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You seem to be missing the point that, no matter how many hypotheses we make about the inner workings of the brain, we cannot turn them into science without eit

by lutusp 10y ago

You seem to be missing the point that, no matter how many hypotheses we make about the inner workings of the brain, we cannot turn them into science without either confirming or refuting them by direct examination of the brain itself. As long as we're hypothesizing about mechanisms that remain beyond direct observation, it's speculation. One cannot falsify a speculation. Psychology doesn't study the brain, it studies the mind. > I'd argue that this theory is empirical ... The observation is empirical but the theory isn't. It cannot become science without validation by way of empirical evidence. https://youtu.be/LIxvQMhttq4?t=32 https://youtu.be/LIxvQMhttq4?t=32 > I'd also argue that this is a computational theory describing how visual search works, without worrying about the underlying implementation of that process. Yes -- and because we cannot directly observe the processes we're hypothesizing about, we cannot make them a matter of empirical evidence, therefore we have no basis for falsification. https://www.britannica.com/topic/criterion-of-falsifiability https://www.britannica.com/topic/criterion-of-falsifiability Quote: "Criterion of falsifiability, in the philosophy of science, a standard of evaluation of putatively scientific theories, according to which a theory is genuinely scientific only if it is possible in principle to establish that it is false." > Clearly, it would be interesting to know that too, but it's certainly not necessary. Only necessary for science, otherwise not important.

mattkrause 10y ago
On the contrary, the point I'm trying to make is that you can study the processing done by whatever's in your skull (mind, brain, GPU, nanobots, whatever) while being totally agnostic about the underlying hardware. You can develop theories about this, test them, falsify them, and revise them. Returning to the feature integration theory, it says that during singleton search (red vs. green), reaction times should be constant regardless of the number of items, while reaction time should be a linear function of the number of items when the search involves combining information from multiple feature channels. You can test this with a junky laptop or even some drawings and a stopwatch. In fact, if you really want, I'll send you a script so you can test it yourself. You can falsify this: just fit lines to the (item count, RT) data and see if the slopes match the predictions. People have, in fact, done this, and have shown that this explanation of visual search isn't quite complete--weird things happen when the target is very rare, for example. Can you explain exactly what some neuroscience data would add here? Look, I'm not some hardcore dualist. I work in a systems neuroscience group and completely agree that brain-based theories are more interesting than phenomenological ones, which is why I put up with the hours, pay, etc. However, this doesn't make those psychological theories any less valid, nor does it make psychology less of a science. Anyway, there are lots of other processes that are not directly observable. Gravity, for example, wasn't directly observed until last year. Evolution can't be observed directly either.
- lutusp 10y ago
  > Can you explain exactly what some neuroscience data would add here? Certainly -- it would move the issue from the metaphysical to the physical realm. That might make it science. There's no science of the metaphysical. > Anyway, there are lots of other processes that are not directly observable. Yes, but not scientific ones. > Gravity, for example, wasn't directly observed until last year. Orbital mechanics both predicts and observes gravity. Each successful spacecraft journey represents another successful prediction of the physical theory of gravity. Dark Energy shows that a physical gravitation theory can be potentially falsified, a property all self-respecting scientific theories must have. Gravitational time dilation represents an empirical confirmation of Einstein's General Relativity, our present theory about gravity. To be accurate, the atomic clocks on board GPS satellites must take this time dilation into account (as well as that from Special Relativity). Einstein rings represent another direct observation of gravity. I think you mean that gravitational waves weren't observed until last year. Predicted long ago, finally observed. > Evolution can't be observed directly either. There is copious, empirical evidence for evolution. Start with how and why antibiotics lose their effectiveness over time. Then move on to laboratory studies of the evolution of Drosophila Melanogaster (fruit fly), chosen for its short reproduction cycle. Examples abound, all empirical and falsifiable. These are all examples of experimental confirmation of empirical theories, all potentially falsifiable by observing nature.
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    Great--thanks for the examples. I'm still a little hung up on the metaphysical part though. Suppose we ignore all the baggage around the "mind" and just consider an input/output relationship: a visual stimulus goes in and some response comes out. We can formulate a theory about the transfer function that maps between them, and then test it by applying different stimuli and comparing the observed response with the expected one. A) Suppose the device is a machine. It initially looks like it responds by beeping when illuminated. However, we falsify this theory by finding different patterns of light and dark, some of which cause the machine to beep and others that don't, falsifying that theory. However, it suggests that some feature of the image may matter, so we test it to see if varying the color of the light matters (it doesn't), or if the relative spacings of light and dark do matter (it does). We try more features and eventually discover that it responds to every single one of the barcodes we try, but nothing else, and hypothesize that it's a barcode scanner. B) Suppose we're recording from a single neuron in a rat or cat's brain while the animal views a screen. In early experiments, we discover that cells in this brain area--and this neuron specifically--responds to visual stimuli. We adjust the stimuli and note that it only responds to some of the stimuli, so we construct a quantitative model giving the expected distribution of responses as a function of stimulus features. This suggests more tests of the model--perhaps the model has very limited spatial support and thus claims that far apart stimuli have no effect. We present the animal (and thus, the neuron) with stimuli outside the supported region and, to our surprise, the responses change. We revise the model to include some suppressive interactions, and try again.... C) Suppose we're recording the behavioural responses of a human subject. We show the subject pictures of other humans, and ask them to report whether the individual shown is a man or woman. We hypothesise that certain features in the image guide this decision, so we modify the images to enhance or degrade those features and repeat the experiment. Some of these changes have no effect, others increase or decrease the speed and accuracy with which they respond. So, we modify the images more selectively, or only in certain locations, and repeat the experiment, revising our model as we go. It seems like you would admit A and B as being "scientific", but think that C is flawed. Is this right?

by lutusp 10y ago

mattkrause 10y ago

On the contrary, the point I'm trying to make is that you can study the processing done by whatever's in your skull (mind, brain, GPU, nanobots, whatever) while being totally agnostic about the underlying hardware. You can develop theories about this, test them, falsify them, and revise them. Returning to the feature integration theory, it says that during singleton search (red vs. green), reaction times should be constant regardless of the number of items, while reaction time should be a linear function of the number of items when the search involves combining information from multiple feature channels. You can test this with a junky laptop or even some drawings and a stopwatch. In fact, if you really want, I'll send you a script so you can test it yourself. You can falsify this: just fit lines to the (item count, RT) data and see if the slopes match the predictions. People have, in fact, done this, and have shown that this explanation of visual search isn't quite complete--weird things happen when the target is very rare, for example. Can you explain exactly what some neuroscience data would add here? Look, I'm not some hardcore dualist. I work in a systems neuroscience group and completely agree that brain-based theories are more interesting than phenomenological ones, which is why I put up with the hours, pay, etc. However, this doesn't make those psychological theories any less valid, nor does it make psychology less of a science. Anyway, there are lots of other processes that are not directly observable. Gravity, for example, wasn't directly observed until last year. Evolution can't be observed directly either.

lutusp 10y ago
> Can you explain exactly what some neuroscience data would add here? Certainly -- it would move the issue from the metaphysical to the physical realm. That might make it science. There's no science of the metaphysical. > Anyway, there are lots of other processes that are not directly observable. Yes, but not scientific ones. > Gravity, for example, wasn't directly observed until last year. Orbital mechanics both predicts and observes gravity. Each successful spacecraft journey represents another successful prediction of the physical theory of gravity. Dark Energy shows that a physical gravitation theory can be potentially falsified, a property all self-respecting scientific theories must have. Gravitational time dilation represents an empirical confirmation of Einstein's General Relativity, our present theory about gravity. To be accurate, the atomic clocks on board GPS satellites must take this time dilation into account (as well as that from Special Relativity). Einstein rings represent another direct observation of gravity. I think you mean that gravitational waves weren't observed until last year. Predicted long ago, finally observed. > Evolution can't be observed directly either. There is copious, empirical evidence for evolution. Start with how and why antibiotics lose their effectiveness over time. Then move on to laboratory studies of the evolution of Drosophila Melanogaster (fruit fly), chosen for its short reproduction cycle. Examples abound, all empirical and falsifiable. These are all examples of experimental confirmation of empirical theories, all potentially falsifiable by observing nature.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  Great--thanks for the examples. I'm still a little hung up on the metaphysical part though. Suppose we ignore all the baggage around the "mind" and just consider an input/output relationship: a visual stimulus goes in and some response comes out. We can formulate a theory about the transfer function that maps between them, and then test it by applying different stimuli and comparing the observed response with the expected one. A) Suppose the device is a machine. It initially looks like it responds by beeping when illuminated. However, we falsify this theory by finding different patterns of light and dark, some of which cause the machine to beep and others that don't, falsifying that theory. However, it suggests that some feature of the image may matter, so we test it to see if varying the color of the light matters (it doesn't), or if the relative spacings of light and dark do matter (it does). We try more features and eventually discover that it responds to every single one of the barcodes we try, but nothing else, and hypothesize that it's a barcode scanner. B) Suppose we're recording from a single neuron in a rat or cat's brain while the animal views a screen. In early experiments, we discover that cells in this brain area--and this neuron specifically--responds to visual stimuli. We adjust the stimuli and note that it only responds to some of the stimuli, so we construct a quantitative model giving the expected distribution of responses as a function of stimulus features. This suggests more tests of the model--perhaps the model has very limited spatial support and thus claims that far apart stimuli have no effect. We present the animal (and thus, the neuron) with stimuli outside the supported region and, to our surprise, the responses change. We revise the model to include some suppressive interactions, and try again.... C) Suppose we're recording the behavioural responses of a human subject. We show the subject pictures of other humans, and ask them to report whether the individual shown is a man or woman. We hypothesise that certain features in the image guide this decision, so we modify the images to enhance or degrade those features and repeat the experiment. Some of these changes have no effect, others increase or decrease the speed and accuracy with which they respond. So, we modify the images more selectively, or only in certain locations, and repeat the experiment, revising our model as we go. It seems like you would admit A and B as being "scientific", but think that C is flawed. Is this right?