John Bickle

Mississippi State University | MSU · Department of Philosophy and Religion

Epigenetics investigates the dynamics of gene expression in various cells, and the signals from the internal and external environment affecting these dynamics. Neuroepigenetics extends this research into neurons and glia cells. Environmental-induced changes in gene expression are not only associated with the emerging structure and function of the n...

Scientists often respond to failures to replicate by citing differences between the experimental components of an original study and those of its attempted replication. In this paper, we investigate these purported mismatch explanations. We assess a body of failures to replicate in neuroscience studies on spinal cord injury. We argue that a defensi...

A kind of “ruthless reductionism” characterized the experimental practices of the first two decades of molecular and cellular cognition (MCC). More recently, new research tools have expanded experimental practices in this field, enabling researchers to image and manipulate individual molecular mechanisms in behaving organisms with an unprecedented...

I recommend replacing Piccinini's elaborate metaphysics that grounds his approach in Neurocognitive Mechanisms with metascience. Reconceived as metascience, Piccinini's discussion of numerous case studies from recent neuroscience in his book's final chapters makes a strong case for his proposal that current neuroscience trades in neural representat...

When philosophers and scientists reflect on how explanations across “levels” of nature’s organization relate, typically they focus on successful instances in which the counterpart higher and lower level explanations align relatively smoothly with one another. But counterpart cross-level explanations don’t always link up successfully. Here I focus f...

Since the 1990s, molecular and cellular cognition (MCC) has elucidated critical causal mechanisms behind higher level processes of perception and cognition. New intervention techniques, including genetic tracers and fluorescent visualization, have facilitated targeted access and manipulation of molecular pathways to investigate their precise roles...

I recount some landmark discoveries that initially confirmed the cyclic AMP response element-binding (CREB) protein-memory consolidation and allocation linkages. This work constitutes one of the successes of the field of Molecular and Cellular Cognition (MCC) but is also of interest to philosophers of neuroscience. Two approaches, "mechanism" and "...

Neurobiologists talk of linking mind to molecular dynamics in and between neurons. Such talk is dismissed by cognitive scientists, including many cognitive neuroscientists, due to the number of “levels” that separate behaviors from these molecular events. In this paper I explain what neurobiologists mean by such claims by describing the kinds of ex...

Human creativity intuitively seems beyond the reach of molecular, cellular, and circuit neuroscience. However, in this chapter, the authors propose that mechanisms that link memories across time have a critical role in a key aspect of human creativity, namely, the many ways in which distinct memories acquired on separate occasions can be related an...

Optogenetics and DREADDs (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs) are important research tools in recent neurobiology. These tools allow unprecedented control over activity in specifically targeted neurons in behaving animals. Two approaches in philosophy of neuroscience, mechanism and ruthless reductionism, provide explicit acc...

Accounts of causal explanation are standard in philosophy of science. Less common are accounts of experimentation to investigate causal relations: detailed discussions of the specific kinds of experiments scientists design and run. Silva, Landreth, and Bickle’s (SLB) (Engineering the next revolution in neuroscience: the new science of experiment pl...

Experimental philosophy is a recent development whose broader aims and goals are still being debated. Some prominent experimental philosophers have articulated an attitude toward perennial philosophy that is reminiscent of an early explicitly defended goal of neurophilosophy, a field that predated experimental philosophy by at least one decade. But...

I introduce two new tools in experimental neurobiology, optogenetics and DREADDs (de-signer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs). These tools permit unprecedented control over activity in specific neurons in behaving animals. In addition to their inherent scientific interest, these tools make an important contribution to philosophy of...

One commonality across the wide-ranging influences Duane Rumbaugh had on late-20th century science was his commitment to the comparative perspective in psychology. I argue here that a commitment similar in force to Rumbaugh’s also infuses mainstream experimental neurobiology. This connection is ironic because Rumbaugh eschewed brain intervention ex...

Contemporary personalized psychiatry faces head-on the tension to be individualized and patient-centered, while also striving to be scientific. We explore this tension by applying two accounts of scientific causal explanation, Woodward’s interventionist account and Silva, Landreth, and Bickle’s metascientific account, to recent research in social n...

Thomas Kuhn’s famous model of the components and dynamics of scientific revolutions is still dominant to this day across science, philosophy, and history. The guiding philosophical theme of this paper is that, concerning actual revolutions in neuroscience over the past sixty years, Kuhn’s account is wrong. There have been revolutions, and new ones...

David Marr's three-level method for completely understanding a cognitive system and the importance he attaches to the computational level are so familiar as to scarcely need repeating. Fewer seem to recognize that Marr defends his famous method by criticizing the "reductionistic approach." This sets up a more interesting relationship between Marr a...

Ah, the 1980s: Roseanne, The Cosby Show, “Let’s Dance,” U2, Ronnie and Nancy, Princess Di — and eliminative materialism dominating the philosophy of mind (ahem!). Paul and Patricia Churchland didn’t invent the view, although they certainly brought it to wide philosophical attention as a central component of their neurophilosophy. At stake was suppo...

Ah, the 1980s: Roseanne, The Cosby Show, “Let’s Dance," U2, Ronnie and Nancy, Princess Di - and eliminative materialism dominating the philosophy of mind (ahem!). Paul and Patricia Churchland didn’t invent the view, although they certainly brought it to wide philosophical attention as a central component of their neurophilosophy. At stake was suppo...

This paper describes our experiences teaching nanoscale science and technology to undergraduate students at the University of Cincinnati. In 2006 a group of faculty from six Engineering and Arts & Sciences departments inaugurated new undergraduate lecture and laboratory courses devoted to the nanoscale, supported by an NSF Grant, NUE: Integration o...

We introduce a new model of reduction inspired by Kemeny and Oppenheim's model [Kemeny & Oppenheim 1956] and argue that this model is operative in a "ruthlessly reductive" part of current neuroscience. Kemeny and Oppenheim's model was quickly rejected in mid-20th-century philosophy of science and replaced by models developed by Ernest Nagel and Ken...

Since its inception more than a quarter-century ago, the philosophy of neuroscience has grown into a recognised field in the philosophy of the special sciences. It focusses on foundational issues in the discipline, but also anticipates developments in the neurosciences that bear on epistemological, ethical and cultural concerns. In this paper, life...

Mind–brain reductionism asserts, obviously, that conscious mind reduces to physical brain. Typically this account has been affiliated with the ontological mind–brain identity theory, which argues for the identity of specific mental/psychological with neurobiological types or kinds. This affiliation follows from the common idea that the reduction re...

The previous decade has seen renewed critical interest in the multiple realization argument. These criticisms constitute a “second wave” of challenges to this central argument in late-20th century philosophy of mind. Unlike the first wave, which challenged the premise that multiple realization is inconsistent with reduction or type identity, this s...

If e-literature's narrative structures change our brains, what happens to our selves, ask John Bickle and Sean Keating

Many believe that phenomenology is an uneasy fit with the notion that consciousness is simply produced by physical manipulations. This chapter takes one of the most provocative examples of this type of manipulation - cortical microstimulation leading to seemingly random conscious states such as the image of one's grandmother or a musical melody - a...

This chapter argues that much discussion between philosophers and neuroscientists is infected by philosophical assumptions about the nature of reduction. Instead we should pursue an unbiased examination of the methods used throughout relevant areas of neuroscience. The chapter focuses on reductionist work in the neurobiological discipline of molecu...

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience is a collection of interdisciplinary research spanning philosophy (of science, mind, and ethics) and current neuroscience. Containing articles written by some of the most prominent philosophers working in this area, and in some cases co-authored with neuroscientists, this volume reflects both the b...

This article considers research methodologies relevant to the search for molecular mechanisms of cognitive functions. It proposes a new general framework for understanding contemporary science called the science of research (SR). It discusses two scientific puzzles concerning the neurobiology of cognitive functions and some recently noticed ineffic...

We briefly describe ways in which neuroeconomics has made contributions to its contributing disciplines, especially neuroscience, and a specific way in which it could make future contributions to both. The contributions of a scientific research programme can be categorized in terms of (1) description and classification of phenomena, (2) the discove...

Social cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroethics have reached a synthesis of late, but some troubling features are present. The neuroscience that currently dominates the study of social cognition is exclusively cognitive neuroscience, as contrasted with the cellular and increasingly molecular emphasis that has gripped mainstream neuroscien...

Real Reduction in Real NeuroscienceNeurofunctions?Consciousness and Cellular NeuroscienceReductionist Neuroscience and “Hard Problems”Toward Genuinely Interdisciplinary Philosophy and Neuroscience

Social cognition appears to present phenomena that "ruthlessly reductive" molecular and cellular neuroscience cannot fruitfully investigate or explain. This is because the causes of such phenomena are distal and external not only to the molecular machinery of individual neurons, but to individual brains. However, the "reductionist's epiphany" insis...

As opposed to the dismissive attitude toward reductionism that is popular in current philosophy of mind, a “ruthless reductionism” is alive and thriving in “molecular and cellular cognition”—a field of research within cellular and molecular neuroscience, the current mainstream of the discipline. Basic experimental practices and emerging results fro...

An interdisciplinary group at the University of Cincinnati was recently awarded an NSF Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education grant, Integration of Nanoscale Science and Engineering into Undergraduate Curricula. The faculty come from Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, and Philosophy departments. The overall goal of this project is to incorporate nano...

Multiple realizability, the claim that a type of mental state is implemented in a variety of distinct types of physical states, is the central premise in the most influential criticism of mind-to-brain reductionist programs. But the validity of this argument is under increasing scrutiny, based both on examples from more mature branches of science a...

In their review essay (published in this issue), Looren de Jong and Schouten take my 2003 book to task for (among other things) neglecting to keep up with the latest developments in my favorite scientific case study (memory consolidation). They claim that these developments have been guided by psychological theorizing and have replaced neurobiology...

This book precis describes the motives behind my recent attempt to bring to bear “ruthlessly reductive” results from cellular and molecular neuroscience onto issues in the philosophy of mind. Since readers of this journal will probably be most interested in results addressing features of conscious experience, I highlight these most prominently. My...

The structuralist program has developed a useful metascientific resource: ontological reductive links (ORLs) between the constituents of the potential models of reduced and reducing theories. This resource was developed initially to overcome an objection to structuralist “global” ac counts of the intertheoretic reduction relation. But it also illum...

Familiar questions about the relationship across levels separating psychology from the neurosciences have recently been mirrored in questions about the relationship across levels within the neurosciences themselves. How does ‘cognitive neuroscience’ relate to the discipline's current cellular and molecular mainstream? Here we adopt an empirical app...

Cognitive informatics has a stated interest in keeping track of developments within the neurosciences, especially concerning cognitive phenomena (like learning, memory, perception, complex motor execution, and even consciousness). Until now, cognitive informaticists have only attended to developments in cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology. I...

Familiar questions about the relationship across levels separating psychology from the neurosciences have recently been mirrored in questions about the relationship across levels within the neurosciences themselves. How does 'cognitive neuroscience' relate to the discipline's current cellular and molecular mainstream? Here we adopt an empirical app...

Most philosophers of mind and many cognitive psychologists still doubt that “genuinely cognitive” psychological theories will reduce to neurobiological counterparts. As I emphasized in Chapter One, this attitude contrasts starkly with the reductive aspirations of “mainstream” cellular and molecular neuroscientists. My first substantive task in this...

This book is about contemporary neuroscience. More specifically, it works with detailed examples drawn from current research to express that discipline’s reductive aspirations, aims, and potential. This reductionism holds important consequences for some “hot” issues in contemporary philosophy of mind. Even more specifically, this book is about the...

Consciousness is one psychological phenomenon thought by many to lie beyond the explanatory reach of cellular and molecular neuroscience. Recently some philosophers have appealed to features of consciousness to revive psycho-physical dualism (Jackson 1983; Nagel 1989). Others use them to urge “new mysterian” skepticism about our human cognitive cap...

We next trace implications of the detailed example from Chapter Two for two prominent issues in current philosophy of mind and one increasingly prominent area of current neuroscience. Reduction is central to all three. The first philosophical issue—the problem of mental causation—questions whether or how mental properties can exert causal effects o...

Psychoneural reduction is under attack again, only this time from a former ally: cognitive neuroscience. It has become popular to think of the brain as a complex system whose theoretically important properties emerge from dynamic, non-linear interactions between its component parts. ``Emergence'' is supposed to replace reduction: the latter is thou...

Although great progress in neuroanatomy and physiology has occurred lately, we still cannot go directly to those levels to discover the neural mechanisms of higher cognition and consciousness. But we can use neurocomputational methods based on these details to push this project forward. Here we describe vector subtraction as an operation that compu...

We employ computer simulation to investigate the function of neural circuitries between thalamic sensory relay nuclei, primary sensory cortices, and the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN). Computational similarities exist between these circuits and the architecture of a simple artificial neural network. We impose processing parameters on this network...

Philosophers and psychologists seeking an accessible introduction to current neuroscience will find much value in this volume. Befitting the neuroscientific focus on sensory processes, many essays address explicitly the binding problem. Theoretical and experimental work pertaining to the “temporal synchronicity” solution is prominent. But there are...

The need for representations and computations over their contents in psychological explanations is often cited as both the mark of the genuinely cognitive and a source of skepticism about the reducibility of cognitive theories to neuroscience. A generic version of this anti‐reductionist argument is rejected in this paper as unsound, since (i) curre...

Recently some philosophers have urged that connectionist artificial intelligence is (potentially) eliminative for the propositional attitudes of folk psychology. At the same time, however, these philosophers have also insisted that since philosophy of science has failed to provide criteria distinguishing ontologically retentive from eliminative the...

Davidson's principle of the anomalousness of the mental was instrumental in discrediting once-popular versions of mind-brain reductionism. In this essay I argue that a novel account of intertheoretic reduction, which does not require the sort of cross-theoretic bridge laws that Davidson's principle rules out, allows a version of mind-brain reductio...

The focus of much recent debate between realists and eliminativists about the propositional attitudes obscures the fact that a spectrum of positions lies between these celebrated extremes. Appealing to an influential theoretical development in cognitive neurobiology, I argue that there is reason to expect such an intermediate outcome. The ontology...

Over the past three decades, philosophy of science has grown increasingly "local." Concerns have switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is a natural result. This emerging area was also spurred by remarkable recent growth in the neuroscienc...