Jerome Kagan
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036528
- eISBN:
- 9780262341349
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036528.003.0006
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter focuses on the constraints of attributing psychological properties to brain profiles. The constraint on the validity of inferences based on one source of evidence bears directly on the ...
More
This chapter focuses on the constraints of attributing psychological properties to brain profiles. The constraint on the validity of inferences based on one source of evidence bears directly on the neuroscientist's habit of describing brain profiles with words whose meaning and validity originated in psychological data. This practice deserves careful scrutiny because animals or humans are the presumed agents in sentences containing terms describing the psychological processes of perception, memory, intention, feeling, emotion, reasoning, or action. These terms take on novel meanings in sentences in which neuronal activity is the noun. However, the practice of using psychological predicates—such as compute, regulate, or synthesize—to describe brain profiles remains popular because neuroscientists do not have a rich biological vocabulary for the diverse brain profiles that occur in response to incentives.Less
This chapter focuses on the constraints of attributing psychological properties to brain profiles. The constraint on the validity of inferences based on one source of evidence bears directly on the neuroscientist's habit of describing brain profiles with words whose meaning and validity originated in psychological data. This practice deserves careful scrutiny because animals or humans are the presumed agents in sentences containing terms describing the psychological processes of perception, memory, intention, feeling, emotion, reasoning, or action. These terms take on novel meanings in sentences in which neuronal activity is the noun. However, the practice of using psychological predicates—such as compute, regulate, or synthesize—to describe brain profiles remains popular because neuroscientists do not have a rich biological vocabulary for the diverse brain profiles that occur in response to incentives.
