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Phenomena and Objects of Research in the Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Uljana Feest
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Abstract

It is commonly held that research efforts in the cognitive and behavioral sciences are mainly directed toward providing explanations and that phenomena figure into scientific practice qua explananda. I contend that these assumptions convey a skewed picture of the research practices in question and of the role played by phenomena. I argue that experimental research often aims at exploring and describing “objects of research” and that phenomena can figure as components of, and as evidence for, such objects. I situate my analysis within the existing literature and illustrate it with examples from memory research.

Type
Cognitive Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 1165 - 1176
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Previous versions of this article were presented at the Universities of Hannover, Bielefeld, Wuppertal, and Graz, as well as the 2015 meeting of the European Philosophy of Science Association in Düsseldorf (Germany). A more recent version was presented at the Technische Universität Berlin in July 2016. The author would like to thank the members of these audiences, as well as colleagues who attended my talk at the 2016 meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association in Atlanta, for their very helpful questions and comments.

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