Laboratory bootstrapping in neuroimaging research

VENTURELLI, NICOLÁS

Córdoba

Workshop; III Encuentro de Filosofía de las Ciencias Cognitivas y las Neurociencias; 2018

Instituto de Humanidades (CONICET / UNC)

Philosophical accounts of neuroimaging research have mainly focused on the extent to which particular neuroimaging techniques can provide evidence to support specific hypotheses. As a way to complement these efforts, I will present a comprehensive framework to help assess the evidential import of neuroimaging experiments. I will portray a typical experiment as a series of different stages, from experimental design to data interpretation, each involving concrete decisions based on a host of assumptions of different scope and generality. I will show how specific decisions made at any one stage are bound to influence, and are made based on, other decisions made at other stages. I argue that this crucial aspect of the experimental process has not been adequately taken into account in the literature: Doing so shows this line of experimental research in cognitive neuroscience as mainly directed towards the scrutiny of the relevant assumptions, and not as simply restricted to the localization of brain function. I will use recent work on short-term memory as a case study to illustrate my claims.