Smaller than a Breadbox: Scale and Natural Kinds

Bursten, Julia R. S.

doi:10.1093/bjps/axw022

Cited by 38 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In this paper, I argue that we can overcome cognitive myopia by adopting a patchwork approach to the concept "neural function". Rather than imposing pre-conceived philosophical theories of concepts onto scientific examples, patchwork approaches focus on the material inferential structure of scientific concepts as they are actually used in practice (Wilson 2006, Love 2013, Bursten 2016, Novick 2018). 2 Scientific concepts develop a patchwork of local applications when practitioners use concepts to refer to related but non-identical properties when extending them to novel cases in their domain of inquiry.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond cognitive myopia: a patchwork approach to the concept of neural function

Haueis

2018

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In this paper, I argue that looking at the concept of neural function through the lens of cognition alone risks cognitive myopia: it leads neuroscientists to focus only on mechanisms with cognitive functions that process behaviorally relevant information when conceptualizing "neural function". Cognitive myopia tempts researchers to neglect neural mechanisms with noncognitive functions which do not process behaviorally relevant information but maintain and repair neural and other systems of the body. Cognitive myopia similarly affects philosophy of neuroscience because scholars overlook noncognitive functions when analyzing issues surrounding e.g., functional decomposition or the multifunctionality of neural structures. I argue that we can overcome cognitive myopia by adopting a patchwork approach that articulates cognitive and noncognitive "patches" of the concept of neural function. Cognitive patches describe mechanisms with causally specific effects on cognition and behavior which are likely operative in transforming sensory or other inputs into motor outputs. Noncognitive patches describe mechanisms that lack such specific effects; these mechanisms are enabling conditions for cognitive functions to occur. I use these distinctions to characterize two noncognitive functions at the mesoscale of neural circuits: subsistence functions like breathing are implemented by central pattern generators and are necessary to maintain the life of the organism. Infrastructural functions like gain control are implemented by canonical microcircuits and prevent neural system damage while cognitive processing occurs. By adding conceptual patches that describe these functions, a patchwork approach can overcome cognitive myopia and help us explain how the brain's capacities as an information processing device are constrained by its ability to maintain and repair itself as a physiological apparatus.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond cognitive myopia: a patchwork approach to the concept of neural function

Haueis

2018

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“…Philosophical understandings of the concept of natural kinds and debates about the usefulness of the very concept for understanding scientific classification and conceptual change are still evolving as philosophers of science expand the focus of their inquiry to a number of diverse and interdisciplinary areas of science (see e.g., Bolker, 2013;Brigandt, 2003Brigandt, , 2010Brigandt, , 2012Bursten, 2016;Godman, 2013;Kendig, 2016aKendig, , 2016bLudwig, 2017;Ludwig, 2018;Muszynski & Malaterre, 2020;Ruphy, 2010;Slater, 2015;Slater, 2013;Tabb, 2019;Tsou, 2013;Zachar, 2000). Natural kinds realists have expressed optimism that just so long as the aims of classification in a given scientific domain are broadly epistemic, natural kinds in some form (e.g., HPC, MPC) will be in the offing (e.g., Boyd, 2019;Kendler et al, 2011;Khalidi, 2013), and there may be different epistemically admirable ways of conceptually carving up the world that cross-cut each other (e.g., Khalidi, 2013).…”

Section: Constructed Kindsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Classification, kinds, taxonomic stability and conceptual change

Mattu

Sullivan

2021

Aggression and Violent Behavior

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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 some of the key developments in this philosophical literature and identify some interesting issues it raises about the prospects of the so-called "special sciences", including psychiatry, psychology, and the mind-brain sciences more generally, to discover natural kinds. 2. Principles of classification: a brief historical overview 2.1. Conventionalism Human beings impose conceptual order on their world. In the most basic terms, we are born into a world of language users; learning the meanings of words requires the abilities to detect objects having certain properties in the world, to recognize similarities and differences among those objects with respect to those properties and to understand that things that others identify using the same name share certain properties in common. We learn these basic rules of classification and assign things that share properties in common to groups having unique names. Common examples of groups include stars, mammals, trees, beliefs and feelings. We learn that stars have the basic properties of being luminous and visible in the night sky and that beliefs are things that humans and some non-human animals have that can be assigned a truth value. Sometimes we place unlike things into the same group-we misclassify

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“…This is perhaps exemplified most clearly by a recent collected volume on 'natural kinding', which investigates how kinds are constructed or discovered in scientific practice (Kendig, 2016). Second, philosophers increasingly focus on classificatory practices in disciplines that have traditionally remained below the radar of philosophers of science, such as cognitive science, nanoscience, polymer classification and protein classification (Bursten 2018;Havstad 2018;Khalidi 2013;Pöyhönen 2015). The result of these trends is that, far from having 'little to do with issues that arise in a larger context' (Hacking 2007, p. 229), philosophical debates about natural kinds engage with issues that are relevant to scientific practice.…”

Section: When To Eliminate Investigative Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Against natural kind eliminativism

Conix

Chi

2020

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It has recently been argued that the concept of natural kinds should be eliminated because it does not play a productive theoretical role and even harms philosophical research on scientific classification. We argue that this justification for eliminativism fails because the notion of 'natural kinds' plays another epistemic role in philosophical research, namely, it enables fruitful investigation into nonarbitrary classification. It does this in two ways: first, by providing a fruitful investigative entry into scientific classification; and second-as is supported by bibliometric evidence-by tying together a research community devoted to non-arbitrary classification. The question of eliminativism then requires weighing off the benefits of retaining the concept against its harms. We argue that the progressive state of philosophical work on natural kinds tips this balance in favour of retaining the concept.

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Smaller than a Breadbox: Scale and Natural Kinds

Cited by 38 publications

References 25 publications

Beyond cognitive myopia: a patchwork approach to the concept of neural function

Beyond cognitive myopia: a patchwork approach to the concept of neural function

Classification, kinds, taxonomic stability and conceptual change

Against natural kind eliminativism

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