Discontents, Doctrines, and Disruptions

Two radical neuron doctrines

Two radical neuron doctrines must be distinguished--strong and weak. G&S direct much of their attack at the former--but the Churchlands only hold the latter. The weak radical neuron doctrine remains a serious possibility. G&S describe the radical neuron doctrine in a number of slightly different ways, and we think this hides an important distinction. On the one hand, the radical neuron doctrine...

Universality and Its Discontents

In framing the concept of rational consensus, decision theorists have tended to defer to an older, established literature on social welfare theory for guidance on how to proceed. But the uncritical adoption of standards meant to regulate the reconciliation of differing interests has unduly burdened the development of rational methods for the synthesis of differing judgments. In particular, the ...

Dysbiosis and Its Discontents

Dysbiosis is a key term in human microbiome research, especially when microbiome patterns are associated with disease states. Although some questions have been raised about how this term is applied, its use continues undiminished in the literature. We investigate the ways in which microbiome researchers discuss dysbiosis and then assess the impact of different concepts of dysbiosis on microbiom...

Anthropomorphism and its Discontents

The usefulness of an approach in science is a difficult beast to capture. Attempts to quantify the fertility of anthropomorphism can quickly degenerate into something akin to a scientific beauty contest (at worst) or a matter of counting publications or citations of protagonists (at best). Blumberg asks “whether individuals who explicitly engage in anthropomorphism have a track record of scient...

Doctors and their discontents.