Guest, Olivia and Scharfenberg, Natalia and van Rooij, Iris (2025) Modern Alchemy: Neurocognitive Reverse Engineering. [Preprint]

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Abstract

The cognitive sciences, especially at the intersections with computer science, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience, propose `reverse engineering' the mind or brain as a viable methodology. We show three important issues with this stance: 1) Reverse engineering proper is not a single method and follows a different path when uncovering an engineered substance versus a computer. 2) These two forms of reverse engineering are incompatible. We cannot safely reason from attempts to reverse engineer a substance to attempts to reverse engineer a computational system, and vice versa. Such flawed reasoning rears its head, for instance, when neurocognitive scientists reason about what artificial neural networks and brains have in common using correlations or structural similarity. 3) While neither type of reverse engineering can make sense of non-engineered entities, both are applied in incompatible and mix-and-matched ways in cognitive scientists' thinking about computational models of cognition. This results in treating mind as a substance; a methodological manoeuvre that is, in fact, incompatible with computationalism. We formalise how neurocognitive scientists reason (metatheoretical calculus) and show how this leads to serious errors. Finally, we discuss what this means for those who ascribe to computationalism, and those who do not.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Guest, Olivia olivia.guest@donders.ru.nl 0000-0002-1891-0972 Scharfenberg, Natalia van Rooij, Iris i.vanrooij@donders.ru.nl
Keywords:	mutliple realisability, reverse engineering, computational cognitive neuroscience, metatheoretical calculus, computationalism
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Computation Specific Sciences > Engineering General Issues > Models and Idealization
Depositing User:	Olivia Guest
Date Deposited:	13 May 2025 13:02
Last Modified:	13 May 2025 13:02
Item ID:	25289
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Computation Specific Sciences > Engineering General Issues > Models and Idealization
Date:	12 May 2025
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/25289

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