchical (...)
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  2. Medical Models of Addiction.Harold Kincaid & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2010 - In Don Ross, Harold Kincaid & David Spurrett (eds.), What Is Addiction? The MIT Press.
    Biomedical science has been remarkably successful in explaining illness by categorizing diseases and then by identifying localizable lesions such as a virus and neoplasm in the body that cause those diseases. Not surprisingly, researchers have aspired to apply this powerful paradigm to addiction. So, for example, in a review of the neuroscience of addiction literature, Hyman and Malenka (2001, p. 695) acknowledge a general consensus among addiction researchers that “[a]ddiction can appropriately be considered as a chronic medical illness.” Like other (...)
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  3. Understanding from Machine Learning Models.Emily Sullivan - 2022 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (1):109-133.
    Simple idealized models seem to provide more understanding than opaque, complex, and hyper-realistic models. However, an increasing number of scientists are going in the opposite direction by utilizing opaque machine learning models to make predictions and draw inferences, suggesting that scientists are opting for models that have less potential for understanding. Are scientists trading understanding for some other epistemic or pragmatic good when they choose a machine learning model? Or are the assumptions behind why minimal models provide understanding misguided? In (...)
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  4. Inductive Risk, Understanding, and Opaque Machine Learning Models.Emily Sullivan - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):1065-1074.
    Under what conditions does machine learning (ML) model opacity inhibit the possibility of explaining and understanding phenomena? In this article, I argue that nonepistemic values give shape to the ML opacity problem even if we keep researcher interests fixed. Treating ML models as an instance of doing model-based science to explain and understand phenomena reveals that there is (i) an external opacity problem, where the presence of inductive risk imposes higher standards on externally validating models, and (ii) an internal opacity (...)
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  5. Do ML models represent their targets?Emily Sullivan - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    I argue that ML models used in science function as highly idealized toy models. If we treat ML models as a type of highly idealized toy model, then we can deploy standard representational and epistemic strategies from the toy model literature to explain why ML models can still provide epistemic success despite their lack of similarity to their targets.
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  6. The multiplicity of experimental protocols: A challenge to reductionist and non-reductionist models of the unity of neuroscience.Jacqueline A. Sullivan - 2009 - Synthese 167 (3):511-539.
    Descriptive accounts of the nature of explanation in neuroscience and the global goals of such explanation have recently proliferated in the philosophy of neuroscience and with them new understandings of the experimental practices of neuroscientists have emerged. In this paper, I consider two models of such practices; one that takes them to be reductive; another that takes them to be integrative. I investigate those areas of the neuroscience of learning and memory from which the examples used to substantiate these models (...)
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  7. Vulnerability in Social Epistemic Networks.Emily Sullivan, Max Sondag, Ignaz Rutter, Wouter Meulemans, Scott Cunningham, Bettina Speckmann & Mark Alfano - 2020 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 28 (5):1-23.
    Social epistemologists should be well-equipped to explain and evaluate the growing vulnerabilities associated with filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization in social media. However, almost all social epistemology has been built for social contexts that involve merely a speaker-hearer dyad. Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization all presuppose much larger and more complex network structures. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for a properly social epistemology that gives the role and structure of networks their due. In particular, (...)
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  8. Digital Wellness and Persuasive Technologies.Laura Specker Sullivan & Peter Reiner - 2019 - Philosophy and Technology 34 (3):413-424.
    The development of personal technologies has recently shifted from devices that seek to capture user attention to those that aim to improve user well-being. Digital wellness technologies use the same attractive qualities of other persuasive apps to motivate users towards behaviors that are personally and socially valuable, such as exercise, wealth-management, and meaningful communication. While these aims are certainly an improvement over the market-driven motivations of earlier technologies, they retain their predecessors’ focus on influencing user behavior as a primary metric (...)
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  9. Neuroscientific Kinds Through the Lens of Scientific Practice.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2016 - In Catherine Kendig (ed.), Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice. Routledge. pp. 47-56.
    In this chapter, I argue that scientific practice in the neurosciences of cognition is not conducive to the discovery of natural kinds of cognitive capacities. The “neurosciences of cognition” include cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology, two research areas that aim to understand how the brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. Some philosophers of neuroscience have claimed that explanatory progress in these research areas ultimately will result in the discovery of the underlying mechanisms of cognitive capacities. Once such mechanistic understanding (...)
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  10. More than consent for ethical open-label placebo research.Laura Specker Sullivan - 2021 - Journal of Medical Ethics 47 (12):e7-e7.
    Recent studies have explored the effectiveness of open-label placebos for a variety of conditions, including chronic pain, cancer-related fatigue and irritable bowel syndrome. OLPs are thought to sidestep traditional ethical worries about placebos because they do not involve deception: with an OLP, patients or subjects are told outright that they are not given an active substance. As deception is framed as the primary hurdle to ethical placebo use, the door is ostensibly opened to ethical studies of OLPs. In this article, (...)
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  11. Trust, Risk, and Race in American Medicine.Laura Specker Sullivan - 2020 - Hastings Center Report 50 (1):18-26.
    Trust is a core feature of the physician-patient relationship, and risk is central to trust. Patients take risks when they trust their providers to care for them effectively and appropriately. Not all patients take these risks: some medical relationships are marked by mistrust and suspicion. Empirical evidence suggests that some patients and families of color in the United States may be more likely to mistrust their providers and to be suspicious of specific medical practices and institutions. Given both historical and (...)
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  12. Long-Term Potentiation: One Kind or Many?Jacqueline Sullivan - 2017 - In Marcus P. Adams, Zvi Biener, Uljana Feest & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (eds.), Eppur Si Muove: Doing History and Philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Peter Machamer. Dordrecht: Springer.
    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. I suggest 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 as philosophers of science have traditionally conceived them.
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  13. Explanation Hacking: The perils of algorithmic recourse.E. Sullivan & Atoosa Kasirzadeh - forthcoming - In Juan Manuel Durán & Giorgia Pozzi (eds.), Philosophy of science for machine learning: Core issues and new perspectives. Springer.
    We argue that the trend toward providing users with feasible and actionable explanations of AI decisions—known as recourse explanations—comes with ethical downsides. Specifically, we argue that recourse explanations face several conceptual pitfalls and can lead to problematic explanation hacking, which undermines their ethical status. As an alternative, we advocate that explanations of AI decisions should aim at understanding.
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  14. Optogenetics, Pluralism, and Progress.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (00):1090-1101.
    Optogenetic techniques are described as “revolutionary” for the unprecedented causal control they allow neuroscientists to exert over neural activity in awake behaving animals. In this paper, I demonstrate by means of a case study that optogenetic techniques will only illuminate causal links between the brain and behavior to the extent that their error characteristics are known and, further, that determining these error characteristics requires comparison of optogenetic techniques with techniques having well known error characteristics and consideration of the broader neural (...)
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  15. SIDEs: Separating Idealization from Deceptive ‘Explanations’ in xAI.Emily Sullivan - forthcoming - Proceedings of the 2024 Acm Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.
    Explainable AI (xAI) methods are important for establishing trust in using black-box models. However, recent criticism has mounted against current xAI methods that they disagree, are necessarily false, and can be manipulated, which has started to undermine the deployment of black-box models. Rudin (2019) goes so far as to say that we should stop using black-box models altogether in high-stakes cases because xAI explanations ‘must be wrong’. However, strict fidelity to the truth is historically not a desideratum in science. Idealizations (...)
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  16. Stabilizing Mental Disorders: Prospects and Problems.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2014 - In H. Kincaid & J. Sullivan (eds.), Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds. MIT Press. pp. 257-281.
    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.
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  17. Reconsidering 'spatial memory' and the Morris water maze.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2010 - Synthese 177 (2):261-283.
    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, (...)
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  18. Universality caused: the case of renormalization group explanation.Emily Sullivan - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (3):36.
    Recently, many have argued that there are certain kinds of abstract mathematical explanations that are noncausal. In particular, the irrelevancy approach suggests that abstracting away irrelevant causal details can leave us with a noncausal explanation. In this paper, I argue that the common example of Renormalization Group explanations of universality used to motivate the irrelevancy approach deserves more critical attention. I argue that the reasons given by those who hold up RG as noncausal do not stand up to critical scrutiny. (...)
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  19. Painful Reasons: Representationalism as a Theory of Pain.Brendan O'Sullivan & Robert Schroer - 2012 - Philosophical Quarterly 62 (249):737-758.
    It is widely thought that functionalism and the qualia theory are better positioned to accommodate the ‘affective’ aspect of pain phenomenology than representationalism. In this paper, we attempt to overturn this opinion by raising problems for both functionalism and the qualia theory on this score. With regard to functionalism, we argue that it gets the order of explanation wrong: pain experience gives rise to the effects it does because it hurts, and not the other way around. With regard to the (...)
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  20. Can Real Social Epistemic Networks Deliver the Wisdom of Crowds?Emily Sullivan, Max Sondag, Ignaz Rutter, Wouter Meulemans, Scott Cunningham, Bettina Speckmann & Mark Alfano - 2014 - In Tania Lombrozo, Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 1. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    In this paper, we explain and showcase the promising methodology of testimonial network analysis and visualization for experimental epistemology, arguing that it can be used to gain insights and answer philosophical questions in social epistemology. Our use case is the epistemic community that discusses vaccine safety primarily in English on Twitter. In two studies, we show, using both statistical analysis and exploratory data visualization, that there is almost no neutral or ambivalent discussion of vaccine safety on Twitter. Roughly half the (...)
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  21.  77
    Exploring Regulatory Flexibility to Create Novel Incentives to Optimize Drug Discovery.Jacqueline A. Sullivan & E. Richard Gold - 2024 - Frontiers in Medicine 11 (Section on Regulatory Science).
    Efforts by governments, firms, and patients to deliver pioneering drugs for critical health needs face a challenge of diminishing efficiency in developing those medicines. While multi-sectoral collaborations involving firms, researchers, patients, and policymakers are widely recognized as crucial for countering this decline, existing incentives to engage in drug development predominantly target drug manufacturers and thereby do little to stimulate collaborative innovation. In this mini review, we consider the unexplored potential within pharmaceutical regulations to create novel incentives to encourage a diverse (...)
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  22. Coordinated pluralism as a means to facilitate integrative taxonomies of cognition.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2017 - Philosophical Explorations 20 (2):129-145.
    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 (...)
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  23. Are there Model Behaviours for Model Organism Research? Commentary on Nicole Nelson's Model Behavior.Jacqueline A. Sullivan - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 82:101266.
    One might be inclined to assume, given the mouse donning its cover, that the behavior of interest in Nicole Nelson's book Model Behavior (2018) is that of organisms like mice that are widely used as “stand-ins” for investigating the causes of human behavior. Instead, Nelson's ethnographic study focuses on the strategies adopted by a community of rodent behavioral researchers to identify and respond to epistemic challenges they face in using mice as models to understand the causes of disordered human behaviors (...)
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  24. Insight and the no‐self in deep brain stimulation.Laura Specker Sullivan - 2018 - Bioethics 33 (4):487-494.
    Ethical analyses of the effects of neural interventions commonly focus on changes to personality and behavior, interpreting these changes in terms of authenticity and identity. These phenomena have led to debate among ethicists about the meaning of these terms for ethical analysis of such interventions. While these theoretical approaches have different criteria for ethical significance, they agree that patients’ reports are concerning because a sense of self is valuable. In this paper, I question this assumption. I propose that the Buddhist (...)
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  25. Construct Stabilization and the Unity of the Mind-Brain Sciences.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (5):662-673.
    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 (...)
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  26. Achieving Cumulative Progress In Understanding Crime: Some Insights from the Philosophy of Science.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - forthcoming - Psychology, Crime and Law.
    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 (...)
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  27. Is the Next Frontier in Neuroscience a Decade of the Mind?Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2014 - In Charles T. Wolfe (ed.), Brain theory : essays in critical neurophilosophy. Palgrave-Macmillan.
    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, (...)
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  28. Fictional persuasion, transparency, and the aim of belief.Ema Sullivan-Bissett & Lisa Bortolotti - 2017 - In Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Helen Bradley & Paul Noordhof (eds.), Art and Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 153-73.
    In this chapter we argue that some beliefs present a problem for the truth-aim teleological account of belief, according to which it is constitutive of belief that it is aimed at truth. We draw on empirical literature which shows that subjects form beliefs about the real world when they read fictional narratives, even when those narratives are presented as fiction, and subjects are warned that the narratives may contain falsehoods. We consider Nishi Shah’s teleologist’s dilemma and a response to it (...)
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  29. A Role for Representation in Cognitive Neurobiology.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2010 - Philosophy of Science (Supplement) 77 (5):875-887.
    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 (...)
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  30. Experimentation in Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Neurobiology.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2014 - In Levy Neil & Clausen Jens (eds.), Handbook on Neuroethics. Springer.
    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 (...)
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  31. Memory consolidation, multiple realizations, and modest reductions.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (5):501-513.
    This article investigates several consequences of a recent trend in philosophy of mind to shift the relata of realization from mental state–physical state to function‐mechanism. It is shown, by applying both frameworks to the neuroscientific case study of memory consolidation, that, although this shift can be used to avoid the immediate antireductionist consequences of the traditional argument from multiple realizability, what is gained is a far more modest form of reductionism than recent philosophical accounts have intimated and neuroscientists themselves have (...)
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  32. Stabilizing Constructs through Collaboration across Different Research Fields as a Way to Foster the Integrative Approach of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) Project.Jacqueline A. Sullivan - 2016 - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (00):00.
    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.
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  33. The concept of practice frameworks in correctional psychology.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - forthcoming - Aggression and Violent Behavior.
    To develop rehabilitative treatment programs for persons who have committed crimes, correctional psychologists build theoretical structures that weld theoretical ideas about the causes of criminal behavior, theoretical perspectives about appropriate targets for correctional intervention and normative assumptions about crime and the aims of correctional intervention. To differentiate the tri-partite theoretical structure with which correctional program designers' work, Ward and Durrant (2021) introduce the metatheoretical concept of “practice frameworks”. In this paper, I describe and evaluate this concept, situating my analysis within (...)
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  34. From Explanation to Recommendation: Ethical Standards for Algorithmic Recourse.Emily Sullivan & Philippe Verreault-Julien - forthcoming - Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES’22).
    People are increasingly subject to algorithmic decisions, and it is generally agreed that end-users should be provided an explanation or rationale for these decisions. There are different purposes that explanations can have, such as increasing user trust in the system or allowing users to contest the decision. One specific purpose that is gaining more traction is algorithmic recourse. We first pro- pose that recourse should be viewed as a recommendation problem, not an explanation problem. Then, we argue that the capability (...)
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  35. Understanding Stability in Cognitive Neuroscience Through Hacking's Lens.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2021 - Philosophical Inquiries (1):189-208.
    Ian Hacking instigated a revolution in 20th century philosophy of science by putting experiments (“interventions”) at the top of a philosophical agenda that historically had focused nearly exclusively on representations (“theories”). In this paper, I focus on a set of conceptual tools Hacking (1992) put forward to understand how laboratory sciences become stable and to explain what such stability meant for the prospects of unity of science and kind discovery in experimental science. I first use Hacking’s tools to understand sources (...)
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  36. How Values Shape the Machine Learning Opacity Problem.Emily Sullivan - 2022 - In Insa Lawler, Kareem Khalifa & Elay Shech (eds.), Scientific Understanding and Representation: Modeling in the Physical Sciences. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 306-322.
    One of the main worries with machine learning model opacity is that we cannot know enough about how the model works to fully understand the decisions they make. But how much is model opacity really a problem? This chapter argues that the problem of machine learning model opacity is entangled with non-epistemic values. The chapter considers three different stages of the machine learning modeling process that corresponds to understanding phenomena: (i) model acceptance and linking the model to the phenomenon, (ii) (...)
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  37. New Frontiers in Translational Research: Touchscreens, Open Science, and the Mouse Translational Research Accelerator Platform (MouseTRAP).Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2021 - Genes, Brain and Behavior 20 (1):e12705.
    Many neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases and other brain disorders are accompanied by impairments in high-level cognitive functions including memory, attention, motivation, and decision-making. Despite several decades of extensive research, neuroscience is little closer to discovering new treatments. Key impediments include the absence of validated and robust cognitive assessment tools for facilitating translation from animal models to humans. In this review, we describe a state-of-the-art platform poised to overcome these impediments and improve the success of translational research, the Mouse Translational Research (...)
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  38. Novel Tool Development and the Dynamics of Control: The Rodent Touchscreen Operant Chamber as a Case Study.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):1-19.
    In the quest to discover the neural bases of cognition, rigorous behavioral tools are equally as important as sophisticated tools for neural intervention. This paper evaluates several episodes in the development of a novel behavioral tool for rodent cognitive testing, the rodent touchscreen operant chamber. Using conceptual tools on offer in the philosophical literature on exploratory experimentation and control, I illuminate how optimization of this behavioral tool and an understanding of the causal knowledge it may be used to generate historically (...)
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  39. Another Defence of Owen’s Exclusivity Objection to Beliefs Having Aims.Ema Sullivan-Bissett & Paul Noordhof - 2017 - Logos and Episteme 8 (1):147-153.
    David Owens objected to the truth-aim account of belief on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not meet a necessary condition on aims, namely, that aims can be weighed against other aims. If the putative aim of belief cannot be weighed, then belief does not have an aim after all. Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen responded to this objection by appeal to other deliberative contexts in which the aim could be weighed, and we argued that this response to Owens failed (...)
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  40. Motivated Reasoning and Research Ethics Guidelines.Laura Specker Sullivan - 2022 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 39 (3):519-535.
    The creation of guidelines has long been a popular means of conveying normative requirements in scientific and medical research. The recent case of He Jiankui, whose research flouted both widely accepted ethical standards and a set of field-specific guidelines he co-authored, raises the question of whether guidelines are an effective means of preventing misconduct. This paper advances the theory that guidelines can facilitate moral rationalization, a form of motivated reasoning. Moral rationalization in research occurs when individuals justify their actions with (...)
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  41. Medical maternalism: beyond paternalism and antipaternalism.Laura Specker Sullivan - 2016 - Journal of Medical Ethics 42 (7):439-444.
    This paper argues that the concept of paternalism is currently overextended to include a variety of actions that, while resembling paternalistic actions, are importantly different. I use the example of Japanese physicians’ non-disclosures of cancer diagnoses directly to patients, arguing that the concept of maternalism better captures these actions. To act paternalistically is to substitute one's own judgement for that of another person and decide in place of that person for his/her best interest. By contrast, to act maternalistically is to (...)
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  42. Link Uncertainty, Implementation, and ML Opacity: A Reply to Tamir and Shech.Emily Sullivan - 2022 - In Insa Lawler, Kareem Khalifa & Elay Shech (eds.), Scientific Understanding and Representation: Modeling in the Physical Sciences. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 341-345.
    This chapter responds to Michael Tamir and Elay Shech’s chapter “Understanding from Deep Learning Models in Context.”.
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  43. Nishida Kitarō’s Kōiteki Chokkan: Active Intuition and Contemporary Metaethics.Laura Specker Sullivan - 2019 - In Colin Marshall (ed.), Comparative Metaethics: Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality. London: Routledge.
    I characterize Nishida Kitarō’s metaethical perspective throughout his work but focus especially on his later papers, most notably his writings on kōiteki chokkan, or active intuition. These include Kōiteki Chokkan no Tachiba (published in 1935), Kōiteki Chokkan (published in 1937), as well as Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Bashoteki Ronri to Shūkyōteki Sekaikan, published in 1945, and widely available in translation). I explore affinities between Nishida’s approach to ethics and metaethical intuitionism and sensibility theory. I then use this analysis to (...)
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  44. Long-Term Potentiation: One Kind or Many?Jacqueline Sullivan - 2017 - In Marcus P. Adams, Zvi Biener, Uljana Feest & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (eds.), Eppur Si Muove: Doing History and Philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Peter Machamer. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 127-140.
    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.
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  45. Classifying Psychopathology: Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds.Harold Kincaid & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2014 - In Harold Kincaid & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (eds.), Classifying Psychopathology: Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds. MIT Press. pp. 1-10.
    In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, asking whether current systems are sufficient for effective diagnosis, treatment, and research. Doing so, they take up the question of whether mental disorders are natural kinds, grounded in something in the outside world. Psychiatric categories based on natural kinds should group phenomena in such a way that they are subject to the same type of causal explanations and respond similarly to (...)
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  46. The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education.Judith Suissa & Alice Sullivan - 2021 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 55 (1):55-82.
    Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at the front line of these conflicts, namely, questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. We document the ways in which the work of academics has been affected by political activism around these questions and, drawing on our respective disciplinary expertise as a sociologist and a philosopher, elucidate the costs of curtailing discussion on fundamental (...)
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  47. TRUTH – A Conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans (1973).P. F. Strawson & Gareth Evans - manuscript
    This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.
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  48. Models of Mental Illness.Jacqueline Sullivan - 2016 - In Miriam Solomon, Jeremy R. Simon & Harold Kincaid (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 455-464.
    This chapter has two aims. The first aim is to compare and contrast three different conceptual-explanatory models for thinking about mental illness with an eye towards identifying the assumptions upon which each model is based, and exploring the model’s advantages and limitations in clinical contexts. Major Depressive Disorder is used as an example to illustrate these points. The second aim is to address the question of what conceptual-theoretical framework for thinking about mental illness is most likely to facilitate the discovery (...)
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  49. Qualitative Assessment of Self-Identity in Advanced Dementia.Sadhvi Batra, Jacqueline Sullivan, Beverly R. Williams & David S. Geldmacher - 2015 - Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice 15 (5):1260-1278.
    This study aimed to understand the preserved elements of self-identity in persons with moderate to severe dementia attributable to Alzheimer’s disease. A semi-structured interview was developed to explore the narrative self among residents with dementia in a residential care facility and residents without dementia in an independent living setting. The interviews were transcribed verbatim from audio recordings and analyzed for common themes, while being sensitive to possible differences between the groups. The participants with dementia showed evidence of self-reference even though (...)
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  50. Uncovering Metaethical Assumptions in Bioethical Discourse across Cultures.Laura Specker Sullivan - 2016 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 26 (1):47-78.
    Bioethics seeks to answer questions and resolve problems that change along with developments in medicine and biology. Ethical justification plays a crucial role in bioethical analysis by clarifying the reasons that support complex judgments about particular actions and general policies.1 It helps bioethicists to determine what to allow, forbid, support, and minimize. When there is disagreement, it can also aid understanding of competing positions. However, at times, disagreement on particular issues becomes so entrenched that understanding seems impossible. In such circumstances, (...)
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