Daniel Weiskopf | Georgia State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Daniel Weiskopf
Philosophy of Science
Neuroscientists have in recent years turned to building models that aim to generate predictions r... more Neuroscientists have in recent years turned to building models that aim to generate predictions rather than explanations. This "predictive turn" has swept across domains including law, marketing, and neuropsychiatry. Yet the norms of prediction remain undertheorized relative to those of explanation. I examine two styles of predictive modeling and show how they exemplify the normative dynamics at work in prediction. I propose an account of how predictive models, conceived of as technological devices for aiding decision-making, can come to be adequate for purposes that are defined by both their guiding research questions and their larger social context of application.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2020
Indigenous peoples possess enormously rich and articulated knowledge of the natural world. A majo... more Indigenous peoples possess enormously rich and articulated knowledge of the natural world. A major goal of research in anthropology and ethnobiology as well as ecology, conservation biology, and development studies is to find ways of integrating this knowledge with that produced by academic and other institutionalized scientific communities. Here I present a challenge to this integration project. I argue, by reference to ethnographic and cross-cultural psychological studies, that the models of the world developed within specialized academic disciplines do not map onto anything existing within traditional beliefs and practices for coping with nature. Traditional ecological knowledge is distributed across a heterogeneous array of overlapping practices within Indigenous cultures, including spiritual and ritual practices that invoke categories, properties, and causal-explanatory models that do not in general converge with those of the academic sciences. In light of this divergence I argue that we should abandon the integration project, and conclude by sketching a notion of knowledge coordination as a possible successor framework.
The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind, 2019
Reductionism is one of the most divisive concepts in the popular and philosophical lexicon. Over ... more Reductionism is one of the most divisive concepts in the popular and philosophical lexicon. Over the past century it has been championed, declared dead, resurrected, and reformed many times over. Its resilient, protean character reflects the circumstances of its birth in the polarizing mid-20 th century debates over the unity of science. While the totalizing ideal of unified science has lost its luster, localized reductionist projects continue to flourish. In this chapter I sketch the goals and methods of one prominent form of reductionism within the mindbrain sciences and consider the prospects for non-reductionist alternatives.
In recent decades, attempts to explain autism have been frustrated by the heterogeneous nature of... more In recent decades, attempts to explain autism have been frustrated by the heterogeneous nature of its behavioral symptoms and the underlying genetic, neural, and cognitive mechanisms that produce them. This has led some to propose eliminating the category altogether. The eliminativist inference relies on a conception of psychiatric categories as kinds defined by their underlying mechanistic structure. I review the evidence for eliminativism and propose an alternative model of the family of autisms. On this account, autism is a network category defined by a set of idealized exemplars linked by multiple levels of theoretically significant properties. I argue that this network model better captures the empirical phenomena, the historical growth of the category, and the ways the category has been shaped by social norms and interests. Finally, I defend a realist interpretation of network categories against the challenge from eliminativists.
Neural Mechanisms: New Challenges in the Philosophy of Neuroscience
In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the... more In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the importation of computational and statistical techniques from machine learning and informatics. In addition to their translational applications such as brain-computer interfaces and early diagnosis of neuropathology, these tools promise to advance new solutions to longstanding theoretical quandaries. Here I critically assess whether these promises will pay off, focusing on the application of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to the problem of reverse inference. I argue that MVPA does not inherently provide a new answer to classical worries about reverse inference, and that the method faces pervasive interpretive problems of its own. Further, the epistemic setting of MVPA and other decoding methods contributes to a potentially worrisome shift towards prediction and away from explanation in fundamental neuroscience.
Philosophy Compass, 2019
This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the e... more This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the ethnosciences with ontological debates in philosophy. First, we survey empirical evidence from heterogeneous cultural contexts and disciplines. Second, we propose a model of cross‐cultural relations between ontologies beyond a simple divide between universalist and relativist models. Third, we argue for an integrative model of ontology building that synthesizes insights from different fields such as biological taxonomy, cognitive science, cultural anthropology, and political ecology. We conclude by arguing that a program of ethnoontology provides philosophers both with insights about traditional issues such as debates about natural kinds and with novel strategies for connecting philosophy with pressing global issues such as the conservation of local environments and the self‐determination of Indigenous communities.
Natural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our be... more Natural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our beliefs and purposes. But not all ways of tracking categories in the natural world involve conceiving of them as natural kinds. Anthropic concepts represent groups of natural, mind-independent entities that are apt for serving various human interests, goals, and projects. They represent the natural world under a practical mode of presentation, as a set of material resources that can be transformed to further a host of functions and ends. I argue that cross-cultural studies of traditional ecological knowledge provide evidence that many chemical, mineral, and biological concepts that are frequently taken to be natural kind concepts turn out on closer inspection to be anthropic concepts. Anthropic concepts are distinguished from artifact concepts, and a form of realism about the anthropic kinds that they refer to is defended.
A central problem for any theory of cognition is to specify what the medium or vehicle of thought... more A central problem for any theory of cognition is to specify what the medium or vehicle of thought is. Historically, answers divide into roughly three categories. Some claim that the words of natural language are the medium of thought. Others claim that we think in sensory or perceptual images. Dual-coding approaches in psychology have sometimes attempted to split the difference between these . A final possibility is that thought is neither verbal nor imagistic, but that it takes place in a special-purpose amodal conceptual medium. On this view, concepts may be similar in some respects to language and images, but they nevertheless belong to a distinct system with its own representational capacities and processes.
The mind/brain, like any other complex system, can be modeled in a variety of ways. 1 Some of the... more The mind/brain, like any other complex system, can be modeled in a variety of ways. 1 Some of these involve ignoring or abstracting from most of its structure: for the purpose of understanding overall glucose metabolism in the body, we can neglect the brain's intricate internal organization and treat it simply as a suitably discretized homogeneous mass having certain energy demands . Other projects demand more fine-grained modeling schemes, as when we are trying to map cortical white-matter density and connectivity , or the distribution of various neurotransmitter receptor sites ). Here, the system's detailed structural and dynamical properties matter, although not necessarily the same ones in every context. A single system may admit of many possible simplifying idealizations, and how we model a system-which of its components and properties we choose to represent, and how much detail we incorporate into that representation-is fundamentally a pragmatic choice.
How is it that we are able to think about what we perceive? More specifically, how are we able to... more How is it that we are able to think about what we perceive? More specifically, how are we able to bring the resources of conceptualized thought to bear on the objects and events that are represented to us in perception? And how much of our capacity for conceptualized thought is undergirded by, or is an extension of, our capacities for perception and action? Addressing these questions requires disentangling some of the more tightly woven strands linking perception, thought, and action.
The idea that mental activity can be arranged according to a hierarchy of complexity has ancient ... more The idea that mental activity can be arranged according to a hierarchy of complexity has ancient origins, with roots in the Aristotelian psychological division of the soul into nutritive, perceptual, and intellectual faculties. On this view, elementary functions dedicated to sustaining life undergird those that engage cognitively with the sensible world, which in turn support the active faculties of abstract reason. Higher faculties are meant to be those that have, in some sense, greater abstraction, generality, or complexity, which links them
Neuroscience constrains psychology, but stating these constraints with precision is not simple. H... more Neuroscience constrains psychology, but stating these constraints with precision is not simple. Here I consider whether mechanistic analysis provides a useful way to integrate models of cognitive and neural structure. Recent evidence suggests that cognitive systems map onto overlapping, distributed networks of brain regions. These highly entangled networks often depart from stereotypical mechanistic behaviors. While this casts doubt on the prospects for classical mechanistic integration of psychology and neuroscience, I argue that it does not impugn a realistic interpretation of either type of model. Cognitive and neural models may depict different, but equally real, causal structures within the mind/brain.
Mechanistic explanation has an impressive track record of advancing our understanding of complex,... more Mechanistic explanation has an impressive track record of advancing our understanding of complex, hierarchically organized physical systems, particularly biological and neural systems. But not every complex system can be understood mechanistically. Psychological capacities are often understood by providing cognitive models of the systems that underlie them. I argue that these models, while superficially similar to mechanistic models, in fact have a substantially more complex relation to the real underlying system. They are typically constructed using a range of techniques for abstracting the functional properties of the system, which may not coincide with its mechanistic organization. I describe these techniques and show that despite being nonmechanistic, these cognitive models can satisfy the normative constraints on good explanations.
Machery denies the traditional view that concepts are constituents of thoughts, and he more provo... more Machery denies the traditional view that concepts are constituents of thoughts, and he more provocatively argues that concepts should be eliminated from our best psychological taxonomy. I argue that the constituency view has much to recommend it (and is presupposed by much of his own theory), and that the evidence gives us grounds for pluralism, rather than eliminativism, about concepts.
In this response, I do four things. First, I defend the claim that the action compatibility effec... more In this response, I do four things. First, I defend the claim that the action compatibility effect does not distinguish between embodied and traditional accounts of language comprehension. Second, I present neuroimaging and neuropsychological results that seem to support the traditional account. Third, I argue that metaphorical language poses no special challenge to the arguments I gave against embodied theories of comprehension. Fourth, I lay out the architecture of language I advocate and suggest the sorts of data that would decide between traditional and embodied accounts.
Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to se... more Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to semantic or conceptual representations. These representations themselves were supposed to be distinct from the representations manipulated by the hearer's perceptual and motor systems. Recently this view of language has been challenged by advocates of embodied cognition. Drawing on empirical studies of linguistic comprehension, they have proposed that the language faculty reuses the very representations and processes deployed in perceiving and acting. I review some of the evidence and arguments in favor of the embodied view of language comprehension, and argue that none of it is conclusive. Moreover, the embodied view itself blurs two important distinctions: first, the distinction between linguistic comprehension and its typical consequences; and second, the distinction between representational content and vehicles. Given that these distinctions are well-motivated, we have good reason to reject the embodied view of linguistic understanding.
Having concepts is a distinctive sort of cognitive capacity. One thing that conceptual thought re... more Having concepts is a distinctive sort of cognitive capacity. One thing that conceptual thought requires is obeying the Generality Constraint: concepts ought to be freely recombinable with other concepts to form novel thoughts, independent of what they are concepts of. Having concepts, then, constrains cognitive architecture in interesting ways. In recent years, spurred on by the rise of evolutionary psychology, massively modular models of the mind have gained prominence. I argue that these architectures are incapable of satisfying the Generality Constraint, and hence incapable of underpinning conceptual thought. I develop this argument with respect to two well-articulated proposals, due to Dan Sperber and Peter Carruthers. Neither proposal gives us a satisfactory explanation of Generality within the confines of a genuinely modular architecture. Massively modular minds may display considerable behavioral and cognitive flexibility, but not humanlike conceptualized thought.
Traditionally, theories of concepts in psychology assume that concepts are a single, uniform kind... more Traditionally, theories of concepts in psychology assume that concepts are a single, uniform kind of mental representation. But no single kind of representation can explain all of the empirical data for which concepts are responsible. I argue that the assumption that concepts are uniformly the same kind of mental structure is responsible for these theories' shortcomings, and outline a pluralist theory of concepts that rejects this assumption. On pluralism, concepts should be thought of as being constituted by multiple representational kinds, with the particular kind of concept used on an occasion being determined by the context. I argue that endorsing pluralism does not lead to eliminativism about concepts as an object of scientific interest.
Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that... more Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that have been thought to support atomism and show that they are inconclusive. The evidence that allegedly backs atomism is equally compatible with a localist position on which concepts are structured representations with complex semantic content. I lay out such a localist position and argue that the appropriate position for a non-atomist to adopt is a pluralist view of conceptual structure. I show several ways in which conceptual pluralism provides an advantage in satisfying the empirical and philosophical demands on a theory of conceptual structure and content.
Philosophy of Science
Neuroscientists have in recent years turned to building models that aim to generate predictions r... more Neuroscientists have in recent years turned to building models that aim to generate predictions rather than explanations. This "predictive turn" has swept across domains including law, marketing, and neuropsychiatry. Yet the norms of prediction remain undertheorized relative to those of explanation. I examine two styles of predictive modeling and show how they exemplify the normative dynamics at work in prediction. I propose an account of how predictive models, conceived of as technological devices for aiding decision-making, can come to be adequate for purposes that are defined by both their guiding research questions and their larger social context of application.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2020
Indigenous peoples possess enormously rich and articulated knowledge of the natural world. A majo... more Indigenous peoples possess enormously rich and articulated knowledge of the natural world. A major goal of research in anthropology and ethnobiology as well as ecology, conservation biology, and development studies is to find ways of integrating this knowledge with that produced by academic and other institutionalized scientific communities. Here I present a challenge to this integration project. I argue, by reference to ethnographic and cross-cultural psychological studies, that the models of the world developed within specialized academic disciplines do not map onto anything existing within traditional beliefs and practices for coping with nature. Traditional ecological knowledge is distributed across a heterogeneous array of overlapping practices within Indigenous cultures, including spiritual and ritual practices that invoke categories, properties, and causal-explanatory models that do not in general converge with those of the academic sciences. In light of this divergence I argue that we should abandon the integration project, and conclude by sketching a notion of knowledge coordination as a possible successor framework.
The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind, 2019
Reductionism is one of the most divisive concepts in the popular and philosophical lexicon. Over ... more Reductionism is one of the most divisive concepts in the popular and philosophical lexicon. Over the past century it has been championed, declared dead, resurrected, and reformed many times over. Its resilient, protean character reflects the circumstances of its birth in the polarizing mid-20 th century debates over the unity of science. While the totalizing ideal of unified science has lost its luster, localized reductionist projects continue to flourish. In this chapter I sketch the goals and methods of one prominent form of reductionism within the mindbrain sciences and consider the prospects for non-reductionist alternatives.
In recent decades, attempts to explain autism have been frustrated by the heterogeneous nature of... more In recent decades, attempts to explain autism have been frustrated by the heterogeneous nature of its behavioral symptoms and the underlying genetic, neural, and cognitive mechanisms that produce them. This has led some to propose eliminating the category altogether. The eliminativist inference relies on a conception of psychiatric categories as kinds defined by their underlying mechanistic structure. I review the evidence for eliminativism and propose an alternative model of the family of autisms. On this account, autism is a network category defined by a set of idealized exemplars linked by multiple levels of theoretically significant properties. I argue that this network model better captures the empirical phenomena, the historical growth of the category, and the ways the category has been shaped by social norms and interests. Finally, I defend a realist interpretation of network categories against the challenge from eliminativists.
Neural Mechanisms: New Challenges in the Philosophy of Neuroscience
In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the... more In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the importation of computational and statistical techniques from machine learning and informatics. In addition to their translational applications such as brain-computer interfaces and early diagnosis of neuropathology, these tools promise to advance new solutions to longstanding theoretical quandaries. Here I critically assess whether these promises will pay off, focusing on the application of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to the problem of reverse inference. I argue that MVPA does not inherently provide a new answer to classical worries about reverse inference, and that the method faces pervasive interpretive problems of its own. Further, the epistemic setting of MVPA and other decoding methods contributes to a potentially worrisome shift towards prediction and away from explanation in fundamental neuroscience.
Philosophy Compass, 2019
This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the e... more This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the ethnosciences with ontological debates in philosophy. First, we survey empirical evidence from heterogeneous cultural contexts and disciplines. Second, we propose a model of cross‐cultural relations between ontologies beyond a simple divide between universalist and relativist models. Third, we argue for an integrative model of ontology building that synthesizes insights from different fields such as biological taxonomy, cognitive science, cultural anthropology, and political ecology. We conclude by arguing that a program of ethnoontology provides philosophers both with insights about traditional issues such as debates about natural kinds and with novel strategies for connecting philosophy with pressing global issues such as the conservation of local environments and the self‐determination of Indigenous communities.
Natural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our be... more Natural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our beliefs and purposes. But not all ways of tracking categories in the natural world involve conceiving of them as natural kinds. Anthropic concepts represent groups of natural, mind-independent entities that are apt for serving various human interests, goals, and projects. They represent the natural world under a practical mode of presentation, as a set of material resources that can be transformed to further a host of functions and ends. I argue that cross-cultural studies of traditional ecological knowledge provide evidence that many chemical, mineral, and biological concepts that are frequently taken to be natural kind concepts turn out on closer inspection to be anthropic concepts. Anthropic concepts are distinguished from artifact concepts, and a form of realism about the anthropic kinds that they refer to is defended.
A central problem for any theory of cognition is to specify what the medium or vehicle of thought... more A central problem for any theory of cognition is to specify what the medium or vehicle of thought is. Historically, answers divide into roughly three categories. Some claim that the words of natural language are the medium of thought. Others claim that we think in sensory or perceptual images. Dual-coding approaches in psychology have sometimes attempted to split the difference between these . A final possibility is that thought is neither verbal nor imagistic, but that it takes place in a special-purpose amodal conceptual medium. On this view, concepts may be similar in some respects to language and images, but they nevertheless belong to a distinct system with its own representational capacities and processes.
The mind/brain, like any other complex system, can be modeled in a variety of ways. 1 Some of the... more The mind/brain, like any other complex system, can be modeled in a variety of ways. 1 Some of these involve ignoring or abstracting from most of its structure: for the purpose of understanding overall glucose metabolism in the body, we can neglect the brain's intricate internal organization and treat it simply as a suitably discretized homogeneous mass having certain energy demands . Other projects demand more fine-grained modeling schemes, as when we are trying to map cortical white-matter density and connectivity , or the distribution of various neurotransmitter receptor sites ). Here, the system's detailed structural and dynamical properties matter, although not necessarily the same ones in every context. A single system may admit of many possible simplifying idealizations, and how we model a system-which of its components and properties we choose to represent, and how much detail we incorporate into that representation-is fundamentally a pragmatic choice.
How is it that we are able to think about what we perceive? More specifically, how are we able to... more How is it that we are able to think about what we perceive? More specifically, how are we able to bring the resources of conceptualized thought to bear on the objects and events that are represented to us in perception? And how much of our capacity for conceptualized thought is undergirded by, or is an extension of, our capacities for perception and action? Addressing these questions requires disentangling some of the more tightly woven strands linking perception, thought, and action.
The idea that mental activity can be arranged according to a hierarchy of complexity has ancient ... more The idea that mental activity can be arranged according to a hierarchy of complexity has ancient origins, with roots in the Aristotelian psychological division of the soul into nutritive, perceptual, and intellectual faculties. On this view, elementary functions dedicated to sustaining life undergird those that engage cognitively with the sensible world, which in turn support the active faculties of abstract reason. Higher faculties are meant to be those that have, in some sense, greater abstraction, generality, or complexity, which links them
Neuroscience constrains psychology, but stating these constraints with precision is not simple. H... more Neuroscience constrains psychology, but stating these constraints with precision is not simple. Here I consider whether mechanistic analysis provides a useful way to integrate models of cognitive and neural structure. Recent evidence suggests that cognitive systems map onto overlapping, distributed networks of brain regions. These highly entangled networks often depart from stereotypical mechanistic behaviors. While this casts doubt on the prospects for classical mechanistic integration of psychology and neuroscience, I argue that it does not impugn a realistic interpretation of either type of model. Cognitive and neural models may depict different, but equally real, causal structures within the mind/brain.
Mechanistic explanation has an impressive track record of advancing our understanding of complex,... more Mechanistic explanation has an impressive track record of advancing our understanding of complex, hierarchically organized physical systems, particularly biological and neural systems. But not every complex system can be understood mechanistically. Psychological capacities are often understood by providing cognitive models of the systems that underlie them. I argue that these models, while superficially similar to mechanistic models, in fact have a substantially more complex relation to the real underlying system. They are typically constructed using a range of techniques for abstracting the functional properties of the system, which may not coincide with its mechanistic organization. I describe these techniques and show that despite being nonmechanistic, these cognitive models can satisfy the normative constraints on good explanations.
Machery denies the traditional view that concepts are constituents of thoughts, and he more provo... more Machery denies the traditional view that concepts are constituents of thoughts, and he more provocatively argues that concepts should be eliminated from our best psychological taxonomy. I argue that the constituency view has much to recommend it (and is presupposed by much of his own theory), and that the evidence gives us grounds for pluralism, rather than eliminativism, about concepts.
In this response, I do four things. First, I defend the claim that the action compatibility effec... more In this response, I do four things. First, I defend the claim that the action compatibility effect does not distinguish between embodied and traditional accounts of language comprehension. Second, I present neuroimaging and neuropsychological results that seem to support the traditional account. Third, I argue that metaphorical language poses no special challenge to the arguments I gave against embodied theories of comprehension. Fourth, I lay out the architecture of language I advocate and suggest the sorts of data that would decide between traditional and embodied accounts.
Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to se... more Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to semantic or conceptual representations. These representations themselves were supposed to be distinct from the representations manipulated by the hearer's perceptual and motor systems. Recently this view of language has been challenged by advocates of embodied cognition. Drawing on empirical studies of linguistic comprehension, they have proposed that the language faculty reuses the very representations and processes deployed in perceiving and acting. I review some of the evidence and arguments in favor of the embodied view of language comprehension, and argue that none of it is conclusive. Moreover, the embodied view itself blurs two important distinctions: first, the distinction between linguistic comprehension and its typical consequences; and second, the distinction between representational content and vehicles. Given that these distinctions are well-motivated, we have good reason to reject the embodied view of linguistic understanding.
Having concepts is a distinctive sort of cognitive capacity. One thing that conceptual thought re... more Having concepts is a distinctive sort of cognitive capacity. One thing that conceptual thought requires is obeying the Generality Constraint: concepts ought to be freely recombinable with other concepts to form novel thoughts, independent of what they are concepts of. Having concepts, then, constrains cognitive architecture in interesting ways. In recent years, spurred on by the rise of evolutionary psychology, massively modular models of the mind have gained prominence. I argue that these architectures are incapable of satisfying the Generality Constraint, and hence incapable of underpinning conceptual thought. I develop this argument with respect to two well-articulated proposals, due to Dan Sperber and Peter Carruthers. Neither proposal gives us a satisfactory explanation of Generality within the confines of a genuinely modular architecture. Massively modular minds may display considerable behavioral and cognitive flexibility, but not humanlike conceptualized thought.
Traditionally, theories of concepts in psychology assume that concepts are a single, uniform kind... more Traditionally, theories of concepts in psychology assume that concepts are a single, uniform kind of mental representation. But no single kind of representation can explain all of the empirical data for which concepts are responsible. I argue that the assumption that concepts are uniformly the same kind of mental structure is responsible for these theories' shortcomings, and outline a pluralist theory of concepts that rejects this assumption. On pluralism, concepts should be thought of as being constituted by multiple representational kinds, with the particular kind of concept used on an occasion being determined by the context. I argue that endorsing pluralism does not lead to eliminativism about concepts as an object of scientific interest.
Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that... more Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that have been thought to support atomism and show that they are inconclusive. The evidence that allegedly backs atomism is equally compatible with a localist position on which concepts are structured representations with complex semantic content. I lay out such a localist position and argue that the appropriate position for a non-atomist to adopt is a pluralist view of conceptual structure. I show several ways in which conceptual pluralism provides an advantage in satisfying the empirical and philosophical demands on a theory of conceptual structure and content.