Carving joints into nature: reengineering scientific concepts in light of concept-laden evidence

Dubova, Marina; Goldstone, Robert L.

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2023.04.006

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 85 publications

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“…Most areas of social and behavioral sciences use experimental manipulations and outcomes to measure unobservable constructs. Social and behavioral scientists in most domains are still engaged in iterative refinement of the experimental paradigms and dimensions of the design space that will best measure these constructs (Dubova & Goldstone, 2023). For instance, while a plethora of paradigmsincluding the multisource interference task, the task switching paradigm, and the N-back taskare utilized for the study of mental effort, there is little agreement about which experimental manipulations evoke mentally effortful processes, let alone how these manipulations would be combined into an integrative experiment (Bustamante et al, 2022;Koch, Poljac, Müller, & Kiesel, 2018;Kool, McGuire, Rosen, & Botvinick, 2010;Shenhav et al, 2017;Westbrook & Braver, 2015).…”

Section: Integrative Experimentation Exploits Existing Experimental P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The elephant's other legs: What some sciences actually do

Baron

2024

Behav Brain Sci

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Integrative experiments, as described, seem blindly empirical, as if the question of generality of effects could not be understood through controlled one-at-a-time experiments. But current research using such experiments, especially applied research, can resolve issues and make progress through understanding of cause–effect pathways, leaving to engineers the task of translating this understanding into practice.

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Section: Integrative Experimentation Exploits Existing Experimental P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The elephant's other legs: What some sciences actually do

Baron

2024

Behav Brain Sci

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“…Most areas of social and behavioral sciences use experimental manipulations and outcomes to measure unobservable constructs. Social and behavioral scientists in most domains are still engaged in iterative refinement of the experimental paradigms and dimensions of the design space that will best measure these constructs (Dubova & Goldstone, 2023). For instance, while a plethora of paradigms – including the multisource interference task, the task switching paradigm, and the N-back task – are utilized for the study of mental effort, there is little agreement about which experimental manipulations evoke mentally effortful processes, let alone how these manipulations would be combined into an integrative experiment (Bustamante et al, 2022; Koch, Poljac, Müller, & Kiesel, 2018; Kool, McGuire, Rosen, & Botvinick, 2010; Shenhav et al, 2017; Westbrook & Braver, 2015).…”

Section: Integrative Experimentation Exploits Existing Experimental P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Explore your experimental designs and theories before you exploit them!

Dubova,

Sloman,

Andrew

et al. 2024

Behav Brain Sci

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“…The key idea is that instead of stopping there one should revise the characterization of the capacity in light of what one has learned about the mechanism. (For a discussion of how this revision proceeds see, for example, Chang, 2004;Feest, 2010;Dubova & Goldstone, 2023). Hence, this strategy might avoid leading us into a trivial, infinitely large, and useless cognitive ontology.…”

Section: How (Not) To Save the New Mechanistic Answermentioning

confidence: 99%

The New Mechanistic Approach and Cognitive Ontology—Or: What Role do (Neural) Mechanisms Play in Cognitive Ontology?

Krickel

2024

Minds & Machines

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Cognitive ontology has become a popular topic in philosophy, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. At its center is the question of which cognitive capacities should be included in the ontology of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. One common strategy for answering this question is to look at brain structures and determine the cognitive capacities for which they are responsible. Some authors interpret this strategy as a search for neural mechanisms, as understood by the so-called new mechanistic approach. In this article, I will show that this new mechanistic answer is confronted with what I call the triviality problem. A discussion of this problem will show that one cannot derive a meaningful cognitive ontology from neural mechanisms alone. Nonetheless, neural mechanisms play a crucial role in the discovery of a cognitive ontology because they are epistemic proxies for best systematizations.

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Carving joints into nature: reengineering scientific concepts in light of concept-laden evidence

Cited by 10 publications

References 85 publications

The elephant's other legs: What some sciences actually do

The elephant's other legs: What some sciences actually do

Explore your experimental designs and theories before you exploit them!

The New Mechanistic Approach and Cognitive Ontology—Or: What Role do (Neural) Mechanisms Play in Cognitive Ontology?

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