29 found
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  1. 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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  2. 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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  3. 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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  4. 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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  5. 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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  6. 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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  7. 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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  8. 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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  9. 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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  10. 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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  11. Epistemic disagreement in psychopathology research and practice: A procedural model.Tony Ward, Jacqueline Anne Sullivan & Russil Durrant - 2024 - Theory & Psychology.
    Clinical psychology is characterized by persistent disagreement about fundamental aspects of the discipline ranging from what mental disorders are to what constitutes effective treatment. Attempts to address the problem of epistemic disagreement have been frequently based on establishing the correct answer by fiat without identifying and addressing the sources of the disagreement. We argue that this strategy has not worked very well and the result is frequently ongoing and intractable disagreement, with each side in an argument convinced they are correct. (...)
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  12. 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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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15. 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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  16. 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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  17. (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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  18. Classic Psychedelics in Translational Research: Addressing Epistemic Challenges from Bench to Bedside.Jaipreet Mattu & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2024 - In Chris Letheby & Philip Gerrans (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry. Oxford University Press.
    In the last decade alone, a growing body of preliminary evidence suggests that classic psychedelics (CPs) can rapidly and durably ameliorate symptoms and cognitive deficits associated with depression. However, the mechanisms by which CPs work in the brain are not well understood. Rodent translational research, in which experimental findings from rodents are translated to humans, is fundamental in achieving this goal. This chapter focuses on a representative subset of human and rodent studies investigating CPs for depression, including the various lines (...)
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  19. 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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  20. 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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. 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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  25. 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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  26. 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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  27. Understanding Stability in Cognitive Neuroscience Through Hacking's Lens.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2021 - Philosophical Inquiries 1 (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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  28. 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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  29. A Response to: "A Commentary on "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.
    This paper is a response to a commentary by Walter Glannon (2016, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience) on my paper "Stabilizing Constructs Across Research Fields as a Way to Foster the Integrative Approach of the Research Domain Criteria Project".
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