The Possibility of Paradigms, Incommensurability and the Idea of Progress in Neuroscience

This article examines how neuroscientific theories can be understood in the context of the philosophy of science. It discusses whether these theories are better explained by Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigms or by Imre Lakatos’s theory of research programmes. First, the article evaluates three examples from the history of neuroscience (localization theory, the neuron doctrine, and the contrast between behaviorism and cognitivism) using Kuhn’s criteria for paradigms. Then, it argues that even though clear paradigms may not exist in neuroscience, there is still a strong lack of communication between different theories. To describe this situation, the article introduces a new idea called “narrow-scoped incommensurability.” After that, it explores the benefits of understanding neuroscientific theories as Lakatosian research programmes. It shows that historical examples which do not match the paradigm model can actually be explained well by Lakatos’s model. Two examples from neuroscience (place cells and mirror neurons) are used to show that scientific progress in neuroscience is possible in the Lakatosian sense. According to the article’s conclusions, the reason why paradigms in neuroscience are (for now) impossible is that paradigms require a long historical development, and neuroscience has not yet produced a theory that meets these historical conditions. Instead, seeing neuroscientific theories as research programmes gives us a more pluralistic, historical, and explanatory perspective on the philosophy of neuroscience.