By: John Bickle, Patricia Churchland, Stuart Firestein, Michael N. Lehman, David J. Parker, Alcino J. Silva, Bradley J. Walters, and Robert W. Williams
Abstract: In the terms adopted by the editors of this special issue concerning how a ‘philosopher’s toolkit’ might contribute to progress in neuroscience, this paper reports posing that question to several neuroscientists, all with a track record of successfully interacting with philosophers. These discussions took the form of structured interviews following the methods of Barwich. The results highlight a number of issues that these neuroscientists think philosophers can help them solve. Different views emerged about what a ‘philosopher’s toolkit’ consists of; but each of these neuroscientists saw some important roles that philosophers can play within neuroscience itself. Transcripts of these interviews and the accompanying analyses reveal to philosophers that some prominent neuroscientists welcome their contributions, to central outstanding questions within their specific research fields and to more general concerns that confront scientists beyond those specific to neuroscience. These discussions and analyses based upon them should be welcome to philosophers of science-in-practice, especially to a subset recently dubbed ‘philosophers-in-science’. They also reveal to neuroscientists who are less familiar with interacting professionally with philosophers a glimpse of what some of their colleagues find potentially valuable about such interactions.
Commentary from John Bickle:
When the European Journal of Neuroscience announced a special issue dedicated to “The Relevance of a Philosophical Toolkit to Advance Neuroscience,” my twenty-plus-year metascientific approach to the philosophy of neuroscience immediately honed in on a method: structured interviews with neuroscientists who have worked with philosophers. The interviews opened with the philosopher’s toolkit question, “what do YOU think a “philosopher’s toolkit” can contribute to progress in neuroscience?” Philosophers of science such as Ann-Sophie Barwich and Jutta Schickcore used such interviews as data for some of their publications, which I have admired. A paper resulting from such interviews could be relevant for philosophers who seek to interact with neuroscientists by showing that some neuroscientists welcome their input, and by suggesting some specific issues and problems these neuroscientists think philosophers can help address. It could also aid neuroscientists who might still be skeptical that philosophers will be much help by showing how the research programs of some of their colleagues have benefitted from these interactions. Perhaps these skeptical neuroscientists will recognize similar topics rumbling around in their labs’ discussions, and then be willing to bring on a philosopher to participate? Metascience loves such win-win situations.
So, in April 2024 I emailed some neuroscientists I had worked with previously, and others I knew who had worked with other philosophers, to gauge their interest in participating in this novel project. These ranged from senior PIs with decades and millions of dollars of grant funding and hundreds of publications, to mid-career researchers. (See the Methods section of the paper for brief bios of the participants.) I also included Patricia Churchland among the interview participants, since she had not only been instrumental in kick-starting neurophilosophy/ philosophy of neuroscience, but along with her husband Paul had been so influential in getting me excited about the field, back in my graduate student days in southern California in the 1980s. To a person, these neuroscientists all expressed interest in participating, so the interviews began then and there over email. These initial exchanges were followed by Zoom sessions that began with the “philosopher’s toolkit” question (above), followed up with more specific questions, each tailored to individual neuroscientist’s specific answers. Zoom interviews ranged in time from around 30 minutes to well over an hour. My wife and partner Marica Bernstein found an excellent tool to transcribe the Zoom transcripts into Word docx (see the Methods section in the paper), and after the interviews were over, we had more than 400 pages of transcripts from which to draw.
Two themes surfaced quickly. First, none of these neuroscientists wanted philosophers’ assistance with what popular media calls “the big questions about (neuro-)science,” nor questions of the sort that dominated the rise of the philosophy of science throughout the twentieth century. None of these neuroscientists requested assistance with the kinds of questions that dominate current philosophy of neuroscience, such as “are there legitimate kinds of explanations in neuroscience that are non-mechanistic?” “What do neuroscientists mean by ‘representation’ or ‘computation’?” Or “can our cognitive ontology be usefully reformed by neuroscience discoveries?” Instead, these neuroscientists wanted philosophers’ input on questions at the foundation of his or her specific areas of research. Not surprisingly, these neuroscientists’ differing areas of research foci likewise led to interestingly different assessments about what’s in a “philosopher’s toolkit.” Second, and in keeping with the first theme, all of these neuroscientists emphasized that basic philosophical training—in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, or even general philosophy of science—wouldn’t be enough to help make these hoped-for contributions. Instead, the helpful philosopher would have to have real training in neuroscience—and in the specific area of research that the neuroscientist him- or herself engaged in. Acquiring this training will require philosophers to “embed” in labs, not in the capacity of a social scientist ethnographing an alien culture, but as a participant in the lab’s research or experimental work. Finally, they each recognized the difficulty that philosophers still confront in being taken seriously by their neuroscientist colleagues. But each related personal experiences about philosophers with their toolkits contributing to their research programs; and each agreed that recognition of these contributions by their fellow neuroscientists was warranted.
Interestingly, the initial reviews of our manuscript were positive, but both the reviewers and the action editor (Ann-Sophie Barwich) had very useful suggestions for improving it. These suggestions led us to another round of email interviews to clarify numerous points, and to the work of Thomas Pradeu and colleagues’ recent British Journal of the Philosophy of Science publication, “Philosophy in science: Can philosophers permeate through science and produce scientific knowledge?” I confess to not having been aware of this important paper before one of the reviewers suggested it to us. It turned out to contain a description of an approach in the philosophy of science, ‘Philosophy-in-Science’ (or PiNS), that exactly reflects the kinds of philosophers (of neuroscience) that these neuroscientists were seeking as collaborators. Full reference to Pradeu’s and colleagues’ paper is provided in the References section of our publication. As we hope our paper does, Pradeu and colleagues’ paper can inspire both philosophers seeking to interact with scientists, and scientists intrigued by, but perhaps still skeptical, of what a philosopher might add to their research endeavors.
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