Letting Biology Confound Philosophical Accounts of Mechanistic Explanation
William Bechtel, University of California at San Diego
In Discovering Complexity Richardson and I arrived at the importance of mechanisms in many of the explanations biologists offer (we never said all) from examining biological research that did not fit the then standard philosophical accounts of reduction. Our account of what mechanistic explanation involves were guided by the cases we happened to investigate. In introducing the second edition of Discovering Complexity we appealed to philosophers to look to additional examples from biology that would require extending or revising the conceptions of mechanism and mechanistic explanation on offer in philosophy. I will briefly describe the insights about mechanistic explanations that I have derived from three such pilgrimages in the past decade. Circadian biology has motivated a focus on the complex dynamics often found in and between biological mechanisms that can only be understood through computational modeling. Research on molecular motors has made central the need to focus on how free energy is constrained to produce the activities of mechanisms. Finally, examination of nervous systems in invertebrates and of sub-cortical parts of the nervous systems in mammals has made apparent the complex modes of control that regulate biological mechanisms and how these are typically organized heterarchically, not hierarchically.
Neuroepigenetics Causes: Neither MechanismTM Nor PathwaysTM (But a Smidgen of Both)
John Bickle, Professor of Philosophy and Shackouls Honors College Faculty, Mississippi State University, and Scientist-Educator, Department of Advanced Biomedical Education, University of Mississippi Medical Center
Bob Richardson's work is widely acknowledged as foundational for the subsequent development of the hugely popular "new mechanist" program in early-21st century philosophy of science. But an important recent field in biology, neuroepigenetics -- the study of how epigenetic changes, stable changes in cell function that do not involve alterations in DNA sequences, affect the nervous system -- provides examples of causes that do not easily fit into the now-standard mechanist account ('mechanismTM'), in particular discoveries of environmental factors directly changing molecular gene transcriptional factors. As I'll show using a recent much-cited neuroepigenetics finding, the various (few!) ways that new mechanists have tried to account for environment causal factors do not match up with neuroepigenetics details; and accounting for these findings may require significant alterations to mechanismTM. Are these findings a better fit with Lauren Ross's recent development of causal pathways ('pathwaysTM') as an alternative account of biological causal explanation? Not exactly, because neuroepigenetics causes seem to violate two features of Ross's account: the "flow" of some entity or signal through the system and the "abstraction of significant causal detail" of the target system or process. Interestingly, neuroepigenetics appears to conjoin some aspects of mechanismTM with some aspects of pathwaysTM, and so constitutes a rich field for further philosophical reflections on causation and causal explanations in the life sciences.
Is Localization a Cartesian Inheritance?
Cédric Brun, Université Bordeaux Montaigne
This presentation draws on the distinction between localizationism and localization strategy established by Bill Bechtel and Bob Richardson in their book Discovering Complexity (1993) to discuss the usual presentation of Descartes' pioneering work in neuroanatomy and neuropsychology. I aim to clarify the sense in which localizationism is not a result of Cartesian influence, but how the practice of functional localization in neuroscience still exhibits significant Cartesian influence. After defining localizationism and briefly discussing the historical context of attempts to link the soul to the brain as a unified entity, I introduce the localization strategy as a key approach in contemporary cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. This strategy involves isolating the physical components of a system and determining their functions to explain behavior. Then, I present the assumptions guiding localizationism, such as the one-to-one assumption and the independence assumption and review a set of objections to localizationism, including a priori, methodological, theoretical, and empirical objections. Overall, the conclusion drawn is that localizationism is not a direct Cartesian inheritance. However, the localization strategy, which is integral to contemporary cognitive neuroscience, can be seen as a broader Cartesian inheritance via its mechanistic nature. Understanding this lineage helps shed light on the dynamics of cognitive neuroscience practice rather than a supposed adherence to localizationism.
Lesions and Persons: Discovering Complexity in the Space of Reasons
Carl Craver, Washington University in St. Louis
Neuropsychology, properly construed and constructed, is a potent tool for bridging an indispensable personal-level understanding of our friends and loved ones and an inevitable sub-personal characterization of the causal systems in virtue of which those people figure so distinctively in our lives. In particular, the neuropsychology of amnesia offers a window on how episodic memory (and episodic thought more generally) does and does not figure in our lives as persons. In the spirit of Discovering Complexity, I'll discuss the two stages of a discovery heuristic for articulating such linkages: differential symptom description and dissociation. I'll make their inferential structure explicit, showing how standard knee-jerk reactions to deficit studies are misplaced with respect to this discovery heuristic. In doing so, I'll make a case that it is possible to do science responsibly with an n of 1. As a contrast, time permitting, I'll consider some limits of another attempt to construct the same kind of bridge: RB and the dissociation between episodic memory and the sense of ownership (Klein and Nichols 2012). In the end, we should have a clearer understanding of how this important discovery heuristic works and with perhaps some optimism for the capacity to drop tethering lines between our understanding of people as denizens of the space of reasons and our understanding of the causal structures that make them possible in this world.
Abstraction in Computational Explanations of Cognition
Zoe Drayson, University of California at Davis
It is widely agreed that computational explanations of cognition involve some sort of abstraction from straightforwardly neurophysiological explanations of the brain. The nature of this abstraction, however, is contested. In this paper, I survey how the different metaphysical and epistemological approaches to abstraction in scientific explanation apply specifically to computational explanations of cognition. I explore how these notions of abstraction relate to functional explanation, multiple realizability, realism, and autonomy, and I consider their bearing on current debates about cognitive ontology.
Discovering Psychological Complexity: Insights for Theory Construction
Markus Eronen, University of Groningen
Discovering Complexity (Bechtel & Richardson 1993) is nowadays regarded as a landmark in 20th century philosophy of science. Its impact on debates on reduction and mechanistic explanation in the life sciences has been immense and widely recognized. However, what has received much less attention is the novel conception of theory development put forward in the book: Discovery is construed as a process of narrowing down the problem space of possible theories, by imposing constraints and applying heuristics. In this talk, I will draw from this approach to derive new insight for theory construction in psychology, where there is currently a broad debate on the lack of good psychological theories and the "theory crisis". I will argue that the focus on this debate has been too much on formalizing theories and coming up with theory construction methodologies. Instead, I propose we should view theory development in psychology as a process of narrowing down the space of possible theories by imposing and discovering empirical, conceptual, and theoretical constraints.
Unraveling Discovery Dynamics in Open Science Partnerships
Jacqueline Sullivan, Western University
Over the past two decades, academic neuroscientists have benefited from increased funding from governmental, charitable, and philanthropic agencies, allowing them to engage in multiple lines of pre-clinical research aimed at uncovering novel therapeutic targets for brain-related diseases. Researchers from diverse fields, such as biochemistry, stem-cell research, rodent behavioral neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and physiology, thus conducted their investigations independently or in small interdisciplinary teams. Despite these efforts, the pace of discovery remained slow, leading funding agencies to recognize the value of embracing more ambitious and transformative research approaches. This shift in perspective has given rise to Open Science Partnerships (OSPs) (Gold 2021), which leverage the collective expertise of large and diverse research groups in transdisciplinary collaborations spanning multiple institutions. In this talk, I will describe one OSP in which I am currently involved, called the TRanslational Initiative to DeRisk NeuroTherapeutics (TRIDENT). Drawing upon Bechtel & Richardson's philosophical model of scientific discovery (1993), I aim to illuminate some of the underlying dynamics of the discovery process in this OSP. I show that while Bechtel and Richardson's model offers valuable insights, a comprehensive understanding of OSPs necessitates a multi-pronged methodological approach that integrates both traditional philosophical and qualitative research methods. I outline one such approach and use it to illuminate some other important dynamics that may contribute to the success or failure of OSPs. By means of this analysis, I hope to show how philosophers of science can contribute positively to shaping policy decisions within and around OSPs, thereby contributing to their iterative improvement and success.
Disorder as Dysfunction: Adaptationism and Teleology in Psychiatry
Kari Theurer, Trinity College
Psychiatry's major diagnostic manuals, the DSM and the ICD, now include in their respective definitions of psychiatric disorder a condition stipulating that any putative disorder must reflect some underlying biological dysfunction. This is reflected in current trends in psychiatric research that aim to find the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of various disorders. After considering the history of the "dysfunction clause", I consider two possible interpretations of it, and I argue that neither is plausible. I conclude that the real underlying problem is an old and vexing one in the philosophy of science: the problem of locating teleology in the natural world.
