Letitia Meynell

Ethical Challenges and Interpretive Difficulties with Non-Clinical Applications of Pediatric fMRI

In this article, we critically examine some of the ethical challenges and interpretive difficulties with possible future non-clinical applications of pediatric fMRI with a particular focus on applications in the classroom and the courtroom – two domains in which children come directly in contact with the state. We begin with a general overview of anticipated clinical and non-clinical applications of pediatric fMRI. This is followed by a detailed analysis of a range of ethical challenges and interpretive difficulties that trouble the use of fMRI and are likely to be especially acute with non-clinical uses of the technology. We conclude that knowledge of these challenges and difficulties should influence policy decisions regarding the non-clinical uses of fMRI. Our aim is to encourage the development of future policies prescribing the responsible use of this neuroimaging technology as it develops both within and outside the clinical setting.

Why Feynman Diagrams Represent

There are two distinct interpretations of the role that Feynman diagrams play in physics: (i) they are calculational devices, a type of notation designed to keep track of complicated mathematical expressions; and (ii) they are representational devices, a type of picture. I argue that Feynman diagrams not only have a calculational function but also represent: they are in some sense pictures. I defend my view through addressing two objections and in so doing I offer an account of representation that explains why Feynman diagrams represent. The account that I advocate is a version of that defended by Kendall Walton, which provides us with a basic characterization of the way that representations in general work and is particularly useful for understanding distinctively pictorial representations – in Walton’s terms, depictions. The question of the epistemic function of Feynman diagrams as pictorial representations is left for another time.

Imagination and insight: a new acount of the content of thought experiments

This paper motivates, explains, and defends a new account of the content of thought experiments. I begin by briefly surveying and critiquing three influential accounts of thought experiments: James Robert Brown’s Platonist account, John Norton’s deflationist account that treats them as picturesque arguments, and a cluster of views that I group together as mental model accounts. I use this analysis to motivate a set of six desiderata for a new approach. I propose that we treat thought experiments primarily as aesthetic objects, specifically fictions, and then use this analysis to characterize their content and ultimately assess their epistemic success. Taking my starting point from Kendall Walton’s account of representation (Mimesis as make-believe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1990), I argue that the best way to understand the content of thought experiments is to treat them as props for imagining fictional worlds. Ultimately, I maintain that, in terms of their form and content, thought experiments share more with literary fictions and pictorial representations than with either argumentation or observations of the Platonic realm. Moreover, while they inspire imaginings, thought experiments themselves are not mental kinds. My approach redirects attention towards what fixes the content of any given thought experiment and scrutinizes the assumptions, cognitive capacities and conventions that generate them. This view helps to explain what seems plausible about Brown’s, Norton’s, and the mental modelers’ views.

The Politics of Pictured Reality: Locating the Object from Nowhere in fMRI

In Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling recounts the late twentieth-century taming of the corpus callosum in the name of sexing the brain. This three-dimensional bridge, which transfers signals between lobes of the living brain, was domesticated to make it scientifically tractable: dead, preserved brains were physically sectioned, then conceptually divided into five parts and studiously measured. As she explains, “One is left to assign meaning to an abstraction, and the space opened up for mischief becomes enormous” (2000b: 130).

Responsibility and speculation: on possible applications of pediatric fMRI.

First and foremost, we thank the commentators for their responses. Many are fundamentally in agreement with us, and their contributions nicely complement our views. Others offer us a chance to clarify our position by challenging it. In the space allotted, it is difficult to give each commentary its due. Instead, we discuss the more salient objections that recur in one form or another in a number of commentaries and then briefly consider those commentaries that usefully expand on our views. One recurring criticism of our discussion of potential pediatric fMRI applications in the classroom or courtroom (Fenton et al. 2009) is that these applications are too speculative (see Celone and Stern (2009), Connors and Singh (2009), and Rosen (2009)). While several commentators recognize the importance of ensuring that ethical discussions are not merely reactive, they worry that our foci are so far removed from current applications that they are positively implausible. Connors and Singh (2009) go so far as to argue that we should constrain our moral gaze to present applications. We respectfully disagree with these commentators. Too much is at stake to stay ethical reflection on future applications of pediatric fMRI until they show themselves to be imminent. Celone and Stern (2009) and Rosen (2009) suggest that there are no serious prospects of extending fMRI to the nonclinical applications we identify. Perhaps, but who can know the future? In any case, it is important to note that the applications we discuss are the subject of peer-reviewed articles, popular media reports, as well as professional conversations with and among neuroscientists. Indeed, contra Ball (2009), Celone and Stern (2009) and Connors and Singh (2009), it is not mere lay hype that has led to prominent discussions of neuroimaging technology, including fMRI, in classroom or courtroom settings. Some neuroscientists fuel these discussions. Arguably, the burgeoning literature on using fMRI technology to image neural correlates of political attitudes, political emotions, moral emotions, and moral decision making (Amodio et al. 2007; Platt 2002; Qiu 2006;

Parsing pictures: on analyzing the content of images in science

In this paper I tackle the question of what basic form an analytical method for articulating and ultimately assessing visual representations should take. I start from the assumption that scientific images, being less prone to interpretive complication than artworks, are ideal objects from which to engage this question. I then assess a recent application of Nelson Goodman’s aesthetics to the project of parsing scientific images, Laura Perini’s “The Truth in Pictures.” I argue that, although her project is an important one, her Goodmanian conventionalism produces a method of analysis that is incapable of adequately parsing a certain class of pictures and her focus on truth is unnecessary. This speaks against the promise of Goodman’s analytical strategy for elucidating visual content and reasoning in the sciences and elsewhere. As an alternative, I develop John Willats’ analytical method and compare it to Perini’s through engaging three of her examples—a chemical diagram, a graph and an electron micrograph. Ultimately, a space remains open for a mixed system where 1 Important aspects of this work were developed during my dissertation research. While Dr. Kathleen Okruhlik was integral to the development of that project, the central ideas that are discussed here owe most to Dr. Patrick Maynard, who introduced me to the works of Kendall Walton and John Willats and showed me how beautifully they compliment each other. Thank you also to the Philosophy Department at Dalhousie University for feedback on an earlier draft and particularly to Dr. Mélanie Frappier whose criticism and support have been

Special issue on visual representations and reasoning

M É LAN I E FRAP P I ER 1 , L E T I T I A MEYNELL 2 and JAMES ROBERT BROWN History of Science and Technology Programme, University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia; e-mail: melanie.frappier@ukings.ca; Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia; e-mail: letitia.meynell@dal.ca; Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario; e-mail: jrbrown@chass.utoronto.ca

Picturing Feynman Diagrams and the Epistemology of Understanding

In this paper, I take up the following puzzle: If Feynman diagrams represent states of affairs, but do not do so truthfully what can their epistemic value be? I argue that Feynman diagrams have been epistemically powerful (at least in part) because, as pictorial representations, they facilitate an understanding of quantum electrodynamics, and quantum field theories more generally. Drawing on Richard Feynman’s own remarks and Catherine Z. Elgin’s account of the role of understanding in science, I tease out what it might mean to have an understanding of something that is not factive. Although my approach allows for a thin sense of substantively non-factive epistemic success, it is continuous with a factive sense of understanding that is more familiar in the sciences.