Imaging the living brain: An argument for ruthless reductionism from olfactory neurobiology

Barwich, Ann‐Sophie

doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2020.110560

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Young's account resonates with some scientists' emphasis on the chemical stimulus (Keller et al., 2017). However, other scientific and philosophical reports dispute the notion that the nature of olfactory experience is principally accounted for by the chemical stimulus or that the chemical stimulus constitutes the key element of analysis in olfactory neuroscience (Barwich, 2019, 2021; Poivet et al., 2016, 2018). Accordingly, we shall briefly outline three challenges for MST.…”

Section: Odors and Odor Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So how do odor receptors encode chemical information? It turns out that this remains a complex issue still under scientific investigation (Barwich, 2021). Short of a conclusive answer, what is relevant to the discussion about MST in our discussion here is the question of whether odor receptors really respond to the same properties by which an analytical chemist would model a molecule.…”

Section: Odors and Odor Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… (image Barwich, 2021): Overlapping receptor activity in the combinatorial coding of different odorants. Olfactory receptors {R1‐R6} overlap in their response tuning range to different odorants.…”

Section: The Function(s) Of Olfactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In effect, the same odorant causes varying odor experiences across people. The diverging perception of androstenone Barwich, 2021): Overlapping receptor activity in the combinatorial coding of different odorants. Olfactory receptors {R1-R6} overlap in their response tuning range to different odorants.…”

Section: The Function(s) Of Olfactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Molecules to Perception: Philosophical Investigations of Smell

Barwich

Smith

2022

Philosophy Compass

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Theories of perception have traditionally dismissed the sense of smell as a notoriously variable and highly subjective sense, mainly because it does not easily fit into accounts of perception based on visual experience. So far, philosophical questions about the objects of olfactory perception have started by considering the nature of olfactory experience.However, there is no philosophically neutral or agreed conception of olfactory experience: it all depends on what one thinks odors are. We examine the existing philosophical methodology for addressing our sense of smell: on the one hand appeals to phenomenology that focus on the experiential dimensions of odor perception and on the other approaches that look at odor sources and their material dimensions. We show that neither strategy provides enough information to account for the human sense of smell and argue that the inclusion of the missing dimension of biology, with its concern for the function (or functions) of olfaction, provides the means to develop a satisfactory and empirically informed philosophy of smell.

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Section: Odors and Odor Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Odors and Odor Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Function(s) Of Olfactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Function(s) Of Olfactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Molecules to Perception: Philosophical Investigations of Smell

Barwich

Smith

2022

Philosophy Compass

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“…There is simply no room in the universe for macroscale phenomena to have the kind of 'irreducible' causal power needed for agent causation. (Kim, 1993; see also Bickle, 2015;Barwich, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Naturalising Agent Causation

Potter¹,

Mitchell²

2022

Preprint

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The idea of agent causation - that a system like a living organism can be a cause of things in the world - is often seen as mysterious and deemed to be at odds with the physicalist thesis that is now commonly embraced in science and philosophy. Instead, the causal power of organisms is attributed to mechanistic components within the system or derived from the causal activity at the lowest level of physical description. In either case, the ‘agent’ itself (i.e., the system as a whole) is left out of the picture entirely, and agent causation is explained away. We argue that this is not the right way to think about causation in biology, or in systems more generally. We present a framework of eight criteria that we argue, collectively, describe a system that overcomes the challenges concerning agent causality, in an entirely naturalistic and non-mysterious way. They are: 1) Thermodynamic Autonomy, 2) Persistence, 3) Endogenous Activity, 4) Holistic Integration, 5) Low-Level Indeterminacy, 6) Multiple Realisability, 7) Historicity, 8) Agent-Level Normativity. Each criterion is taken to be dimensional rather than categorical, and thus we conclude with a short discussion on how researchers working on quantifying agency may use this multi-dimensional framework to situate and guide their research.

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Irrational methods suggest indecomposability and emergence

Ghomi

2023

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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This paper offers a practical argument for metaphysical emergence. The main message is that the growing reliance on so-called irrational scientific methods provides evidence that objects of science are indecomposable and as such, are better described by metaphysical emergence as opposed to the prevalent reductionistic metaphysics. I show that a potential counterargument that science will eventually reduce everything to physics has little weight given where science is heading with its current methodological trend. I substantiate my arguments by detailed examples from biological engineering, but the conclusions are extendable beyond that discipline.

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Imaging the living brain: An argument for ruthless reductionism from olfactory neurobiology

Cited by 11 publications

References 51 publications

From Molecules to Perception: Philosophical Investigations of Smell

From Molecules to Perception: Philosophical Investigations of Smell

Naturalising Agent Causation

Irrational methods suggest indecomposability and emergence

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