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The reification objection to bottom-up cognitive ontology revision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2016

Joseph B. McCaffrey  and
Edouard Machery
Joseph B. McCaffrey
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15217. jbm48@pitt.edu machery@pitt.edu http://www.josephbmccaffrey.com http://www.hps.pitt.edu/profile/machery.php
Edouard Machery
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15217. jbm48@pitt.edu machery@pitt.edu http://www.josephbmccaffrey.com http://www.hps.pitt.edu/profile/machery.php
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Abstract

Anderson (2014) proposes a bottom-up approach to cognitive ontology revision: Neuroscientists should revise their taxonomies of cognitive constructs on the basis of brain activation patterns across many tasks. We argue that such bottom-up proposal is bound to commit a mistake of reification: It treats the abstract mathematical entities uncovered by dimension reduction techniques as if they were real psychological entities.

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Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e125
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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