Karen Yan, “Tool-Afforded Causal Reasoning in Neurophysiology”
Channel: CEFISES at UCLouvain
Date: 2023-08-08

Talk given at the Mechanisms and Ontic Causation in the Life Sciences conference, the second workshop of the MeCauLife group.

Abstract: Neuroscientists rely on designing and executing specific kinds of experiments to perform their causal reasoning. Silva, Landreth, and Bickle's (SLB) (2014) called the experiments “connection experiments,” whereas Craver and Darden (CD) (2013) called them “experiments for testing causal relevance.” These works mark a crucial science-in-practice turn in the philosophy of neuroscience because they turned philosophers' attention to the specific causal investigative strategies (CISs) employed in experimentation. Experimentation is at the core of neuroscientists' daily practice, and it is where philosophers can (or probably should) abstract the norms that govern the relevant scientific reasoning before they conduct any further evaluative analysis of the reasoning norms. SLB and CD provide systematic descriptive accounts of the relevant CISs employed in neuroscience. Those accounts abstract the relevant reasoning norms implicit in the analyzed CISs.

However, the role of an experimental tool in causal reasoning is less discussed in the above literature. Recently, Bickle, Craver, and Barwich (2022) edited a collection to address this neglected issue in the literature. In addition to what they have discussed, this paper aims to make a novel contribution by showing how the affordance of experimental tools enables neurophysiologists' causal reasoning capacity and how some causal norms are intertwined with experimental tools. In other words, had they lacked the relevant experimental tools, they would not have exercised the kind of skill or engaged the kind of cognitive process to instantiate a causal reasoning norm appropriate to a specific experimental context.

I will use three case studies to illustrate the nature of what I call tool-afforded causal reasoning. This type of causal reasoning involves the affordance of experimental tools. That is, the possible and impossible uses of an experimental tool enable (or constrain) the cognitive processes underlying scientists' causal reasoning. I will argue that we can identify causal reasoning norms in how experimental tools afford experimenters' cognitive processes underlying their causal reasoning.

If we can find causal reasoning norms in how experimental tools enable or constrain neuroscientists' reasoning, it has a crucial methodological implication for philosophers. If philosophers aim to abstract causal reasoning norms from neuroscientists' scientific practice for further evaluative analyses, how should they proceed? One way is to use some theory (or framework) about causal reasoning, e.g., the interventionist account of causation, to guide the philosophical analysis of scientific practice. Call this the theory-first approach. This is a common strategy used by philosophers. But my analysis of the neurophysiology case study shows another way. One could dive into the experimental detail, specifically how tools enable or constrain scientists' causal reasoning. Call this the tool-first approach. I will argue that, in some experimental contexts, it is more beneficial for philosophers to use the tool-first approach to abstract relevant scientists' causal reasoning norms.

To the above ends, the paper will proceed as follows. From Section 2 to Section 4, I will identify three CISs from neurophysiological experiments and show how these CISs are tool-afforded. Section 5 discusses some metaphilosophical issues regarding the theory-first approach and the tool-first approach and argues that the tool-first approach can complement the extant accounts, such as SLB's connection experiments and CD's experimental for testing causal relevance.