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Choice models and realistic ontologies: three challenges to neuro-psychological modellers

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Abstract

Choice modellers are frequently criticized for failing to provide accurate representations of the neuro-psychological substrates of decisions. Several authors maintain that recent neuro-psychological findings enable choice modellers to overcome this alleged shortcoming. Some advocate a realistic interpretation of neuro-psychological models of choice, according to which these models posit sub-personal entities with specific neuro-psychological counterparts and characterize those entities accurately. In this article, I articulate and defend three complementary arguments to demonstrate that, contrary to emerging consensus, even the best available neuro-psychological models of choice cannot be justifiably given this realistic interpretation. Moreover, I explicate what challenges will continue to hamper neuro-psychological modellers’ attempts to substantiate a realistic interpretation of their models. In doing so, I draw on the literature on scientific modelling to advance the ongoing philosophical discussion concerning the ontological status of the sub-personal entities posited in distinct decision sciences, the resemblance relations that supposedly connect choice models and the neuro-psychological substrates of decisions, and what conditions these models must satisfy to be regarded as realistic representations of their target systems.

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Notes

  1. I shall speak of neuro-psychological models broadly so as to include neuroeconomic models in this category. Over the last decade, different approaches to neuroeconomic modelling have been developed (see e.g. Fumagalli 2010, 2015). I shall comment on these approaches in various places throughout the paper. For now, it suffices to observe that my critique bears on both ‘behavioral economics in the scanner’ and ‘neurocellular economics’ (Ross 2008a), but does not extend to works that do not presuppose the realistic interpretation I target (see e.g. Harrison and Ross 2010).

  2. Similar categorizations have been proposed in specific decision sciences. For instance, Mäki (1992, 329) defines idealizing assumptions in economic theory as: referentially realistic when they can be taken to refer to non-fictitious target systems; representationally realistic when they represent features that are actually possessed by their target systems; and veristically realistic when they characterize these features accurately. Adopting Mäki’s terminology, the proponents of the realistic interpretation of neuro-psychological models of choice may be said to regard these models as referentially, representationally and veristically realistic representations of the neuro-psychological substrates of decisions.

  3. Some authors take the contrast between economic and neuro-psychological models of choice to be even more profound than what I suggest. For instance, Ross et al. (2008, viii) claim that standard economic models do not rest on specific assumptions as to what sort of entities (e.g. individuals, firms, countries) representative agents supposedly map onto. In their view, the agents posited by economic models are representative optimizers whose ontological status is indeterminate. I do not assess these claims here, as my contrast between realistic and other interpretations of choice models holds irrespective of their cogency.

  4. In this article, I examine a wide array of sub-personal posits, ranging from individual neurons to neuro-psychological processes, cognitive modules and multiple selves. My three challenges do not have equivalent implications for models that postulate distinct kinds of posits. However, even the best available neuro-psychological models fail to meet at least some of my three challenges (see Sections 3–5).

  5. Similar concerns arise regarding other entrenched neuro-psychological categorizations (see e.g. Gigerenzer and Regier 1996, on the divide between associative and rule-based systems proposed by Sloman 1996; see also Evans 2008, on the distinction between intuitive and reflective judgments made by Kahneman and Frederick 2002).

  6. Analogous remarks apply to other controversies in neuro-psychology. By way of illustration, consider the debate concerning the alleged existence of systematic mappings between cognitive functions and brain structures. Once precise definitions of cognitive function and brain structure are provided, there will presumably be some fact of the matter as to what kinds of mappings hold between these relata. Unfortunately, attempts to settle these issues have been plagued by widespread ambiguities in the use of those notions (see e.g. Price and Friston 2005).

  7. I gloss over additional criticisms of the statistical manipulations and corrections implemented in neuro-psychological studies, since these criticisms are already well advanced in the specialized disciplinary literatures (see e.g. Harrison 2008, on the propagation of standard errors of estimates in neuroeconomic studies, and Vul et al. 2009, on endemically inflated correlations in social neuroscience articles).

  8. The notion of stimulus underlying the distinction between ‘stimulus-bound’ rewards and ‘non-stimulus-bound’ choice alternatives is amenable to further analysis. In the text, I speak of stimuli that involve perceptual contact with actual or imaginary triggers to reflect how reward valuation tasks are typically operationalized in neuro-psychological research.

  9. For example, some (e.g. Schelling 1978) represent agents’ behaviour as the solution of a bargaining game among several competing sub-agents. For their part, others (e.g. Benabou and Tirole 2003) model decisions as the sequential equilibrium of a signaling game between multiple selves, each controlling the agent’s behaviour during distinct temporal intervals.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Cristina Bicchieri, Isabelle Drouet, Francesco Guala, Wade Hands, Uskali Mäki, Don Ross, Armin Schulz, Jack Vromen, and Jesús Zamora Bonilla for their comments on previous versions of this paper. I also benefited from the observations of audiences at the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Helsinki, the Tübingen Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, the 11th INEM Conference at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the 13th Conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter, and the Behavioral Ethics Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

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    Roberto Fumagalli

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Fumagalli, R. Choice models and realistic ontologies: three challenges to neuro-psychological modellers. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 6, 145–164 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-015-0134-9

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