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68Molecular Genetics, Reductionism, and Disease Concepts in PsychiatryJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (2): 127-153. 1992.The study of mental illness by the methods of molecular genetics is still in its infancy, but the use of genetic markers in psychiatry may potentially lead to a Virchowian revolution in the conception of mental illness. Genetic markers may define novel clusters of patients having diverse clinical presentations but sharing a common genetic and mechanistic basis. Such clusters may differ radically from the conventional classification schemes of psychiatric illness. However, the reduction of even r…Read more
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20A Fallacious Forced Choice: Cloninger and Stoyanov, Machamer, and Schaffner Are CompatiblePhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (3): 281-284. 2013.
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130Einstein Versus Lorentz: Research Programmes and the Logic of Comparative Theory EvaluationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 25 (1): 45-78. 1974.
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Discovery and Explanation in Biology and MedicineJournal of the History of Biology 28 (1): 172-174. 1995.
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14The Historiography of Special Relativity: Comments on the Papers by John Earman, Clark Glymour, and Robert Rynasiewicz and by Arthur MillerPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982. 1982.Two problems in the paper by EGR are considered. One is the lack of any direct confirmatory evidence for the elegant rational reconstruction. The second is a significant gap in the historical account, just at the critical point in Einstein's discovery process -- namely, the reanalysis of simultaneity. In addition, the EGR account appears in danger of being overly focused on the electrodynamical aspect of special relativity to the exclusion of optical null experiments, and in particular to the ex…Read more
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23Behaving: What's Genetic, What's Not, and Why Should We Care?Oxford University Press USA. 2016.Behaving presents an overview of the recent history and methodology of behavioral genetics and psychiatric genetics, informed by a philosophical perspective. Kenneth F. Schaffner addresses a wide range of issues, including genetic reductionism and determinism, "free will," and quantitative and molecular genetics. The latter covers newer genome-wide association studies that have produced a paradigm shift in the subject, and generated the problem of "missing heritability." Schaffner also presents …Read more
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29Reduction in Biology and MedicineIn Fred Gifford (ed.), Philosophy of Medicine, Elsevier. pp. 16--137. 2011.
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180The Dopamine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia: An Historical and Philosophical AnalysisPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 18 (1): 41-63. 2011.This essay selectively reviews, from an historical and philosophical perspective, the dopamine (DA) hypothesis of schizophrenia (DHS; Table 1 lists the abbreviations used in this essay). Our goal is not to adjudicate the validity of the theory—although we arrive at a generally skeptical conclusion—but to focus on the process whereby the DHS has evolved over time and been evaluated. Since its inception, the DHS has been the most prominent etiologic theory in psychiatry and is still referred to wi…Read more
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49Modeling medical diagnosis: Logical and computer approachesSynthese 47 (1). 1981.In the present article I have surveyed several approaches to modeling the clinical diagnostic process. I have argued that at this point of the field's development, logics which simulate the reasoning patterns and knowledge base of expert clinicians represent research programs that are most likely to succeed. No logic of diagnosis has yet attained the status of being definitive; in spite of striking progress much more research and testing is required. On the basis of various existing logics, I ha…Read more
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47Rendering clinical psychology an evidence‐based scientific discipline: a case studyJournal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 18 (1): 149-154. 2012.
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40Theory structure in the biomedical sciencesJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 5 (1): 57-97. 1980.
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99Correspondence rulesPhilosophy of Science 36 (3): 280-290. 1969.The traditional role which correspondence rules, coordinating definitions, or semantical rules, have in a logical analysis of a scientific theory is questioned by providing an alternative analysis. The alternative account suggests that scientific theories are "meaningful" prior to the establishment of correspondence rules, and that correspondence rules are introduced to permit explanation and testing in the "observational" sector. The role of models is briefly assessed in connection with this pr…Read more
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37Theory change in immunology part I: Extended theories and scientific progressTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 13 (2). 1992.This two-part article examines the competition between the clonal selection theory and the instructive theory of the immune response from 1957–1967. In Part I the concept of a temporally extended theory is introduced, which requires attention to the hitherto largely ignored issue of theory individuation. Factors which influence the acceptability of such an extended theory at different temporal points are also embedded in a Bayesian framework, which is shown to provide a rational account of belie…Read more
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5Biology and Epistemology: Emerging ThemesIn Richard Creath & Jane Maienschein (eds.), Biology and Epistemology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 287. 2000.
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9Of MedicineIn Merrilee H. Salmon (ed.), Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Hackett. pp. 310. 1992.
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39Alzheimer Testing at Silver YearsCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7 (3): 294-307. 1998.Early last year, the GenEthics Consortium (GEC) of the Washington Metropolitan Area convened at George Washington University to consider a complex case about genetic testing for Alzheimer disease (AD). The GEC consists of scientists, bioethicists, lawyers, genetic counselors, and consumers from a variety of institutions and affiliations. Four of the 8 co-authors of this paper delivered presentations on the case. Supplemented by additional ethical and legal observations, these presentations form …Read more
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40Logic of discovery and justification in regulatory geneticsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 4 (4): 349-385. 1974.In the above pages I have sketched a history of the genesis and comparative evaluation of the repressor model of genetic regulation of enzyme induction. I have not attempted in this article to carry out an analysis of the more scientifically interesting fully developed Jacob-Monod operon theory of genetic regulations but such an analysis of the operon theory would not, I believe, involve any additional logical or epistemological features than have been discussed above. I have argued that the abo…Read more
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126In Quest for Scientific Psychiatry: Toward Bridging the Explanatory GapPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (3): 261-273. 2013.The contemporary epistemic status of mental health disciplines does not allow the cross validation of mental disorders among various genetic markers, biochemical pathway or mechanisms, and clinical assessments in neuroscience explanations. We attempt to provide a meta-empirical analysis of the contemporary status of the cross-disciplinary issues existing between neuro-biology and psychopathology. Our case studies take as an established medical mode an example cross validation between biological …Read more
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89Genes, behavior, and developmental emergentism: One process, indivisible?Philosophy of Science 65 (2): 209-252. 1998.The question of the influence of genes on behavior raises difficult philosophical and social issues. In this paper I delineate what I call the Developmentalist Challenge (DC) to assertions of genetic influence on behavior, and then examine the DC through an indepth analysis of the behavioral genetics of the nematode, C. elegans, with some briefer references to work on Drosophila. I argue that eight "rules" relating genes and behavior through environmentally-influenced and tangled neural nets cap…Read more
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15Ethical Considerations in Human Investigation Involving Paradigm Shifts: Organ Transplantation in the 1990sIRB: Ethics & Human Research 19 (6): 5. 1997.
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96Theories, models, and equations in biology: The heuristic search for emergent simplifications in neurobiologyPhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 1008-1021. 2008.This article considers claims that biology should seek general theories similar to those found in physics but argues for an alternative framework for biological theories as collections of prototypical interlevel models that can be extrapolated by analogy to different organisms. This position is exemplified in the development of the Hodgkin‐Huxley giant squid model for action potentials, which uses equations in specialized ways. This model is viewed as an “emergent unifier.” Such unifiers, which …Read more
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24Coherentist approaches to scientific progress in psychiatry: comments on KendlerIn Kenneth S. Kendler & Josef Parnas (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry Ii: Nosology, Oxford University Press. pp. 323. 2012.
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143Reduction: the Cheshire cat problem and a return to rootsSynthese 151 (3): 377-402. 2006.In this paper, I propose two theses, and then examine what the consequences of those theses are for discussions of reduction and emergence. The first thesis is that what have traditionally been seen as robust, reductions of one theory or one branch of science by another more fundamental one are a largely a myth. Although there are such reductions in the physical sciences, they are quite rare, and depend on special requirements. In the biological sciences, these prima facie sweeping reductions fa…Read more
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5Caenorhabditis elegans is a tiny worm that has become the focus of a large number of worldwide research projects examining its genetics, development, neuroscience, and behavior. Recently several groups of investigators have begun to tie together the behavior of the organism and the underlying genes, neural circuits, and molecular processes implemented in those circuits. Behavior is quintessentially organismal—it is the organism as a whole that moves and mates—but the explanations are devised at …Read more
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100Model organisms and behavioral genetics: A rejoinderPhilosophy of Science 65 (2): 276-288. 1998.In this rejoinder to the three preceding comments, I provide some additional philosophical warrant for the biomedical sciences' focus on model organisms. I then relate the inquiries on model systems to the concept of 'deep homology', and indicate that the issues that appear to divide my commentators and myself are in part empirical ones. I cite recent work on model organisms, and especially C. elegans that supports my views. Finally, I briefly readdress some of the issues raised by Developmental…Read more
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32Interactions among Theory, Experiment, and Technology in Molecular BiologyPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.This article examines how a molecular "solution" to an important biological problem-how is antibody diversity generated? was obtained in the 1970s. After the primarily biological clonal selection theory (CST) was accepted by 1967, immunologists developed several different contrasting theories to complete the SCST. To choose among these theories, immunology had to turn to the new molecular biology, first to nucleic acid hybridization and then to recombinant DNA technology. The research programs o…Read more
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86Theory structure, reduction, and disciplinary integration in biologyBiology and Philosophy 8 (3): 319-347. 1993.This paper examines the nature of theory structure in biology and considers the implications of those theoretical structures for theory reduction. An account of biological theories as interlevel prototypes embodying causal sequences, and related to each other by strong analogies, is presented, and examples from the neurosciences are provided to illustrate these middle-range theories. I then go on to discuss several modifications of Nagel''s classical model of theory reduction, and indicate at wh…Read more
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