The neural mechanisms of what?
Measurement problems in cognitive neuroscience and beyond

What counts as ‘religion’ in sociology, ‘unemployment’ in economics, or ‘romantic love’ in psychology? The ‘measurement problem’ is a well-recognized problem in the social sciences concerning the conceptualisation, operationalization and measurement of the concept of inquiry. In the natural sciences, it can be argued that measurement problems also arise, for instance in determining what counts as a ‘planet’ or how to measure ‘temperature’.

While the measurement problem has been recognized in psychology, the more recent discipline of cognitive neuroscience seems to underestimate the problem. This is surprising, because the inferences that can be drawn from neural data depend on the operationalization of phenomena from the social sciences – cognitive capacities in behavioural tasks, such as ‘attention’, ‘working memory’, and ‘consciousness’. Moreover, the current situation in cognitive neuroscience might hinder integration, application and communication of scientific findings.

In my past and current research projects combining philosophy and cognitive neuroscience, I attempt to raise awareness for the measurement problem in cognitive neuroscience. In the course of my fellowship at the IAS, I aim to extend this work by incorporating theoretical and methodological approaches from various disciplines. Specific questions I hope to discuss with IAS research fellows and other experts are 1) whether the measurement problem is a recognized problem in their field and 2) how their field tries to deal with the measurement problem. I expect there are valuable lessons to learn for cognitive neuroscience from the way other disciplines approach this problem.

Programme

Location

Institute for Advanced Study
Oude Turfmarkt 147
1012GC Amsterdam