Inter-Level Explanatory Reduction in Biology: Assessing Reductive Strategies in the Neurogenetic Explanation of Reproductive Attraction in C. elegans

University Of Utah, Salt Lake City UT

Investigators

Abstract

The holy grail of behavioral neuroscience is a complete explanation of complex behavior in terms of its underlying micro-biological components. Is it possible to provide a "complete" biologically reductive explanation of behavior that sort? In classical philosophical models of reduction, higher-level theories can, in principle, be completely analyzed away or eliminated by appeal to privileged lower-level theories. However, it has become apparent that this model does not capture the way investigators in the biologically informed sciences actually carry out their research. Scientists use "inter-level" reductionist strategies that do not privilege a particular level of description, but instead capitalize on the conjunction of both lower-level and higher-level properties in order to achieve research and explanatory goals. A number of questions are open regarding the adequacy of inter-level models of explanatory reduction. Three questions guide the current project: (1) Which levels are most salient for research and explanatory purposes? (2) How do different levels map onto each other in the research and explanation? (3) What are the epistemic payoffs (and costs) to favoring inter-level explanatory reductions? To address these three questions in a systematic and empirically informed manner, the PI will devote a full academic year to obtaining first-hand experience in a neurogenetics laboratory that explicitly adopts an inter-level reductionist strategy to study pheromone-mediated reproductive attraction and avoidance behavior in C. elegans. The importance of the project rests in its advancement of scholarship on the nature and limits of inter-level reductive explanations. Additionally, it will facilitate interdisciplinary exchanges between philosophy and biology faculty. Understanding the causal determinants of behavior, even in simple organisms such as C. elegans, may also have an impact on how we understand the nature of voluntary and responsible actions in general.