Some critical remarks on the epistemology of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

The article examines epistemological and ontological underpinnings of reasearch performed by means of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It takes as its guiding line the important distinction between instruments and apparatuses drawn by Rom Harré. According to Harré, instruments such as barometers or thermometers do not cause the states they measure into existence. Apparatuses, in contradistinction, cause material states into existence to begin with, whereby theses states are subsequently processed (treated, measured, etc.) according to suitable methods (e.g. algorithms). Thus, when the objects of examination (human and animal brains, e.g.) are subjected to 2 or more Tesla in fMRI, a strength of magnetic field never occuring in earthly nature, technical means literally create the states to be examined (measured, graphically represented, etc.). Close examination of the functioning of MRI and fMRI indicates that brain states, e.g., are not simply read, or perceived (on screens) as degrees of temperature are read on scale. Hence, one does not see any mental funtion when looking at fMRI outputs, for the visible output has been semantically processed on the basis of invisible quantum mechanical processes that have undergone translations into digital data caused by the fMRI device itself

Monster –Sammlung und Allegorie

an essay on monsters, science and categories from Diderot to Baudelair

Introduction au rapport inédit de Helmholtz sur Mosso

On ignore presque tout des circonstances qui ont amené Hermann von Helmholtz à s’engager en 1878 dans ce que l’on pourrait appeler une « campagne de promotion académique ». Seul parmi les historiens des sciences, Philipp Felsch mentionne dans son excellente monographie consacrée au physiologiste italien Angelo Mosso [Felsch 2007, 43] le fait que Helmholtz rédigea, très probablement à la demande de son collègue cadet ou à celle d’un secrétaire (permanent ou non) d’une académie des sciences eur..

« Expériment » en 1823 - à propos d’un néologisme français mort-né

Au terme allemand d’Experiment (ou Versuch) correspond en fran­çais le terme d’expérience. Or, en sens opposé, expérience peut devenir soit Versuch, soit Erfahrung (savoir, savoir-faire, connaissance, événement vécu, etc.). Ainsi, le mot expérience véhiculé à plusieurs reprises par Lavoisier dans le discours préliminaire de son Traité a été traduit en allemand par Erfahrung, et en anglais par experiment, ce qui démontre que le terme français prête à des interprétations divergentes, mais également possibles. L’article explicite l’em­ploi du mot expériment, néologisme mort-né du début de xixe siècle, comme équivalent de Versuch., Experiment et experiment dans le but de réduire l’am­biguïté sémantique propre au terme d’expérience.The English term experiment is conventionally rendered in French by expérience. The latter term, however, when translated back into English, may give either experiment or experience. Thus, expérience lends itself to two semantically justifiable, but different translations, at least as long as contextual factors remain ineffective. This article argues for the use of expériment (as equivalent of the English word experiment), a stillborn neologism coined in the early nineteenth century, as a means for reducing the risk of unsettled understandings relating to epistemological matters of experimentation when moving from French to other languages (and vice versa)

Présentation de la traduction de « Sur le voir humain (1855) » Hermann von Helmholtz

Notre préface présente le contexte du fameux discours de Helmholtz sur le voir humain, dont nous donnons ensuite la traduction. Le texte helm-holtzien s’avère être à la fois un hommage soutenu à Immanuel Kant et l’esquisse d’une nouvelle optique physiologique basée sur quelques principes du néo-kantisme.We briefly examine the context of Helmholtz’s famous speech on human vision of 1855 and provide a French translation of this text. The latter reveals itself to be both a tribute to Immanuel Kant and the outline of a new physiological optics based on some neo-Kantian principles

The Bounds of Naturalism: A Plea for Modesty

Nous reformulons la question du naturalisme sur le terrain de la pratique scientifique en privilégiant une analyse épistémologique fine des méthodes, procédures et concepts employés en psychologie. L’enjeu devient alors opérationnel: celui de la mise en place d’un cadre exact et expérimental permettant de rendre compte de la phénoménologie de l’expérience.We reformulate the issue of naturalism within the realm of scientific practices by suggesting that a fine-grained epistemological analysis of the methods, procedures and concepts of psychology is needed. The outcome of this attempt turns out to be operational as it concerns the construction of an exact and experimental approach that allows one to account for the phenomenology of mental states and processes

Vitalism and the Resistance to Experimentation on Life in the Eighteenth Century

There is a familiar opposition between a ‘Scientific Revolution’ ethos and practice of experimentation, including experimentation on life, and a ‘vitalist’ reaction to this outlook. The former is often allied with different forms of mechanism – if all of Nature obeys mechanical laws, including living bodies, ‘iatromechanism’ should encounter no obstructions in investigating the particularities of animal-machines – or with more chimiatric theories of life and matter, as in the ‘Oxford Physiologists’. The latter reaction also comes in different, perhaps irreducibly heterogeneous forms, ranging from metaphysical and ethical objections to the destruction of life, as in Margaret Cavendish, to more epistemological objections against the usage of instruments, the ‘anatomical’ outlook and experimentation, e.g. in Locke and Sydenham. But I will mainly focus on a third anti-interventionist argument, which I call ‘vitalist’ since it is often articulated in the writings of the so-called Montpellier Vitalists, including their medical articles for the Encyclopédie. The vitalist argument against experimentation on life is subtly different from the metaphysical, ethical and epistemological arguments, although at times it may borrow from any of them. It expresses a Hippocratic sensibility – understood as an artifact of early modernity, not as some atemporal trait of medical thought – in which Life resists the experimenter, or conversely, for the experimenter to grasp something about Life, it will have to be without torturing or radically intervening in it. I suggest that this view does not have to imply that Nature is something mysterious or sacred; nor does the vitalist have to attack experimentation on life in the name of some ‘vital force’ – which makes it less surprising to find a vivisectionist like Claude Bernard sounding so close to the vitalists