Abstract
In the social study of science, researchers have only recently begun to pay attention to the importance of the cognitive dimension to describe and explain scientists’ decision-making. By understanding cognitive decision-making mechanisms it is possible to assign an exact causal value to methodological and social variables.
The present chapter is a modified version of “Conclusioni-Il carattere socio-cognitivo della decisione scientifica” in Viale R. (1991). Metodo e Società nella Scienza. Milano: Franco Angeli.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In these contexts, the term system is usually used, as it is in Holland et al. (1986), to express more effectively the goals of a research programme that aims to characterise, computationally, the various stages of the scientist’s decision-making behaviour. Similar attempts using a limited number of simplified decision-making variables have also enjoyed some success. The complexity of the decision-making variables in science means that their computational translation into a programme is still a distant target. The use of the term system therefore only has an analogic and heuristic significance. It characterizes more accurately the interdependence and interconnection between the various internal and external causal factors in individual scientific decisions.
- 2.
Since decision is the necessary premise to action, and may be represented as its mental planning, it seems acceptable to interchange the two terms in this book when analysing the reasons upstream of a decision and therefore of an action. It is therefore clear that the sum of reasons, which are causally effective for the action, is sometimes more inclusive than that of the reasons for the decision.
- 3.
This correspondence is sustained by several authors but appears questionable. ‘Wertrational’ action could be interpreted as ‘logical’ if it were instrumentally suitable to reach or approach the absolute value (otherwise how can we consider logical the actions of scientists who are driven by the absolute value of the search for the truth?). It would also be possible to interpret some ‘traditional’ actions as ‘logical’, if we could place the reflected and automatic pattern of habitual behaviour within the unconscious sum of beliefs in certain ends and the instrumental means of reaching them, stored in the Long-Term Memory and effective to solve practical everyday problems (we can see how many of a scientist’s actions are ‘traditional’, even with a methodological value, which is necessary for the success of the research). Where ‘affektuell’ action is concerned, the current logic is not very clear. We could, on the contrary, imagine an original ‘logic’ that might be linked to means-ends patterns based on emotional mechanisms, of response and defence, instrumentally suitable for evolutionary ends and selected in the species, in its ‘struggle’ for survival.
- 4.
In the case of scientific decisions, this need is reinforced by the evident social nature of methodological standards, selected, learned and justified by the interrelation of several scientists within a given community.
- 5.
There are a number of interesting analogies between the properties of the homo œconomicus and those of the idealised scientist of the neopositivist philosophy of science: the consistency of the factual basis and methodological beliefs; a capacity for correct deductive and probabilistic reasoning according to the canons of classical logic and probability calculus; methodological principles fixed in advance that cannot be modified by the social context; a true description of reality as an epistemological goal.
- 6.
Briefly, the sociologist has to describe O, I(P), O(E), V, V(E, P, Q, H).
- 7.
According to Boudon (1979), Durkheim’s ideas have generated numerous misunderstandings. The structuralist interpretation has tried to interpret Durkheim’s individual as being squashed by society. In fact, Boudon maintains that Durkheim, in conflict with Spencer’s supporters, has only tried to demonstrate that the environment and society are an indispensable variable to understand individual choices, because their effect is to limit the gamut of options at the individual’s disposal.
- 8.
According to some authors, the term reason refers to the combination of ‘conative’ events like desire and ‘cognitive’ events like belief, which are responsible for action (Davidson 1963).
- 9.
If it is not possible to bring it immediately to a lower level of aggregation, because of methodological and cognitive obstacles, it must at least be feasible ‘in theory’. This means that concepts and hypotheses that are reducible ‘in theory’ are preferable to those that are ontologically irreducible.
- 10.
According to the “Central State Identity Theory’, each mental state is a state of the brain, all mental events are physical events, and the two types of expression that describe them have the same extension. In its ‘token materialism’ variant, the identity between mental and cerebral is a contingent fact (i.e. cerebral→mental) and does not express a necessary relationship (which can be formulated by mental→cerebral); other ‘hardware’, made with other materials (e.g. silicon), could have mental properties.
- 11.
It is not as if this type of reduction is impossible. The problem is, as Fodor maintains (1975), that in psychology the functional language is difficult to reduce, because terms such as intention, plan or desire cannot be broken down without losing the significance of the function indicated (decomposition is supported by the more enthusiastic reductionists who aim not only to replace the term denoting a psychological function with a term of neurobiological structure, but also to break it down to the level of the individual elements that make up the neurobiological structure). However, unlike Fodor, I believe that, if it is not possible to make a micro-reduction of the functional terms of ‘folk psychology’, this is less problematic in the case of the concepts of cognitive science. It does seem possible, in theory, to reduce a psychological state to a neurobiological state, in the sense of making a particular psychological state correspond to a particular neurophysiological state responsible for that psychological state. I underline that this is theoretical because before making a ‘derivative reduction’ of this type, two conditions must be met: (1) it is necessary to have two explicitly and precisely formulated theories, suitably corroborated, with unambiguous terms and meanings; (2) it is necessary to establish ‘connecting principles’ of the identity between the terms of one and of the other (Viale 1986, pp. 266–272). In the case in question, this would mean establishing identities between psychological functions and structures localised and defined temporarily of the Central Nervous System. As many of us know, a similar derivative reduction is currently difficult due to the absence of the first and the second condition, because of the inadequacy of the knowledge at our disposal in the neurobiological and psychological fields.
- 12.
It is easier to classify ‘list structures’ using a negative analogy with pencil and paper. While it is difficult to insert a new symbol into a list of symbols written on a sheet of paper, in sequential order from top to bottom, dynamic list structures can be created in a computer memory. Adjacent symbols are not filed in physically adjacent places, but each symbol is filed with the address of the next symbol on the list. This makes it possible to retrieve information very rapidly, but above all to insert new symbols into the list easily (Langley et al. 1987, p. 316).
- 13.
This is particularly true in the case of an empirical generalisation in which its confirmation corresponds to its generation, but it is not always applicable to non-inductive discoveries.
- 14.
In social sciences we can think of the methodological change from classic nineteenth-century economics—which gave priority to the qualitative aspects of the applicability of theories and the a priori foundation of the premises—to the empiricism and operationalism of twentieth-century economics, in particular econometrics and Keynesian theory—giving the opposing priority to the quantitative accuracy of predictions.
References
Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Boudon, R., & Viale, R. (2000). Reasons, cognition and society. Mind & Society, 1, 41–56.
Bower, G. H., & Glass, A. L. (1976). Structural units and the redintegrative power of picture fragments. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2, 456–466.
Churchland, P. M. (1986a). Cognitive neurobiology: A computational hypothesis for laminar cortex. Biology and Philosophy, 1, 25–51.
Churchland, P. S. (1986b). Neurophilosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Cohen, J. (1981). Can human irrationality be experimentally demonstrated. The Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 4, 317–370.
Cole, M. (1977). An ethnographic psychology of cognition. In P. Johnson-Laird & P. C. Wason (Eds.), Thinking. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Coles, L. S. (1972). Syntax directed interpretation of natural language. In H. Simon & L. Siklossy (Eds.), Representation and meaning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Corben, M. C., & De Benedetti, S. (1954). The ultimate atom. Scientific American, 191(6), 88–92.
Daniels, N. (1979). Wide reflective equilibrium and theory acceptance in ethics. Journal of Philosophy, 76, 256–282.
Daniels, N. (1980). On some methods of ethics and linguistics. Philosophical Studies, 37, 21–36.
Davidson, D. (1963). Actions, reasons and causes. Journal of Philosophy, 60.
de Finetti, B. (1931). Sul significato soggettivo delle probabilità. Fundamenta Mathematica, 17, 298–329.
Deutsch, D., & Feroe, J. (1981). The internal representation of pitch sequences in tonal music. Psychological Review, 88, 503–522.
Donovan, A., Laudan, L., & Laudan, R. (Eds.). (1988). Scrutinizing science. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Fine, A. (1975). How to compare theories: Reference and change. Noûs, 9, 17–32.
Fleming, A. (1929). On the antibacterial action to cultures of a penicillium with special reference to their use in the isolation of B. influenzae. British Journal of Experimental Pathology, 10, 226–236.
Giere, R. N. (1988). Explaining science. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P., & the ABC Research Group. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., & Selten, R. (Eds.). (2001). Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Goldman, A. I. (1986). Epistemology and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holland, J. M., Holyoak, K. J., Nisbett, R. E., & Thagard, P. R. (1986). Induction: Process of inference, learning, and discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press (It. Translation (1993). Modelli mentali, Bologna: Il Mulino).
Kitcher, P. (1984). The nature of mathematical knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kosslyn, S. (1981). Image and mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (2nd. ed. 1970).
Kuhn, T. S. (1977). The essential tension. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Langley, P., Simon, H. A., Bradshaw, G. L., & Zytkow, J. M. (1987). Scientific discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory life: Social construction of scientific facts. London: Sage.
Laudan, L. (1981). A problem solving approach to scientific progress. In I. Hacking (Ed.), Scientific revolutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Levins, R. (1968). Evolution in changing environment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mellor, D. H. (1971). The matter of chance. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Popper, K. R. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. London: Hutchinson.
Quine, W. O. (1985). Epistemology naturalized. In H. Kornblith (Ed.), Naturalizing epistemology. Cambridg, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Ramsey, F. P. (1931). The foundations of mathematics. London: Routledge.
Rawls, J. (1972). A theory of justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reichenbach, H. (1949). The theory of probability. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Resnik, M. (1982). Mathematics as a science of patterns: Epistemology. Noûs, 16, 95–105.
Scribner, S. (1977). Modes of thinking and ways of speaking: Culture and logic reconsidered. In P. N. Johnson-Laird & P. C. Wason (Eds.), Thinking: Readings in cognitive science (pp. 483–500). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Shweder, R. A. (1977). Likeness and likelihood in everyday thought: Magical thinking and everyday judgments about personality. In P. N. Johnson-Laird & P. C. Wason (Eds.), Thinking. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Simon, H. A. (1979). Models of thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Simon, H. A., & Barenfield, M. (1969). Information-processing analysis of perceptual-processes in problem solving. Psychological Review, 76, 473–483.
Smith, E. E., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2007). Cognitive psychology. Mind and brain. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall.
Ullman, S. (1979). The interpretation of visual motion. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Viale, R. (1982). Philosophy of mind and mental disease, the philosophy and methodology of science. Dubrovnik: Inter-University Centre of postgraduate studies.
Viale, R. (1986). Philosophie, physique de l’esprit et paradigme simonien. In A. Demailly & J. L. Le Moigne (Eds.), Sciences de l’intelligence, sciences de l’artificiel. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.
Viale, R. (1990). Lemmas: Analyse; predicat (observationnel, theorique).; critere d'empiricitè; proposition empirique; rationalitè scientifique; organicisme; entitè theorique; proposition theorique; langage theorique, (Vol. II dell’Encyclopedie Philosophique). Parigi: Presses Universitaires de France.
Viale, R. (1991). Metodo e società nella scienza. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Viale, R. (2006). Local or universal principles of reasoning? In R. Viale, D. Andler, & L. Hirschfeld (Eds.), Biological and cultural bases of human inferences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Viale, R. (2012). Methodological cognitivism mind (Rationality, and society, Vol. 1). Heidelberg: Springer.
von Mises, R. (1957). Probability, statistics and truth. London: Allen & Unwin.
Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Wimsatt, W. (1981). Robustness, reliability and multiple-determination in science. In M. Brewer & B. Collins (Eds.), Knowing and validating in social sciences. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Viale, R. (2013). The Socio-Cognitive Character of Decision Making in Science . In: Methodological Cognitivism. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40216-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40216-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40215-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40216-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)