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  1. Rethinking Neuroscientific Methodology: Lived Experience in Behavioral Studies.Nedah Nemati - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):184-197.
    The role of experience in the process of behavioral refinement has been undertheorized by philosophers of neuroscience and neuroscientists. By examining sleep studies in behavioral neurobiology, I show that scientists frequently invoke a variety of lived experiences—what I call experientially derived notions—to refine the behavior under investigation. Of note, these behaviors must remain sufficiently fuzzy throughout experimentation to permit refinement. The aim of this article is to recognize that neuroscientists’ use of lived experience necessarily helps refine behaviors and render those (...)
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  • On the role of contextual factors in cognitive neuroscience experiments: a mechanistic approach.Abel Wajnerman-Paz & Daniel Rojas-Líbano - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-26.
    Experiments in cognitive neuroscience build a setup whose set of controlled stimuli and rules elicits a cognitive process in a participant. This setup requires researchers to decide the value of quite a few parameters along several dimensions. We call ‘’contextual factors’’ the parameters often assumed not to change the cognitive process elicited and are free to vary across the experiment’s repetitions. Against this assumption, empirical evidence shows that many of these contextual factors can significantly influence cognitive performance. Nevertheless, it is (...)
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  • Cognitive ontology and the search for neural mechanisms: three foundational problems.Jolien C. Francken, Marc Slors & Carl F. Craver - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-22.
    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 (...)
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  • 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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  • Classification, Kinds, Taxonomic Stability, and Conceptual Change.Jaipreet Mattu & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - forthcoming - Aggression and Violent Behavior.
    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 (...)
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  • Constitutive Relevance in Interlevel Experiments.Maria Serban & Sune Holm - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (2):697-725.
    One reason for the popularity of Craver’s mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance is that it seems to make good sense of the experimental practices and constitutive reasoning in the life sciences. Two recent papers propose a theoretical alternative to in light of several important conceptual objections. Their alternative approach, the no de-coupling account, conceives of constitution as a dependence relation that once postulated provides the best explanation of the impossibility of breaking the common cause coupling of a macro-level mechanism (...)
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  • Assessing Decision-Making Capacity in the Behaviorally Nonresponsive Patient With Residual Covert Awareness.Andrew Peterson, Lorina Naci, Charles Weijer, Damian Cruse, Davinia Fernández-Espejo, Mackenzie Graham & Adrian M. Owen - 2013 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 4 (4):3-14.
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  • The multiple realization book.Danny Booth - 2018 - Philosophical Psychology 31 (3):431-445.
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  • The need for new ontologies in psychiatry.Robyn Bluhm - 2017 - Philosophical Explorations 20 (2):146-159.
    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 (...)
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  • 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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  • Optogenetics and the mechanism of false memory.Sarah K. Robins - 2016 - Synthese 193 (5):1561-1583.
    Constructivists about memory argue that memory is a capacity for building representations of past events from a generalized information store. The view is motivated by the memory errors discovered in cognitive psychology. Little has been known about the neural mechanisms by which false memories are produced. Recently, using a method I call the Optogenetic False Memory Technique, neuroscientists have created false memories in mice. In this paper, I examine how Constructivism fares in light of O-FaMe results. My aims are two-fold. (...)
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  • 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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  • Neuroscientific Kinds Through the Lens of Scientific Practice.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2015 - 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Understanding the development and use of tools in neuroscience: the case of the tungsten micro-electrode.Juan Manuel Garrido Wainer - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-22.
    The philosophical interest in experimental practice in neuroscience has brought renewed attention to the study of the development and use of techniques and tools for data production. John Bickle has argued that the construction and progression of theories in neuroscience are entirely dependent on the development and ingenious use of research tools. In Bickle's account, theory plays a tertiary role, as it depends on what the tools allow researchers to manipulate, and the tools, in turn, are developed not in order (...)
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  • Arche-writing and data-production in theory-oriented scientific practice: the case of free-viewing as experimental system to test the temporal correlation hypothesis.Juan Felipe Espinosa Cristia, Carla Fardella & Juan Manuel Garrido Wainer - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (2):1-27.
    Data production in experimental sciences depends on localised experimental systems, but the epistemic properties of data transcend the contingencies of the processes that produce them. Philosophers often believe that experimental systems instantiate but do not produce the epistemic properties of data. In this paper, we argue that experimental systems' local functioning entails intrinsic capacities to produce the epistemic properties of data. We develop this idea by applying Derrida's model of arche-writing to study a case of theory-oriented experimental practice. Derrida's model (...)
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  • 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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  • 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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  • The philosophy of neuroscience.John Bickle, Pete Mandik & Anthony Landreth - 2006 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    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 (...)
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  • The challenges of choosing and explaining a phenomenon in epidemiological research on the “Hispanic Paradox”.Sean A. Valles - 2016 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 37 (2):129-148.
    According to public health data, the US Hispanic population is far healthier than would be expected for a population with low socioeconomic status. Ever since Kyriakos Markides and Jeannine Coreil highlighted this in a seminal 1986 article, public health researchers have sought to explain the so-called “Hispanic paradox.” Several candidate explanations have been offered over the years, but the debate goes on. This article offers a philosophical analysis that clarifies how two sets of obstacles make it particularly difficult to explain (...)
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  • Compositional Explanatory Relations and Mechanistic Reduction.Kari L. Theurer - 2013 - Minds and Machines 23 (3):287-307.
    Recently, some mechanists have embraced reductionism and some reductionists have endorsed mechanism. However, the two camps disagree sharply about the extent to which mechanistic explanation is a reductionistic enterprise. Reductionists maintain that cellular and molecular mechanisms can explain mental phenomena without necessary appeal to higher-level mechanisms. Mechanists deny this claim. I argue that this dispute turns on whether reduction is a transitive relation. I show that it is. Therefore, mechanistic explanations at the cellular and molecular level explain mental phenomena. I (...)
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  • Mutant mice: Experimental organisms as materialised models in biomedicine.Lara Huber & Lara K. Keuck - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (3):385-391.
    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 (...)
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  • The experimenters' regress reconsidered: Replication, tacit knowledge, and the dynamics of knowledge generation.Uljana Feest - 2016 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 58:34-45.
    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 (...)
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  • Linking Mind to Molecular Pathways: The Role of Experiment Tools.John Bickle - 2019 - Axiomathes 29 (6):577-597.
    Neurobiologists talk of linking mind to molecular dynamics in and between neurons. Such talk is dismissed by cognitive scientists, including many cognitive neuroscientists, due to the number of “levels” that separate behaviors from these molecular events. In this paper I explain what neurobiologists mean by such claims by describing the kinds of experiment tools that have forged these linkages, directly on lab benches. I here focus on one of these tools, gene targeting techniques, brought into behavioral neuroscience from developmental biology (...)
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  • From Microscopes to Optogenetics: Ian Hacking Vindicated.John Bickle - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (5):1065-1077.
    I introduce two new tools in experimental neurobiology, optogenetics and DREADDs. These tools permit unprecedented control over activity in specific neurons in behaving animals. In addition to their inherent scientific interest, these tools make an important contribution to philosophy of science. They illustrate the very premises of Ian Hacking’s “microscope” argument for the relative independence of experiment from theory. This new example is important for generalizing Hacking’s argument because the background sciences and the fields of engineering producing these tools differ (...)
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  • How the case against empathy overreaches.Riana J. Betzler - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.
    Many people think of empathy as a powerful force for good within society and as a crucial component of moral cognition. Recently, prominent theorists in psychology and philosophy have challenged this viewpoint and mounted a case against empathy. The most compelling versions of this case rely heavily on empirical evidence from psychology and neuroscience. They contend that the inherent partiality and parochialism of empathy undermines its potential to serve moral ends. This paper argues that the argument against empathy overreaches; it (...)
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  • Figuring out what is happening: the discovery of two electrophysiological phenomena.William Bechtel & Richard Vagnino - 2022 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44 (2):1-36.
    Research devoted to characterizing phenomena is underappreciated in philosophical accounts of scientific inquiry. This paper develops a diachronic analysis of research over 100 years that led to the recognition of two related electrophysiological phenomena, the membrane potential and the action potential. A diachronic perspective allows for reconciliation of two threads in philosophical discussions of phenomena—Hacking’s treatment of phenomena as manifest in laboratory settings and Bogen and Woodward’s construal of phenomena as regularities in the world. The diachronic analysis also reveals the (...)
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  • Validating Animal Models.Nina A. Atanasova - 2015 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 30 (2):163.
    This paper responds to a recent challenge for the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge from laboratory animals to humans. According to this challenge, experimental neurobiology, and thus neuroscience, is in a state of crisis because the knowledge produced in different laboratories hardly generalizes from one laboratory to another. Presumably, this is so because neurobiological laboratories use simplified animal models of human conditions that differ across laboratories. By contrast, I argue that maintaining a multiplicity of experimental protocols and simple models (...)
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  • 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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  • Sculpting the space of actions. Explaining human action by integrating intentions and mechanisms.Machiel Keestra - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Amsterdam
    How can we explain the intentional nature of an expert’s actions, performed without immediate and conscious control, relying instead on automatic cognitive processes? How can we account for the differences and similarities with a novice’s performance of the same actions? Can a naturalist explanation of intentional expert action be in line with a philosophical concept of intentional action? Answering these and related questions in a positive sense, this dissertation develops a three-step argument. Part I considers different methods of explanations in (...)
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  • The Philosophy of Neuroscience.Bickle John, Mandik Peter & Anthony Landreth - 2012 - In Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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