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Severe Tests in Neuroimaging: What We Can Learn and How We Can Learn It

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

M. Emrah Aktunc
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Abstract

Considerable methodological difficulties abound in neuroimaging, and several philosophers of science have recently called into question the potential of neuroimaging studies to contribute to our knowledge of human cognition. These skeptical accounts suggest that functional hypotheses are underdetermined by neuroimaging data. I apply Mayo’s error-statistical account to clarify the evidential import of neuroimaging data and the kinds of inferences it can reliably support. Thus, we can answer the question “What can we reliably learn from neuroimaging?” and make sense of how this knowledge can contribute to novel construals of cognition.

Type
Cognitive and Psychological Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 961 - 973
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I wish to extend my gratefulness to Deborah Mayo, Richard Burian, Aris Spanos, and Lydia Patton for their great help and advice in the formation of the ideas presented in this paper.

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