Haptic realism for neuroscience

Abstract

Recent work in philosophy of science has shown how the challenges posed by extremely complex systems require that scientists employ a range of modelling strategies, leading to partial perspectives that make apparently conflicting claims about the target (Mitchell 2009b, Longino 2013). The brain is of course extremely complex, and the same arguments apply here. In this paper I present a variety of perspectivism called haptic realism. This account foregrounds the process by which the instrumental goals of neuroscience shape the way that objects of investigation are probed experimentally and conceptualised through modelling. Because such models do not aim to represent their targets exactly as they are, but in ways that are most useful for the investigators, the models should not be interpreted as literal descriptions of neural systems. Scientific realism traditionally involves a semantic commitment to interpreting theories and models as literal descriptions of human-independent nature. Haptic realism makes a significant departure from this tradition. Haptic realism also calls us to reassess the ontological commitments and knowledge claims of neuroscientific models and theories.