Sensory Measurements: Coordination and Standardization

Epistemic circularity and measurement validity in quantitative psychology: insights from Fechner's psychophysics

The validity of psychological measurement is crucially connected to a peculiar form of epistemic circularity. This circularity can be a threat when there are no independent ways to assess whether a certain procedure is actually measuring the intended target of measurement. This paper focuses on how Fechner addressed the measurement circularity that emerged in his psychophysical research. First, I show that Fechner's approach to the problem of circular measurement involved a core idealizing assumption of a shared human physiology. Second, I assess Fechner's approach to this issue against the backdrop of his own epistemology of measurement and the measurement context of his time. Third, I claim that, from a coherentist and historically-situated perspective, Fechner's quantification can be regarded as a first successful step of a longer-term quantification process. To conclude, I draw from these insights some general epistemological reflections that are relevant to current quantitative psychology.

Epistemological challenges for neural correlates of consciousness: A defense of medical research on consciousness

Recent work in the field of consciousness science has predominantly focused on the search for neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). However, despite significant technological advances in recent decades, defining NCC remains an ambitious goal in consciousness research. The main difficulty stems from an epistemological challenge known as the "Problem of coordination", which hinders or at least slows down the experimental process inherent to the study of consciousness. Fundamental research has mainly focused on a content-based conception of consciousness, often referred to as a "local" conception of consciousness. This approach suffers from the Problem of coordination and its consequences. However, an alternative, more reliable approach could be considered, namely, the global or "state-based" approach, which is grounded in clinical research on consciousness disorders.

How incoherent measurement succeeds: Coordination and success in the measurement of the earth's polar flattening

The development of nineteenth-century geodetic measurement challenges the dominant coherentist account of metric success. Coherentists argue that measurements of a parameter are successful if their numerical outcomes convergence across varying contextual constraints. Aiming at numerical convergence, in turn, offers an operational aim for scientists to solve problems of coordination. Geodesists faced such a problem of coordination between two indicators of the earth's polar flattening, which were both based on imperfect ellipsoid models. While not achieving numerical convergence, their measurements produced novel data that grounded valuable theoretical hypotheses. Consequently, they ought to be regarded as epistemically successful. This insight warrants a dynamic revision of coherentism, which allows to judge the success of a metric based on both its coherence and fruitfulness. On that view, scientific measurement aims to coordinate theoretical definitions and produce novel data and theoretical insights.

From successful measurement to the birth of a law: Disentangling coordination in Ohm's scientific practice

In this paper, I argue for a distinction between two scales of coordination in scientific inquiry, through which I reassess Georg Simon Ohm's work on conductivity and resistance. Firstly, I propose to distinguish between measurement coordination, which refers to the specific problem of how to justify the attribution of values to a quantity by using a certain measurement procedure, and general coordination, which refers to the broader issue of justifying the representation of an empirical regularity by means of abstract mathematical tools. Secondly, I argue that the development of Ohm's measurement practice between the first and the second experimental phase of his work involved the change of the measurement coordination on which he relied to express his empirical results. By showing how Ohm relied on different calibration assumptions and practices across the two phases, I demonstrate that the concurrent change of both Ohm's experimental apparatus and the variable that Ohm measured should be viewed based on the different form of measurement coordination. Finally, I argue that Ohm's assumption that tension is equally distributed in the circuit is best understood as part of the general coordination between Ohm's law and the empirical regularity that it expresses, rather than measurement coordination.

How to be rational about empirical success in ongoing science: The case of the quantum nose and its critics

Empirical success is a central criterion for scientific decision-making. Yet its understanding in philosophical studies of science deserves renewed attention: Should philosophers think differently about the advancement of science when they deal with the uncertainty of outcome in ongoing research in comparison with historical episodes? This paper argues that normative appeals to empirical success in the evaluation of competing scientific explanations can result in unreliable conclusions, especially when we are looking at the changeability of direction in unsettled investigations. The challenges we encounter arise from the inherent dynamics of disciplinary and experimental objectives in research practice. In this paper we discuss how these dynamics inform the evaluation of empirical success by analyzing three of its requirements: data accommodation, instrumental reliability, and predictive power. We conclude that the assessment of empirical success in developing inquiry is set against the background of a model's interactive success and prospective value in an experimental context. Our argument is exemplified by the analysis of an apparent controversy surrounding the model of a quantum nose in research on olfaction. Notably, the public narrative of this controversy rests on a distorted perspective on measures of empirical success.

Computing Odor Images

This perspective examines psychophysical methods that may reveal the algorithms that encode odor images by integrating current data from sensory measurement into a computational model of odor perception. There is evidence that algorithms used by the nervous system to process odor sensations require input from only a few odorants, between three and eight. Furthermore, the number of recognizable odors in foods that contribute anything to the aroma of all foods is approximately 250. This may imply that it is the ratio of a small number of key odorants (KOs) that create a multitude of food odors. Studies with large mixtures of odorants (formulated to be of equal potency) show that a subject's ability to detect individual odorants in these mixtures was vanishingly small. These large mixtures had weak and nondescript but similar odor character. If only a few stimulants are used to represent complex images, it is direct evidence of the simplicity and therefore the tractability of the computational process.

Hubris to humility: Tonal volume and the fundamentality of psychophysical quantities

Psychophysics measures the attributes of perceptual experience. The question of whether some of these attributes should be interpreted as more fundamental, or "real," than others has been answered differently throughout its history. The operationism of Stevens and Boring answers "no," reacting to the perceived vacuity of earlier debates about fundamentality. The subsequent rise of multidimensional scaling (MDS) implicitly answers "yes" in its insistence that psychophysical data be represented in spaces of low dimensionality. I argue the return of fundamentality follows from a trend toward increasing epistemic humility. Operationism exhibited a kind of hubris in the constitutive role it assigned to the experimenter's presuppositions that is abandoned by the algorithmic methods of MDS. This broad epistemic trend is illustrated by following the trajectory of research on a particular candidate attribute: tonal volume.

What is so special about smell? Olfaction as a model system in neurobiology

Neurobiology studies mechanisms of cell signalling. A key question is how cells recognise specific signals. In this context, olfaction has become an important experimental system over the past 25 years. The olfactory system responds to an array of structurally diverse stimuli. The discovery of the olfactory receptors (ORs), recognising these stimuli, established the olfactory pathway as part of a greater group of signalling mechanisms mediated by G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs are the largest protein family in the mammalian genome and involved in numerous fundamental physiological processes. The OR family exhibits two characteristics that make them an excellent model system to understand GPCRs: its size and the structural diversity of its members. Research on the OR binding site investigates what amino acid sequences determine the receptor-binding capacity. This promises a better understanding of how the basic genetic makeup of GPCRs relates to their diversification in ligand-binding capacities.