Mapping explanatory language in neuroscience.
The philosophical literature on scientific explanation in neuroscience has been dominated by the idea of mechanisms. The mechanist philosophers often claim that neuroscience is in the business of finding mechanisms. This view has been challenged in numerous ways by showing that there are other succe...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 202; no. 4; pp. 1 - 28 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Oct2023
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=172745299&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 172745299 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct2023 vid: 202 iid: 4 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 172745299 10.1007/s11229-023-04329-6 ppf: 1 ppct: 27 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.2MB tig: atl: Mapping explanatory language in neuroscience. aug: au: Kostić, Daniel Halffman, Willem affil: https://ror.org/027bh9e22 Institute of Philosophy, University of Leiden, Nonnensteeg 1-3, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands https://ror.org/016xsfp80 Institute for Science in Society (ISiS), Radboud University, P.O. Box 9010, 6500 GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands sug: keyword: Explanatory pluralism Neuroscience Scientific explanation Text mining ab: The philosophical literature on scientific explanation in neuroscience has been dominated by the idea of mechanisms. The mechanist philosophers often claim that neuroscience is in the business of finding mechanisms. This view has been challenged in numerous ways by showing that there are other successful and widespread explanatory strategies in neuroscience. However, the empirical evidence for all these claims was hitherto lacking. Empirical evidence about the pervasiveness and uses of various explanatory strategies in neuroscience is particularly needed because examples and case studies that are used to illustrate philosophical claims so far tend to be hand-picked. The risk of confirmation bias is therefore considerable: when looking for white swans, all one finds is that swans are white. The more systematic quantitative and qualitative bibliometric study of a large body of relevant literature that we present in this paper can put such claims into perspective. Using text mining tools, we identify the typical linguistic patterns used in the alleged mechanistic, dynamical, and topological explanations in the literature, their preponderance and how they change over time. Our findings show abundant use of mechanistic language, but also the presence of a significant neuroscience literature using topological and dynamical explanatory language, which grows over time and increasingly differentiates from each other and from mechanistic explanations. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2023. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2023 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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