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  1. 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Localization and Intrinsic Function.Charles A. Rathkopf - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (1):1-21.
    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 (...)
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  • 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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  • What is the Replication Crisis a Crisis of?Uljana Feest - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    In recent debates about the replication crisis, two positions have been dominant: one that focuses on methodological reforms and one that focuses on theory building. This paper takes up the suggestion that there might be a deeper difference in play, concerning the ways the very subject matter of psychology is construed by opposing camps, i.e., in terms of stable effects versus in terms of complexity. I argue that each gets something right, but neither is sufficient. My analysis suggests that the (...)
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  • Cognitive Metascience: A New Approach to the Study of Theories.Miłkowski Marcin - 2023 - Przeglad Psychologiczny 66 (1):185-207.
    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 (...)
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  • From depressed mice to depressed patients: a less “standardized” approach to improving translation.Monika Piotrowska - 2023 - Biology and Philosophy 38 (6):1-19.
    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 (...)
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  • Exploratory concept formation and tool development in neuroscience.Philipp Haueis - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (2):354 - 375.
    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 (...)
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  • Data quality, experimental artifacts, and the reactivity of the psychological subject matter.Uljana Feest - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1):1-25.
    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 (...)
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  • From measurement to classificatory practice: improving psychiatric classification independently of the opposition between symptom-based and causal approaches.Alessandra Basso - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4):1-23.
    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 (...)
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  • Philosophical foundations of neuroeconomics: economics and the revolutionary challenge from neuroscience.Roberto Fumagalli - 2011 - Dissertation, London School of Economics
    This PhD thesis focuses on the philosophical foundations of Neuroeconomics, an innovative research program which combines findings and modelling tools from economics, psychology and neuroscience to account for human choice behaviour. The proponents of Neuroeconomics often manifest the ambition to foster radical modifications in the accounts of choice behaviour developed by its parent disciplines. This enquiry provides a philosophically informed appraisal of the potential for success and the relevance of neuroeconomic research for economics. My central claim is that neuroeconomists can (...)
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  • La deriva genética como fuerza evolutiva.Ariel Jonathan Roffé - 2015 - In J. Ahumada, N. Venturelli & S. Seno Chibeni (eds.), Selección de Trabajos del IX Encuentro AFHIC y las XXV Jornadas de Epistemología e Historia de la ciencia. pp. 615-626.
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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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  • Variedades de la explicación en evo-devo.María Alejandra Petino Zappala & Sergio Daniel Barberis - 2018 - Epistemologia E Historia de la Ciencia 3 (1):18-31.
    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, (...)
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  • Experimental Design: Ethics, Integrity and the Scientific Method.Jonathan Lewis - 2020 - In Ron Iphofen (ed.), Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity. Springer. pp. 459-474.
    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 (...)
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  • Neural Representations Observed.Eric Thomson & Gualtiero Piccinini - 2018 - Minds and Machines 28 (1):191-235.
    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.
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  • Judging Mechanistic Neuroscience: A Preliminary Conceptual-Analytic Framework for Evaluating Scientific Evidence in the Courtroom.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan & Emily Baron - 2018 - Psychology, Crime and Law (00):00-00.
    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 (...)
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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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  • Mechanisms in psychology: ripping nature at its seams.Catherine Stinson - 2016 - Synthese 193 (5).
    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 (...)
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  • A Regularist Approach to Mechanistic Type-Level Explanation.Beate Krickel - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (4):1123-1153.
    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 (...)
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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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  • RUTHLESS REDUCTIONISM AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES: APPARENTLY, NOT SO RUTHLESS.Ao Ramírez - 2014 - Kinesis 6 (11):1-16.
    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 (...)
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  • Reductionism in Biology.Ingo Brigandt & Alan Love - 2008 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    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 (...)
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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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  • Microaggressions and Objectivity: Experimental Measures and Lived Experience.Mikio Akagi & Frederick W. Gooding - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (5):1090-1100.
    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 (...)
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  • Tracking the Objects of the Psychopathology On Interdisciplinarity of Psychopathology on the Margins of Historia polskiego szaleństwa.Przemysław Nowakowski - 2020 - Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 11 (1):1-14.
    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.
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  • How metaphysical commitments shape the study of psychological mechanisms.Eric Hochstein - forthcoming - Theory & Psychology.
    The study of psychological mechanisms is an interdisciplinary endeavour, requiring insights from many different domains. In this article, I argue that philosophy plays an essential role in this interdisciplinary project, and that effective scientific study of psychological mechanisms requires that working scientists be responsible metaphysicians. This means adopting deliberate metaphysical positions when studying mechanisms that go beyond what is empirically justified regarding the nature of the phenomenon being studied, the conditions of its occurrence, and its boundaries. Such metaphysical commitments are (...)
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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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Multiple Historic Trajectories Generate Multiplicity in the Concept of Validity.Yingying Han - 2024 - Perspectives on Science 32 (4):488-517.
    Although researchers agree on the importance of validity, they have not yet reached a consensus on what validity consists of. This article traces the historic trajectories of validity theory development in three research traditions: psychometrics, experiment in social settings, and animal models of psychiatric disorders, showing that the multiplicity in the concept of validity is shaped by its multiple historic trajectories and reflects the diversity of practices and concerns in different research traditions. I argue that specifying validity of what target (...)
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  • LTP Revisited: Reconsidering the Explanatory Power of Synaptic Efficacy.Jonathan Najenson - 2023 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology:1-26.
    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 (...)
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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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  • Empirical assumptions behind the violation of expectation experiments in human and non-human animals.Andrea Soledad Olmos & Santiago Ginnobili - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (3):1-24.
    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 (...)
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  • The inchworm episode: Reconstituting the phenomenon of kinesin motility.Andrew Bollhagen - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-25.
    New Mechanist philosophical models of "phenomenon reconstitution" understand the process to be driven by explanatory considerations. Here I discuss an episode of phenomenon reconstitution that occurred entirely within an experimental program dedicated to characterizing the phenomenon of kinesin motility. Rather than being driven by explanatory considerations, as standard mechanist views maintain, I argue that the phenomenon of kinesin motility was reconstituted to enhance researchers’ primary experimental tool—the single molecule motility assay.
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  • Epistemic Challenges: Engaging Philosophically in Cognitive Science.Przemysław R. Nowakowski - 2019 - Ruch Filozoficzny 75 (2):237.
    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 (...)
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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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  • Connection experiments in neurobiology.John Bickle & Aaron Kostko - 2018 - Synthese 195 (12):5271-5295.
    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 (...)
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  • Explaining what?Elizabeth Irvine - unknown
    The Hard Problem is surrounded by a vast literature, to which it is increasingly hard to contribute to in any meaningful way. Accordingly, the strategy here is not to offer any new metaphysical or ‘in principle’ arguments in favour of the success of materialism, but to assume a Type Q(uinian) approach and look to contemporary consciousness science to see how the concept of consciousness fares there, and what kind of explanations we can hope to offer of it. It is suggested (...)
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  • (1 other version)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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  • 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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  • Pluralists about Pluralism? Versions of Explanatory Pluralism in Psychiatry.Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2014 - In Thomas Uebel (ed.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 105-119.
    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 (...)
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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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  • 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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  • It’s a Male World : el sesgo sexual de los modelos animales en biología.Federico Bernabé Blach & Leandro Giri - 2019 - Arbor 195 (791):492.
    En el presente trabajo se analizan desde un punto de vista metateórico los modelos animales y su uso en la investigación en el ámbito de las ciencias de la vida. A partir de la evaluación de una nutrida literatura científica que denuncia un sesgo sexual en las prácticas de investigación que utilizan dichos modelos, se buscan los supuestos teóricos implícitos que les dan fundamento y se argumenta que lejos de suponer una torpeza metodológica forman parte de una extensa tradición ubicua (...)
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