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Asymmetry and Reciprocity in Hyperscanning Psychotherapy
Full text linkHyperscanning has been increasingly used to quantify the quality of social relationships by tracking the neural correlates of interpersonal interactions. This paper critically examines the use of hyperscanning to track the neural correlates of psychotherapeutic change, e.g., the patient-therapist relationship. First, we motivate our project by diagnosing a lack of complex models in this domain and, looking for the causes of this issue, we highlight the epistemic blindspots of current methodologies that prioritize neural synchrony as a marker of therapeutic success. Drawing on empirical studies and theoretical frameworks, we identify an asymmetry between the neural and behavioral conceptual toolkits, with the latter remaining underdeveloped. We argue that this imbalance stems from two key issues: the underdetermined qualitative interpretation of brain data and the neglect of strong reciprocity in neuroscientific second-person paradigms. In light of our critical analysis, we suggest that further research should address the complexity of reciprocal, dynamic interactions in therapeutic contexts. Specifically, drawing on enactivism, we highlight that the autonomy of interactions is one of the factors that undermines the synchrony paradigm. This approach emphasizes the co-construction of meaning and shared experiences through embodied, reciprocal interactions, offering a more integrative understanding of therapeutic change that accounts for neural correlates of the emergent and dynamic nature of social cognition
Comment on "Energy level shift of quantum systems via the scalar electric Aharonov-Bohm effect"
Full text linkRecently Chiao and his collaborators proposed a novel scalar electric Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect [Phys. Rev. A 107, 042209 (2023)]. They claimed that a quantum system inside a Faraday cage with a time varying but spatially uniform scalar potential acquires an AB phase, resulting in observable energy level shifts. This comment argues that their analysis is flawed: a spatially uniform scalar potential inside the cage, despite external variations, can be gauged away without altering gauge-invariant observables, such as energy differences, thus invalidating their claim. A possible explanation of this seemingly puzzling result is also given
Naturalizing Biological Agency: Constitutive and Dynamical Strategies
Full text linkThe view that organisms are agents—and that organismal agency is fundamental to explaining biological phenomena—has become a central topic in the philosophy of biology (Walsh 2015; Moreno & Mossio 2015; Corning et al. 2023). Unlike standard causal-mechanical approaches, however, the concept of agency carries distinct teleological and normative implications that must be naturalized to be scientifically legitimate. But what exactly does naturalism require? And what counts as an adequate naturalization? I propose two desiderata: causal-location and explanatory indispensability, and compare two naturalistic accounts of agency—the organizational or constitutive account (OA) (Moreno & Mossio 2015) and the ecological or dynamical account (EA) (Walsh 2015). I argue that while OA satisfies causal-location at the cost of explanatory adequacy, EA achieves explanatory adequacy while remaining silent on causal-location. This leads to a dilemma between causal reductionism (OA) and teleological primitivism (EA), rooted in differing criteria for what naturalism requires. I distinguish two increasingly demanding grades of scientific naturalism: scientific emergentism and scientific essentialism, and argue that the dilemma arises from OA’s commitment to the latter and EA’s to the former. I conclude by showing how the emergentist criterion can resolve the dilemma by integrating OA and EA into a two-stage strategy that satisfies both desiderata
Beauty Leads to Truth: Aesthetic Induction on Consistency
Full text linkThe belief that beauty leads to truth is prevalent among contemporary physicists. Far from being a private faith, it operates as a methodological guiding principle, essentially when physicists have to develop theories without new empirical data. However, it is unclear how beauty should be understood here for this belief to be justified not merely as useful but as true. In this article, I propose an interpretation of "beauty leads to truth" as "ugliness leads to falsehood," where "ugliness" refers to a lack of formal harmony, namely, a lack of consistency; in other words, "beauty leads to truth" is interpreted as "inconsistent theories cannot be true." As this article will show, this conviction (that inconsistent theories cannot be true) is indeed utilized as a methodological principle in scientific practice. Nevertheless, finding a justification is not easy, for this conviction is not merely a logical requirement, nor is it readily supported by direct observation or theoretical considerations. The sole non-circular justification seems to lie in a meta-induction: historically, inconsistent theories are less successful than their consistent successors. This constitutes an aesthetic induction, for (in)consistency can be understood as an aesthetic property, at least within a hermeneutic context, and it may perform a genuinely aesthetic role in this meta-induction. In this sense, "inconsistent theories cannot be true" is a specific instance of "beauty leads to truth," or, alternatively, "ugliness leads to falsehood.
Misrepresenting the Hole Argument?
Full text linkKey elements of the recent dialectic surrounding the hole argument
in the philosophy of general relativity are clarified by close attendance
to the nature of scientific representation. I argue that a structuralist
account of representation renders the purported haecceitistic differences
between target systems irrelevant to the representational role of models
of general relativity. Framing the hole argument in this way helps resolve
the impasse in the literature between Weatherall and Pooley and Read
When Are Small-Scale Field Experiments in Solar Geoengineering Worth Pursuing?
Full text linkWe propose a set of heuristics—scientific rigor, safety, usefulness, and transparency—for assessing the pursuitworthiness of small-scale field experiments in solar geoengineering research. Rather than offering a fixed logic of pursuit, we emphasize that these heuristics should operate as part of a dynamic and iterative evaluative process within the solar geoengineering research community, responsive to changing modeling priorities, new data, and shifting ethical and political landscapes. We argue that such experiments must be understood within the broader context of climate modeling research, where their primary role is to improve model components and identify further uncertainties. As debates about “moonshot” research and urgent science continue to evolve, our heuristics offer a way for the community, and for potential funders, to evaluate field experiments without abandoning the standards that guide responsible inquiry. Although our heuristics presuppose the pursuitworthiness of solar geoengineering research as a whole, they provide a structured framework for evaluating which field experiments are worth undertaking and why
Belief and Social Networks
Full text linkNetwork epistemology is a growing field which studies the relationship between social network structure and belief. The field draws on work from many disciplines, including computer science, economics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, and sociology. While the conclusions of the field suggest that the relationship between network structure and belief is quite complex, there are a few general lessons that can be drawn. This chapter discusses what is known, and where fruitful new interdisciplinary work could help expand our understanding
Symptom Bias: Definition, Identification and Avoidance
Full text linkA common criticism of medicine is that there is often too much focus on treating symptoms instead of treating patients. This criticism and its sentiment – among other factors – have motivated many 'humanistic' or 'non-reductionist' approaches to medicine. My aim here is not to detail or defend any of these approaches, but rather to better understand what is at the heart of the 'common criticism.' I contend that this criticism is best understood as a criticism of a kind of bias I here introduce: symptom bias. Symptom bias occurs when treating symptoms becomes the ends of intervening instead of the means towards health or well-being. Without naming and understanding this bias, even the 'non-reductionist' approaches to medicine may perpetuate it
Theoretical Virtues, Truth, and the Epistemic Aim of Scientific Theorizing
Full text linkI argue that the epistemic aim of scientific theorizing (EAST) is producing theories with the highest possible number and degree of theoretical virtues (call this “TV-EAST”). I trace TV-EAST’s logical empiricist origins and discuss its close connections to Kuhn’s and Laudan’s problem-solving accounts of the aim of science. Despite TV-EAST’s antirealist roots, I argue that if one adopts the realist view that EAST is finding true theories, one should also endorse TV-EAST. I then defend TV-EAST by showing that it addresses the challenges raised against using the “aim of science” metaphor and offers significant advantages over the realist account
Structure and function in the predictive brain
Full text linkPredictive processing is an ambitious neurocomputational framework, offering an unified explanation of all cognitive processes in terms of a single computational operation, namely prediction error minimization. Whilst this ambitious unificatory claim has been thoroughly analyzed, less attention has been paid to what predictive processing entails for structure-function mappings in cognitive neuroscience. We argue that, taken at face value, predictive processing entails an all-to-one structure-function mapping, wherein each individual neural structure is assigned the same function, namely minimizing prediction error. Such a structure-function mapping, we show, is highly problematic. For, barring few, rare occasions, such a structure-function mapping fails to play the predictive, explanatory and heuristic roles structure-function mappings are expected to play in cognitive neuroscience. Worse still, it offers a picture of the brain that we know is wrong. For, it depicts the brain as an equipotential organ; an organ wherein structural differences do not correspond to any appreciable functional difference, and wherein each component can substitute for any other component without causing any loss or degradation of functionality. Somewhat ironically, the very neuroscientific roots of predictive processing motivate a form of skepticism concerning the framework’s most ambitious unificatory claims. Do these problems force us to abandon predictive processing? Not necessarily. For, once the assumption that all cognition can be accounted for exclusively in terms of prediction error minimization is relaxed, the problems we diagnosed lose their bite