Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m42fx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T20:17:46.910Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Shocking Lessons from Electric Fish: The Theory and Practice of Multiple Realization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Brian L. Keeley
Brian L. Keeley*
Affiliation:
Pitzer College
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Pitzer College, 1050 North Mills Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711; email: keeley@twinearth.wustl.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between psychology and neurobiology in the context of cognitive science. Are the sciences that constitute cognitive science independent and theoretically autonomous, or is there a necessary interaction between them? I explore Fodor's Multiple Realization Thesis (MRT) which starts with the fact of multiple realization and purports to derive the theoretical autonomy of special sciences (such as psychology) from structural sciences (such as neurobiology). After laying out the MRT, it is shown that, on closer inspection, the argument is either circular or self-undermining—the argument either assumes the very autonomy it seeks to demonstrate or the concluded autonomy is contradicted by the theoretical interdependence invoked by the premises of the argument. Next, I explore a concrete example of multiple realization in the explanation of animal behavior: the convergent evolution of jamming avoidance behaviors in three genera of weakly electric fish. Contrary to the image painted by the MRT, the work on these animals involves a high degree of interaction between the various levels of investigation. The fact that our understanding of electric fish behavior involves functional theories and multiple realization without the kind of disunified science that is supposed to follow from such a situation indicates that the mere fact of multiple realization cannot be the basis for an autonomous psychology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , September 2000 , pp. 444 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

Portions of this paper are taken from the author's Ph.D. dissertation, written under the supervision of Sandra Mitchell and Patricia Churchland at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and finished in 1997. Early versions of this paper were presented to the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and to the Philosophy/Neuroscience/Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis. John Bickle provided me with insightful suggestions; the last section of the paper would not have occurred without his input. Thanks also to an anonymous reviewer for this journal. Masashi Kawasaki, Calvin Wong, K.T. Moortgat, and Ted Bullock all provided feedback on the scientific details. However, any remaining errors are my responsibility. This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NRSA #1 F31 MH10676–01), the McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the UCSD Department of Philosophy.

References

Akins, Kathleen (1993), “What Is It Like to Be Boring and Myopic?” in Dahlbom, B. (ed.), Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind. Oxford: Blackwell, 124–160.Google Scholar
Alves-Gomes, José A. (1996), The Phylogeny and Evolutionary History of the South American Electric Fishes (Order Gymnotiformes). Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Alves-Gomes, José A., Ort, G., Haygood, M., Heiligenberg, W., and Meyer, A. (1995), “Phylogenetic Analysis of the South American Electric Fishes (Order Gymnotiformes) and the Evolution of Their Electrogenic System: A Synthesis Based on Morphology, Electrophysiology, and Mitochondrial Sequence Data”, Molecular Biology and Evolution 12: 298–318.Google ScholarPubMed
Bass, Andrew (1986), “Electric Organs Revisited”, in Bullock and Heiligenberg 1986.Google Scholar
Bechtel, William and Mundale, J. (1999), “Multiple Realizability Revisited: Linking Cognitive and Neural States”, Philosophy of Science 66: 175–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickle, J. (1998), Psychoneural Reduction: The New Wave. Cambridge: MIT Press (A Bradford Book).Google Scholar
Bullock, Theodore Holmes, Behrend, K., and Heiligenberg, W. (1975), “Comparison of the Jamming Avoidance Responses in Gymnotoid and Gymnarchid Electric Fish: A Case of Convergent Evolution of Behavior and Its Sensory Basis”, Journal of Comparative Physiology 103: 97–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bullock, Theodore Holmes, Brodznick, D. A., and Northcutt, R. G. (1983), “The Phylogenetic Distribution of Electroreception: Evidence for Convergent Evolution of a Primitive Vertebrate Sense Modality”, Brain Research Reviews 6: 25–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bullock, Theodore Holmes, Hamstra, R. H., and Scheich, H. (1972), “The Jamming Avoidance Response of High Frequency Electric Fish: I. General Features”, Journal of Comparative Physiology 77: 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bullock, Theodore Holmes and Heiligenberg, W. (eds.) (1986), Electroreception. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Bullock, Theodore Holmes, Northcutt, R. G., and Brodznick, D. A. (1982), “Evolution of Electroreception”, Trends in Neuroscience 5: 50–53.10.1016/0166-2236(82)90022-4CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butler, Keith (1994), “Neural Constraints in Cognitive Science”, Minds and Machines 4: 129–162.10.1007/BF00974143CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churchland, Paul M. (1979), Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. Cambridge Studies in Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crick, Francis (1988), What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel C. (1978), “Why Not the Whole Iguana?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1: 103–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. (1974), “Special Sciences, or the Disunity of Science As a Working Hypothesis”. Originally appeared in Synthese 28: 77–115. Page references are to the reprint in Fodor 1975, 9–25. (Also reprinted in Fodor 1981, 127–145).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. (1975), The Language of Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. (1981), Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press (A Bradford Book).Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. (1995), “West Coast Fuzzy: Why We Don't Know How Brains Work” (review of Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul by Paul M. Churchland), Times Literary Supplement 4821: 5–6.Google Scholar
Hardcastle, Valerie Gray (1996), How to Build a Theory in Cognitive Science. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Heiligenberg, Walter (1977), Principles of Electrolocation and Jamming Avoidance in Electric Fish: A Neuroethological Approach. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heiligenberg, Walter. (1991a), Neural Nets in Electric Fish. Cambridge: MIT Press (A Bradford Book).Google Scholar
Heiligenberg, Walter. (1991b), “The Jamming Avoidance Response of the Electric Fish, Eigenmannia: Computational Rules and Neuronal Implementation”, Seminars in the Neurosciences 3: 3–18.10.1016/1044-5765(91)90062-SCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heiligenberg, Walter, Baker, C., and Matsubara, J. (1978), “The Jamming Avoidance Response in Eigenmannia Revisited: The Structure of a Neuronal Democracy”, Journal of Comparative Physiology 127: 267–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heiligenberg, Walter and Bastian, J. (1980), “The Control of Eigenmannia's Pacemaker by Distributed Evaluation of Electroreceptive Afferences”, Journal of Comparative Physiology 136: 113–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooker, Clifford A. (1981), “Towards a General Theory of Reduction. Part I: Historical and Scientific Setting. Part II: Identity in Reduction. Part III: Cross-categorical Reduction.” Dialogue 20: 38–59, 201–236, 496–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, Terence (1993), “Nonreductive Materialism and the Explanatory Autonomy of Psychology”, in Wagner, S. J. and Warner, R. (eds.), Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 295–320.Google Scholar
Hutchins, Edwin (1995), Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kawasaki, Masashi (1993), “Independently Evolved Jamming Avoidance Responses Employ Identical Computational Algorithms: A Behavioral Study of the African Electric Fish, Gymnarchus niloticus”, Journal of Comparative Physiology A 173: 9–22.Google Scholar
Kawasaki, Masashi. (1994), “The African Wave-type Electric Fish, Gymnarchus niloticus, Lacks Corollary Discharge Mechanisms for Electrosensory Gating”, Journal of Comparative Physiology A 174: 133–144.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kawasaki, Masashi. (1996), “Comparative Analysis of the Jamming Avoidance Response in African and South American Wave-type Fishes”, Biological Bulletin 191: 103–108.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kawasaki, Masashi and Guo, Y.-X. (1996), “Neuronal Circuitry for Comparison of Timing in the Electrosensory Lateral Line Lobe of the African Wave-type Electric Fish, Gymnarchus niloticus”', Journal of Neuroscience 16: 380–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kawasaki, Masashi. (1998), “Parallel Projection of Amplitude and Phase Information from the Hindbrain to the Midbrain of the African Electric Fish, Gymnarchus niloticus”, Journal of Neuroscience 18: 7599–7611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeley, Brian L. (1999), “Fixing Content and Function in Neurobiological Systems: The Neuroethology of Electroreception”, Biology & Philosophy 14: 395–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeley, Brian L. (2000), “Neuroethology and the Philosophy of Cognitive Science”, Philosophy of Science 67 (Proceedings): S404–S417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lauder, G. V. and Liem, K. F. (1983), “Patterns of Diversity and Evolution in Ray-finned Fishes”, in Northcutt, R. G. and Davis, R. E. (eds.), Fish Neurobiology, Vol. 1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1–24.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Dan (1989), Simple Minds. Cambridge: MIT Press (A Bradford Book).Google Scholar
Matsubara, J. and Heiligenberg, W. (1978), “How Well Do Electric Fish Electrolocate under Jamming?” Journal of Comparative Physiology A 12: 285–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Sandra D., Daston, L., Gigerenzer, G., Sesardic, N., and Sloep, P. B. (1997), “The Whys and Hows of Interdisciplinarity”, in Weingart, P., Mitchell, S. D., Richerson, P., and Maasen, S. (eds.), Human by Nature: Between Biology and the Social Sciences. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Northcutt, R. G. (1986), “Electroreception in Nonteleost Bony Fishes”, in Bullock and Heiligenberg 1986, 257–285.Google Scholar
Oppenheim, Paul and Putnam, Hilary (1958), “Unity of Science As a Working Hypothesis”, in Herbert Feigl, Michael Scriven, and Grover Maxwell (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science II, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 3–36.Google Scholar
Owens, David (1989), “Levels of Explanation”, Mind 98: 59–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Hilary (1975), “Philosophy and Our Mental Life”, in his Mind, Language, and Reality, Vol. 2 of Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tye, Michael (1997), “The Problem of Simple Minds: Is There Anything It Is Like to Be a Honey Bee?” Philosophical Studies 88: 289–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar