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AKTUNÇ, Mahir Emrah

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Mahir Emrah

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AKTUNÇ
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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    ArticlePublication
    Error rates and uncertainty reduction in rule discovery
    (Springer Nature, 2020-06) Aktunç, Mahir Emrah; Hazar, Ceren; Baytimur, Emre; Psychology; AKTUNÇ, Mahir Emrah; Hazar, Ceren; Baytimur, Emre
    Three new versions of Wason's 2-4-6 rule discovery task incorporating error rates or feedback of uncertainty reduction, inspired by the error-statistical account in philosophy of science, were employed. In experiments 1 and 2, participants were instructed that some experimenter feedback would be erroneous (control was original 2-4-6 without error). The results showed that performance was impaired when there was probabilistic error. In experiment 3, participants were given uncertainty reduction feedback as they generated different number triples and the negative effects of probabilistic error were not observed. These findings are informative not only about rule discovery tasks in general but also about contexts of inference under uncertainty.
  • Conference ObjectPublicationOpen Access
    Severe tests in neuroimaging: what we can learn and how we can learn it
    (University of Chicago Press, 2014) Aktunç, Mahir Emrah; Psychology; AKTUNÇ, Mahir Emrah
    Considerable methodological difficulties abound in neuroimaging and several philosophers of science have recently called into question the potential of neuroimaging studies to contribute to our knowledge of human cognition. These skeptical accounts suggest that functional hypotheses are underdetermined by neuroimaging data. I apply Mayo's error-statistical account to clarify the evidential import of neuroimaging data and the kinds of inferences it can reliably support. Thus, we can answer the question 'what can we reliably learn from neuroimaging?' and make sense of how this knowledge can contribute to novel construals of cognition.
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    ArticlePublication
    Productive theory-ladenness in fMRI
    (Springer Nature, 2021-09) Aktunç, Mahir Emrah; Psychology; AKTUNÇ, Mahir Emrah
    Several developments for diverse scientific goals, mostly in physics and physiology, had to take place, which eventually gave us fMRI as one of the central research paradigms of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. This technique stands on solid foundations established by the physics of magnetic resonance and the physiology of hemodynamics and is complimented by computational and statistical techniques. I argue, and support using concrete examples, that these foundations give rise to a productive theory-ladenness in fMRI, which enables researchers to identify and control for the types of methodological and inferential errors. Consequently, this makes it possible for researchers to represent and investigate cognitive phenomena in terms of hemodynamic data and for experimental knowledge to grow independently of large scale theories of cognition.
  • ArticlePublicationOpen Access
    Tackling Duhemian problems: an alternative to skepticism of neuroimaging in philosophy of cognitive science
    (Springer Science+Business Media, 2014-12) Aktunç, Mahir Emrah; Psychology; AKTUNÇ, Mahir Emrah
    Duhem’s problem arises especially in scientific contexts where the tools and procedures of measurement and analysis are numerous and complex. Several philosophers of cognitive science have cited its manifestations in fMRI as grounds for skepticism regarding the epistemic value of neuroimaging. To address these Duhemian arguments for skepticism, I offer an alternative approach based on Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical account in which Duhem's problem is more fruitfully approached in terms of error probabilities. This is illustrated in examples such as the use of probabilistic brain atlases, comparison of different preprocessing protocols with respect to their error characteristics, and statistical modeling of fMRI data. These examples demonstrate the ways in which we can better understand and formulate the general methodological problem and direct the way toward alternative approaches to neuroimaging in philosophy of cognitive science, in which we can be more balanced and productive in our scrutiny of the epistemic value of neuroimaging studies.