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Crash Testing an Engineering Framework in Neuroscience: Does the Idea of Robustness Break Down?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

M. Chirimuuta
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Abstract

In this article, I discuss the concept of robustness in neuroscience. Various mechanisms for making systems robust have been discussed across biology and neuroscience (e.g., redundancy and fail-safes). Many of these notions originate from engineering. I argue that concepts borrowed from engineering aid neuroscientists in (1) operationalizing robustness, (2) formulating hypotheses about mechanisms for robustness, and (3) quantifying robustness. Furthermore, I argue that the significant disanalogies between brains and engineered artifacts raise important questions about the applicability of the engineering framework. I argue that the use of such concepts should be understood as a kind of simplifying idealization.

Type
Cognitive Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 1140 - 1151
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am greatly indebted to Timothy O’Leary, Nancy Nersessian, and Peter Sterling for their feedback on this work. I would also like to thank the participants in a fall 2015 workshop on robustness in neuroscience for discussion of the ideas behind this article and the audience at a spring 2016 reengineering biology conference for their questions and comments on it. Both events were hosted by the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. I am also grateful to the audience members at the 2016 Philosophy of Science Association meeting for a lively discussion.

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