Peter Machamer

Thinking about mechanisms

The concept of mechanism is analyzed in terms of entities and activities, organized such that they are productive of regular changes. Examples show how mechanisms work in neurobiology and molecular biology. Thinking in terms of mechanisms provides a new framework for addressing many traditional philosophical issues: causality, laws, explanation, reduction, and scientific change.

Activities and Causation: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Mechanisms

This article deals with mechanisms conceived as composed of entities and activities. In response to many perplexities about the nature of activities, a number of arguments are developed concerning their epistemic and ontological status. Some questions concerning the relations between cause and causal explanation and mechanisms are also addressed.

Bias-Free Improvement in Wine Discrimination

Over three test sessions alternated with two training sessions, accuracy of ‘same’/‘different’ judgments of four dry, white wines improved 14%. Confidence ratings were obtained so that the area under the isosensitivity curve could be computed as a bias-free measure of accuracy while the wine used for same pairs was held constant. An initial bias for ‘different’ judgments persisted, rather than disappearing as Walk found. While perceptual learning did occur, the problem of attending to irrelevant differences was not overcome.

A Model of Intelligibility in Science: Using Galileo's Balance as a Model for Understanding the Motion of Bodies.

In 1590, or thereabouts, Galileo wrote the manuscript De Motu (Galileo 1590). In this text he attempted to demonstrate the errors of Aristotelian natural philosophy and began his lifelong attempt to construct a science of motion. The chief device in De Motu was his wide ranging use of the balance. The balance was a simple machine, familiar to all, that Galileo could describe using principles of equilibrium.In this paper we suggest an empirical thesis: Galileo understood something important when he used the balance as the basic equilibrium model in order to understand all the phenomena of motion. Galileo used the balance model to make intelligible problems of dynamics as well as kinematics (as we anachronistically call them).We believe that using the Galilean balance equilibrium model today in physics classes at the secondary and college levels (and probably even at the elementary school level) would provide students with a model of intelligibility that would unify their thinking about motion and, at the same time, provide them with a general procedural schema for solving motion problems.

Galileo and the Causes

The literature on Galileo’s methodology, or, if you like, his philosophy of science, is replete with reiteration of dichotomous terms, attempting to characterize Galileo’s work, necessarily or for the most part, as an instance, of a type. The terms ‘Patonism/Aristotelianism,’ ‘Mathematical/Experimental, ‘Rationalist/Empiricist’ have been used to describe Galileo’s work. What I hope to do in this essay is to provide a way of looking at Galileo which will undercut the force of such dichotomies and which at the same time will be more faithful to the 16th- and early 17th-century traditions of methodological discussion. I hope to make plausible the claim that Galileo is in a tradition, but one which has not been sufficiently recognized and has only begun to be studied. The tradition is that of the mixed sciences, which is itself a tradition blending mathematics and physics (or natural philosophy), blending Platonic (or neo-Platonic) and Aristotelian elements, blending reason and observation. It is this tradition I shall argue that Galileo takes on from the late 16th-century thinkers and which can be seen in all his works, even in the much studied Discorsi. Indeed, in Section II of this essay I shall concentrate my analysis almost wholly upon the Discorsi as published, assuming that if I can make my case plausible for that work the rest of the Galilean corpus will come into line also.1

Descartes's Changing Mind

Abstract Descartes is always concerned about knowledge. However, the Galileo affair in 1633, the reactions to his Discourse on method , and later his need to reply to objections to his Meditations provoked crises in Descartes’s intellectual development the import of which has not been sufficiently recognized. These events are the major reasons why Descartes’s philosophical position concerning how we know and what we may know is radically different at the end of his life from what it was when he began. We call this later position Descartes’s epistemic stance and contrast it with his earlier methodological, metaphysical realism. Yet Descartes’s epistemic views cannot be separated from other aspects of his work, for example, his views concerning God, causality, metaphysics, and the nature of science. A further meta-implication is that serious errors await any scholar who cites early Cartesian texts in support of late Cartesian positions, or who uses later texts in conjunction with early ones to support a reading of Descartes’s philosophy.

Neuroscience and Theoretical Psychology: What's to Worry About?

This paper explores three connected claims about the interrelation of psychology and neuroscience that occur in discussions within theoretical psychology. The first and second claims are that neuroscience cannot offer a complete account of human psychology because it can show only correlations between neural events and cognitive or behavioral events. The third claim is that neuroscience ultimately is incomplete or irrelevant to psychological accounts since it is silent on crucial cultural and historical issues relevant to human knowledge and action. We argue that all of these claims are false, not because neuroscience can replace psychology, but because each discipline should be seen to complement and support the other.

Aristotle on Natural Place and Natural Motion

JNTERPRETERS OF ARISTOTLE have often assumed, though less often explicitly stated, that the function of natural place in Aristotles sublunar sphere is to provide a cause (formal, efficient, or final) for the natural motion of the elements. It is suggested that there is some sort of attractive power of the place on the moving element. On this interpretation a body is said to move to its natural place because of a power that that place has over that particular kind of body. This attractive power of natural place is often cited as evidence that Aristotles physics is teleological in character. I The passages from Aristotle which are usually cited in support of this interpretation are Physics IV 1, 208b9-10 and De caelo IV 3, 310a30-35. In the Physics, according to a misleading, standard translation, Aristotle writes:

In Quest for Scientific Psychiatry: Toward Bridging the Explanatory Gap

The contemporary epistemic status of mental health disciplines does not allow the cross-validation of mental disorders among various genetic markers, biochemical pathway or mechanisms, and clinical assessments in neuroscience explanations. We attempt to provide a meta-empirical analysis of the contemporary status of the cross-disciplinary issues existing between neurobiology and psychopathology. Our case studies take as an established medical mode an example cross-validation between biological sciences and clinical cardiology in the case of myocardial infarction. This is then contrasted with (…) the incoherence between neuroscience and psychiatry in the case of bipolar disorders. We examine some methodological problems arising from the neuroimaging studies, specifically the experimental paradigm introduced by the team of Wayne Drevets. Several theoretical objections are raised: temporal discordance, state independence, and queries about the reliability and specificity, and failure of convergent validity of the interdisciplinary attempt. Both modern neuroscience and clinical psychology taken as separate fields have failed to reveal the explanatory mechanisms underlying mental disorders. The data acquired inside the monodisciplinary matrices of neurobiology and psychopathology are deeply insufficient concerning their validity, reliability, and utility. Further, there have not been developed any effective transdisciplinary connections between them. It raises the requirement for development of explanatory significant multidisciplinary ‘meta-language’ in psychiatry. We attempt to provide a novel conceptual model for an integrative dialogue between psychiatry and neuroscience that actually includes criteria for cross-validation of the commonly used psychiatric categories and the different assessment methods. The major goal of our proactive program is the foundation of complementary ‘bridging’ connections of neuroscience and psychopathology, which may stabilize the cognitive meta-structure of mental health knowledge. This entails bringing into synergy the disparate discourses of clinical psychology and neuroscience. One possible model accomplishment of this goal would be the synergistic (or at least compatible) integration of the knowledge under transdisciplinary convergent cross-validation of the commonly used methods and notions.

The challenge of psychiatric nosology and diagnosis.

Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, Medical University of Plovdiv, Plovdiv, Bulgaria Professor, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA PhD Student, Department of Psychobiology, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain Distinguished Professor, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA PhD Student, Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, Medical University of Plovdiv, Plovdiv, Bulgaria