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![In our view, rather than scientific knowledge being limited to the human domain (e.g., as human representations that ‘reconstruct’ reality more or less objectively, depending on the interpretation), scientific knowledge is relational and dialectically co-constructed by humans and world, through human embodied (ecological-enactive) cognitive agency in and with the world. The bi-directional arrow emphasizes the relational, dialectical nature of knowledge as co-constructed, and as emergent from the (equally relational and dialectical) affordances, attunement and mutual constraining at play. This picture is fundamentally anti-dualist, rejecting the dichotomization of humans and nature as well as of theory and practice, among others; moreover, in this view all niche construction activity is also cognitive in the relevant embodied sense. See text for further details. [As was the case with Fig. 2, this picture of science embodies the same schema at play in the view of mind as ecological or relational and world-involving.]](publication/371785727/figure/fig3/AS:11431281177053803@1690337180653/In-our-view-rather-than-scientific-knowledge-being-limited-to-the-human-domain-eg-as.png)
In our view, rather than scientific knowledge being limited to the human domain (e.g., as human representations that ‘reconstruct’ reality more or less objectively, depending on the interpretation), scientific knowledge is relational and dialectically co-constructed by humans and world, through human embodied (ecological-enactive) cognitive agency in and with the world. The bi-directional arrow emphasizes the relational, dialectical nature of knowledge as co-constructed, and as emergent from the (equally relational and dialectical) affordances, attunement and mutual constraining at play. This picture is fundamentally anti-dualist, rejecting the dichotomization of humans and nature as well as of theory and practice, among others; moreover, in this view all niche construction activity is also cognitive in the relevant embodied sense. See text for further details. [As was the case with Fig. 2, this picture of science embodies the same schema at play in the view of mind as ecological or relational and world-involving.]
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Philosophy of science has undergone a naturalistic turn, moving away from traditional idealized concerns with the logical structure of scientific theories and toward focusing on real-world scientific practice, especially in domains such as modeling and experimentation. As part of this shift, recent work has explored how the project of philosophical...
Citations
... Philosophers have also taken an interest in the materiality of scientific reasoning. This work takes inspiration from history of science, particularly the history of experimental instruments and materials (Gooding, 1990;Harré, 2003), and philosophy of mind, especially embodied, enacted and embedded cognition (Clark, 2010;Nersessian, 2008Nersessian, , 2022Sanches de Oliveira et al., 2023). In addition, historians and philosophers of science have considered how interaction with specific objects and locations fosters or inhibits specific ways of thinking and doing (Hacking, 1992(Hacking, , 2012Pickstone, 2000;Radder, 2003). ...
Several philosophers of science have taken inspiration from biological research on niches to conceptualise scientific practice. We systematise and extend three niche-based theories of scientific practice: conceptual ecology, cognitive niche construction, and scientific niche construction. We argue that research niches are a promising conceptual tool for understanding complex and dynamic research environments, which helps to investigate relevant forms of agency and material and social interdependencies, while also highlighting their historical and dynamic nature. To illustrate this, we develop a six-point framework for conceptualising research niches . Within this framework, research niches incorporate multiple and heterogenous material, social and conceptual factors (multi-dimensionality); research outputs arise, persist and differentiate through interactions between researchers and research niches (processes); researchers actively respond to and construct research niches (agency); research niches enable certain interactions and processes and not others (capability); and research niches are defined in relation to particular entities, such as individual researchers, disciplines, or concepts (relationality), and in relation to goals, such as understanding, solving problems, intervention, or the persistence of concepts or instruments (normativity).
... This use of inaccuracy is not dependent on a universal view of the world, but instead depends on agreements, techniques, and negotiations, which include the effectiveness of the tool for its scientific purpose. These, by being embedded in broader social systems of, in this case scientific endeavors, form autonomous social systems of their own (Sanches de Oliveira et al. 2023). With this, the norms are not grounded in the agent-independent world, but are self-grounding in some sense. ...
Where does enactivism fit on the question of realism or idealism for perception? In recent years all general positions have been argued to be adequate. I will argue that enactivism is neither realist nor idealist, and requires a completely different game altogether. In short: it is not idealist because it sees cognition as inherently world-involving, and isn’t realist because it emphasizes the agent’s role in shaping the world through our own historical, bodily activity. More generally, I argue that the question itself assumes a reified, abstract notion of perception. This introduces a wedge between organism and environment that is incompatible with enactivism’s view of organism and environment as mutually constitutive. This problematizes the intermediate position between realist and idealist extremes as has traditionally been argued for in enactivism. I also touch on the ethical implications of this question, and how enactivism provides a promising path to grapple with the contradiction of the objective, shared space and our individual, historically shaped encounters with it. In sum, I suggest it is time for enactivism to go off the beaten path, and lay its own path in walking again.
... In principle, direct realism and causal pattern realism are independent from each other, and the fields where they apply-perception and science-are not necessarily connected (cf. Sanches de Oliveira et al., 2023). However, the two forms of realism share the same kind of conceptual moves, and, we propose, can be understood as two species of the same realist genus. ...
Different species of realism have been proposed in the scientific and philosophical literature. Two of these species are direct realism and causal pattern realism . Direct realism is a form of perceptual realism proposed by ecological psychologists within cognitive science. Causal pattern realism has been proposed within the philosophy of model-based science. Both species are able to accommodate some of the main tenets and motivations of instrumentalism. The main aim of this paper is to explore the conceptual moves that make both direct realism and causal pattern realism tenable realist positions able to accommodate an instrumentalist stance. Such conceptual moves are (i) the rejection of veritism and (ii) the re-structuring of the phenomena of interest. We will then show that these conceptual moves are instances of the ones of a common realist genus we name pragmatist realism .
... Adopting this thesis opens up a wide range of new ways of explaining the autonomous agency of systems recognized by researchers at different levels of reality. 33 Sanches de Oliveira et al. (2023). 34 Cummins (2014): 109. ...
This paper aims to determine whether extended human-machine cognitive systems and group systems can be regarded as autonomous agents. For this purpose, I compare two notions of agency: one developed within analytical philosophy of action and based on the concept of intention, and the other introduced by enactivists via the concepts of autopoiesis and sensorimotor autonomy. I argue that only the latter approach can be used to demonstrate autonomous agency in respect of systems that are not humans as such, though they contain humans as their elements. After introducing Maturana and Varela’s conception of minimal autonomy as a kind of generalization of autopoiesis, I present the three conditions of agency put forward by Barandiaran, Di Paolo and Rohde, noting that they do not invoke the property of being alive as necessary in that respect. I argue that both extended and group systems can satisfy these conditions of agency, even though they are not alive as such. The fulfillment of these conditions, however, is ensured by the autopoietic nature of the living components of these systems. That being said, an autonomous system itself does not need to be alive in the biological sense. Sensorimotor, adaptive agency could emerge out of other processes than those responsible for biological life. The article concludes with a suggestion that this is exactly what will happen if an autonomous system is ever artificially created. It would be functionally indistinguishable from a living organism, though not alive in a biological sense.
Scientists, either working alone or in groups, require rich cognitive, social, cultural, and material environments to accomplish their epistemic aims. There is research in the cognitive sciences that examines intelligent behavior as a function of the environment (“environmental perspectives”), which can be used to examine how scientists integrate “cognitive-cultural” resources as they create environments for problem-solving. In this paper, I advance the position that an expanded framework of distributed cognition can provide conceptual, analytical, and methodological tools to investigate how scientists enhance natural cognitive capacities by creating specific kinds of environments to address their epistemic goals. In a case study of a pioneering neuroengineering lab seeking to understand learning in living networks of neurons, I examine how the researchers integrated conceptual, methodological, and material resources from engineering, neuroscience, and computational science to create different kinds of distributed problem-solving environments that enhanced their natural cognitive capacities, for instance, for reasoning, visualization, abstraction, imagination, and memory, to attain their epistemic aims.
In a recent development of what may be called biological philosophy of science, scholars have proposed that aligning notions of research environments with biological concepts of environment holds great promise for understanding the socio-material contexts in and through which science happens. Here, I explore the prospects and potential shortcomings of building sound research environment concepts by contrasting them with biological environment concepts. In doing so, I emphasize the importance of adhering to two central desiderata: the need to clarify what is being environed (i.e., what the counter relatum of an environment is) and what is doing the environing (i.e., what type of environmental partition is instantiated). Subsequently , I juxtapose two biological construals of environment-organismal environments and population environments-with possible articulations of what 'research environments' might stand for, and I maintain that each presents distinct epistemic upshots and limitations. More generally, I argue that there are two broad relations that could exist between biological and research environments: ontological parallels and ontic discordance. Finally, employing the visual metaphor of epistemic parallax, I conclude by conveying some lessons and cautionary notes arising from these comparisons and the importation of biological environment concepts into philosophy of science. While environment concepts may come with epistemic purchase, we should be careful when ontologizing them.
In this paper I use data from interviews conducted with coral scientists to examine the socio-ecological dimensions of science, i.e. how science shapes and is shaped by the living world around it. I use two sets of ideas in particular: niche construction and socio-ecological value frameworks. Using these I offer socio-ecological criteria by which coral scientists evaluate the activities of coral science, more specifically which living systems are intended to benefit from coral science as an activity, and the motivations behind this. The overall picture I present is one of coral science as activity primarily aimed at sustaining a diverse set of living systems, including humans, other organisms, species, and ecosystems, and the social practices associated with these. The value relations between scientists and aspects of these processes dictate how they respond to shifts in the socio-ecological context coral science is embedded in, explaining why the activities associated with coral science are changing as reef ecosystems are threatened. The implication is that natural sciences more generally are entangled with a greater number of social and ecological process than is typically considered, and that shifts in the activities undertaken by scientists may be driven by ecological as well as social and epistemic processes.
