VOLUME 15 (2002), ISSUE 4

Symposium: Inter-level Relations in Computer Science, Biology, and Psychology

CATHOLIJN M. JONKER, JAN TREUR, & WOUTER C.A. WIJNGAARDS
Reductionist and anti-reductionist perspectives on dynamics

• Abstract: In this paper, reduction and its pragmatics are discussed in light of the development in computer science of languages to describe processes. The design of higher-level description languages within computer science has had the aim of allowing for description of the dynamics of processes in the (physical) world on a higher level avoiding all (physical) details of these processes. The higher description levels developed have dramatically increased the complexity of applications that came within reach. The pragmatic attitude of a (scientific) practitioner in this area has become inherently anti-reductionist, but based on well-established reduction relations. The paper discusses how this perspective can be related to reduction in general, and to other domains where description of dynamics plays a main role, in particular, biological and cognitive domains.

F.J. BRUGGEMAN, H.V. WESTERHOFF, AND F.C. BOOGERD
BioComplexity: A pluralist research strategy is necessary for a mechanistic explanation of the 'live' state

• Abstract: The biological sciences study (bio)complex living systems. Research directed at the mechanistic explanation of the 'live' state truly requires a pluralist research program, i.e. BioComplexity research. The program should apply multiple intra-level and inter-level theories and methodologies. We substantiate this thesis with analysis of BioComplexity: metabolic and modular control analysis of metabolic pathways, emergence of oscillations, and the analysis of the functioning of glycolysis.

HUIB LOOREN de JONG
Levels of explanation in biological psychology

• Abstract: In this paper, reduction and its pragmatics are discussed in light of the development Until recently, the notions of function and multiple realization were supposed to save the autonomy of psychological explanations. Furthermore, the concept of supervenience presumably allows both dependence of mind on brain and non-reducibility of mind to brain, reconciling materialism with an independent explanatory role for mental and functional concepts and explanations. Eliminativism is often seen as the main or only alternative to such autonomy. It gladly accepts abandoning or thoroughly reconstructing the psychological level, and considers reduction if successful as equivalent with elimination. In comparison with the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of biology has developed more subtle and complex ideas about functions, laws, and reductive explanation than the stark dichotomy of autonomy or elimination. It has been argued that biology is a patchwork of local laws, each with different explanatory interests and more or less limited scope. This points to a pluralistic, domain-specific and multi-level view of explanations in biology. Explanatory pluralism (McCauley, 1996) has been proposed as an alternative to eliminativism on the one hand and methodological dualism on the other hand. It holds that theories at different levels of description, like psychology and neuroscience, can co-evolve, and mutually influence each other, without the higher-level theory being replaced by, or reduced to, the lower-level one. Such ideas seem to tally with the pluralistic character of biological explanation. In biological psychology, explanatory pluralism would lead us to expect many local and non-reductive interactions between biological, neurophysiological, psychological and evolutionary explanations of mind and behavior. This idea is illustrated by an example from behavioral genetics, where genetics, physiology and psychology constitute distinct but interrelated levels of explanation. Accounting for such a complex patchwork of related explanations seems to require a more sophisticated and precise way of looking at levels than the existing ideas on (reductive and non-reductive) explanation in the philosophy of mind.

F.C. BOOGERD, F.J. BRUGGEMAN, CATHOLIJN M. JONKER, HUIB LOOREN de JONG, ALLARD TAMMINGA, JAN TREUR, & WOUTER C.A. WIJNGAARDS
Inter-level relations in computer science, biology, and psychology

• Abstract: Investigations into inter-level relations in computer science, biology and psychology call for an empirical turn in the philosophy of mind. Rather than concentrate on a priori discussions of inter-level relations between 'completed' sciences, a case is made for the actual study of the way inter-level relations grow out of the developing sciences. Thus, philosophical inquiries will be made more relevant to the sciences, and, more importantly, philosophical accounts of inter-level relations will be testable by confronting them to what really happens in science. Hence, close observation of the ever-changing reduction relations in the developing sciences, and revision of philosophical positions based on these empirical observations, may, in the long run, be more conducive to an adequate understanding of inter-level relations than a traditional a priori approach.

Manuscripts:

WAN-CHI WONG
Revitalizing the metaphoric process in commonsense psychology

• Abstract: In response to the increasingly acknowledged power of metaphor upon everyday and scientific thinking, the present essay aims to revitalize the metaphoric process in commonsense psychology from the interaction view perspective. As prerequisites, a historical review of the "man-the-scientist" metaphor inherited in commonsense psychology, and a situation analysis of its dormant state are attempted. With metaphorical imagination, a holistic-paradigmatic view of personal theories is postulated on the basis of new knowledge in the philosophy and history of science, namely the Duhem-Quine (holism) thesis and Kuhn's paradigmatic perspective of scientific activities. To optimize the metaphoric process, deliberations are made on the similarities as well as the differences between the principal subject (i.e., everyday activities) and the subsidiary subject (i.e., scientific activities). It is shown that the "man-the-scientist" metaphoric process can be far-reaching and dialectic in nature, which results in fresh perspectives of understanding both the everyday and scientific activities. The focus of the present essay lies in elaborating a more sophisticated view on personal theories, and in calling for a non-reductionist approach to the investigation of commonsense psychology.

HOWARD H. KENDLER
Psychology and ethics: Interactions and conflicts

• Abstract: The relationship between psychology and ethics is determined by whether psychology is conceptualized as a natural or a human science. If the former, then psychology is incapable of identifying universal moral imperatives because of the fact/value dichotomy that rejects the possibility of logically deriving moral principles or social policies from factual statements. In addition, the inevitability of moral pluralism raises the question as to how natural science methodology can select moral truths or social policies from a variety of presumed alternatives. In contrast, human science psychology, which emphasizes phenomenological experience as a source of psychological truths, has attempted to bridge the fact/value gap. Upon close examination, this approach has failed to suggest a rule as to how the "correct" set of values can be identified. The conclusion is that facts cannot dictate moral principles or social policies but, they can help illuminate their consequences. Policy decisions become the responsibility of a democratic society, not of psychology.

JEANNETTE KENNETT & STEVE MATTHEWS
Identity, control and responsibility: The case of dissociative identity disorder

• Abstract: Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) is a condition in which a person appears to possess more than one personality, and sometimes very many. Some recent criminal cases involving defendants with DID have resulted in "not guilty" verdicts, though the defense is not always successful in this regard. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Stephen Behnke have argued that we should excuse DID sufferers from responsibility, only if at the time of the act the person was insane (typically delusional); otherwise the presumption should be that persons with DID are indeed responsible for their actions. We find their interpretation of DID and of the way in which the requirements for criminal insanity relate to this condition worrying and likely to result in injustice to DID sufferers. Our thesis is that persons with DID cannot be responsible for their actions if the usual features of the condition are present. A person with DID is a single person in the grip of a very serious mental disorder. By focusing on the features of DID which have, as we argue, the effect of deluding the patient, we try to show that such a person is unable to fulfill the ordinary conditions of responsible agency (viz., autonomy and self-control).

Review Essays:

EDDY NAHMIAS
When consciousness matters: A critical review of DANIEL WEGNER's The illusion of conscious will

• Abstract: In The illusion of conscious will, Daniel Wegner offers an exciting, informative, and potentially threatening treatise on the psychology of action. I offer several interpretations of the thesis that conscious will is an illusion. The one Wegner seems to suggest is "modular epiphenomenalism": conscious experience of will is produced by a brain system distinct from the system that produces action; it interprets our behavior but does not, as it seems to us, cause it. I argue that the evidence Wegner presents to support this theory, though fascinating, is inconclusive and, in any case, he has not shown that conscious will does not play a crucial causal role in planning, forming intentions, etc. This theory's potential blow to our self-conception turns out to be glancing.

JOÉLLE PROUST
A critical review of G. LYNN STEPHENS & G. GRAHAM's When self-consiousness breaks

• Abstract: This book deals with the experience of externality, i.e. an experience, common in schizophrenia, present both in verbal hallucination and in thought insertion. The view defended is that thought insertion is a case of failed agency, experienced by the agent at the personal level as an intelligible thought to which she cannot identify. Such a case in which sense of agency and sense of subjectivity come apart, reveals the existence of two dimensions in self-consciousness. Several difficulties of the solution offered are discussed, in connection with the causal-explanatory role of the phenomenological features of the experience and with the view that thinking is a variety of acting.

DANIEL A. WEISKOPF
A critical review of JERRY FODOR's The mind doesn't work that way

• Abstract: The 'New Synthesis' in cognitive science is committed to the computational theory of mind (CTM), massive modularity, nativism, and adaptationism. In The mind doesn't work that way, Jerry Fodor argues that CTM has problems explaining abductive or global inference, but that the New Synthesis offers no solution, since massive modularity is in fact incompatible with global cognitive processes. I argue that it isn't clear how global human mentation is, so whether CTM is imperiled is an open question. Massive modularity also lacks some of the invidious commitments Fodor ascribes to it. Furthermore, Fodor's anti-adaptationist arguments are in tension with his nativism about the contents of modular systems. The New Synthesis thus has points worth preserving.

Book Reviews:

M. BRANDON WESTOVER
Review of PETER DAYAN & L. F. ABBOTT's Theoretical neuroscience: Computational and mathematical modeling of neural systems

CHARLES FISCHETTE
Review of CRAIG DELANCEY's Passionate engines: What emotions reveal about mind and artificial intelligence

J.D. TROUT
Review of RENEE ELIO's Common sense, reasoning, and rationality

R. KEITH SAWYER
Review of PAUL DOURISH's Where the action is: The foundations of embodied interaction

ALLISON BARNES
Review of EVAN THOMPSON's Between ourselves: Second-person issues in the study of conciousness