Projects
Current research projects:
(2) 2019-2022 University Social Responsibility Project, National Yang-Ming University.
Video
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Completed research projects:
(1) Defending Structural Realism: A Case Study from the Scientific Practice of the Human Connectome Project (MOST 104-2410-H-010-019)
One of the most important debates in the philosophy of science is the scientific realism debate. According to scientific realists, our best scientific theories are approximately true. According to their anti-realist opponents, our best scientific theories make true claims about the observable, but not about the unobservable. Structural realism has been introduced as a kind of middle ground between scientific realism and anti-realism. Structural realists claim that our best scientific theories tell us about the unobservable structure of the world, but not about any unobservable entities that may instantiate that structure. I aim to move this debate forward by defending a novel position within the position space occupied by structural realists.
What makes my position novel is the way in which I defend it. Philosophers of science involved in the realism debate often defend their positions by appeal to scientific theories in general, as opposed to specific case studies. As a result, they face some serious problems. My first research goal is to introduce a new position, what I call case-based structural realism (CBSR), into the realism debate. The idea behind CBSR is that structural realism should be defended on a case-by-case basis, in which case my position will avoid some of the above-mentioned problems faced by other positions.
In addition, philosophers involved in the realism debate often focus on scientific theories, as opposed to scientific practices more generally. Hence, they have trouble accommodating various theory-independent aspects of science. In some branches of biology and cognitive neuroscience, scientific activity is not as theory-guided as it may be in, say, physics, and scientific achievements may come about in a theory-independent way. My second research goal is to develop CBSR further by focusing on how one can appeal to scientific practice in order to defend structural realism.
Philosophers involved in the realism debate also tend to neglect case studies from cognitive neuroscience. One possible explanation is that, if they focus only on the truth and falsity of scientific theories, they will lack adequate philosophical tools to analyze the scientific activities in cognitive neuroscience, which are highly practice-driven. In my reading of the literature, no one has used case studies from cognitive neuroscience to defend structural realism. My third research goal is to provide such a case study from cognitive neuroscience, which is drawn from the Human Connectome Project, a currently ongoing project that attempts to map the structural and functional connectivity of the brain. I aim to defend CBSR by examining the scientific practices within this case.
(2) The Explanatory Power of Dynamical Models in Systems Science (MOST 105-2410-H-010-003)
Proponents of mechanistic explanation argue that dynamical models in systems science are explanatory if only if they are coordinated with mechanistic models. This idea is encapsulated by Kaplan and Craver’s (2011) model-to-mechanism mapping constraint (the 3M constraint). In contrast, others, like Ross (2015), argue that dynamical models can be explanatory without meeting this constraint. Against Kaplan and Craver, I point out a deficiency in the 3M constraint, namely, that it neglects causal relations among the activities of a mechanism. And against Ross, I argue that the dynamical model in her case study is explanatory in a mechanistic sense. In order to do so, I propose a modified mapping constraint that accords an important role to the kinds of causal relations that Kaplan and Craver neglect, and I show that the dynamical model from Ross’s case study satisfies this modified constraint.
(3) A Practice-Based Account of Mechanistic Explanation in Biological Sciences: A Case Study on Circadian Rhythm (MOST 106-2410-H-010-016)
Completed non-research projects:
(1) Cognitive Development and Aging: Integrative Inquiry from Science, Philosophy, and Bioethics, and Its Application (MOE-104-3-4-003) (project website).
(2) Cognitive Enhancement for Seniors (MOE-106-3-4-008) (project website).
(3) Health Promotion for Senior Mind (MOE-107-3-4-008) (project website).
(4) 2017-2019 University Social Responsibility Project, National Yang-Ming University.
(1) Exploring Cognitive and Epistemological Difficulties in
Conducting Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research
in Psychoneuroimmunology and Neuroimmunology
(MOST-109-2410-H-010-013-MY3)
In this project, I aim to explore potential cognitive and epistemological difficulties faced by scholars conducting cross-disciplinary research (CDR). Specifically, I will empirically examine the extent to which MacLeod’s (2018) and Boon and Van Baalen’s (2019) philosophical analyses of CDR apply to actual scientific practices. I will conduct case-based research on psychoneuroimmunology and neuroimmunology to achieve the above aim. The case-based research is conducted by employing some computational tools, such as Citespace, VOSviewer, and CitNetExplore, and in-depth interview.
In this project, I aim to explore potential cognitive and epistemological difficulties faced by scholars conducting cross-disciplinary research (CDR). Specifically, I will empirically examine the extent to which MacLeod’s (2018) and Boon and Van Baalen’s (2019) philosophical analyses of CDR apply to actual scientific practices. I will conduct case-based research on psychoneuroimmunology and neuroimmunology to achieve the above aim. The case-based research is conducted by employing some computational tools, such as Citespace, VOSviewer, and CitNetExplore, and in-depth interview.
(2) Patient-centered Cancer Care Practice (Collaborate with a research team at Taichung Veterans General Hospital and the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center)
Patient-centered care is a medical goal and value generally pursued in the medical field in recent years. In the literature, patient-centered care is further analyzed from three different perspectives. First is the holistic care perspective. It emphasizes taking care of patients' biomedical problems and paying attention to their psychological, social, and spiritual aspects. The second is the individualized medicine perspective. It means that in clinical care, the uniqueness of individual patients should be considered, including various physiological signs, growth background, values, and beliefs to provide customized care and assistance. The third is the patient autonomy and shared medical decision making perspective. It emphasizes the patient's active role in medical decision-making. Medical decision-making should respect the patient's values and assist patients in every medical process through effective communication to empower the patient's ability to make independent decisions. This project will use the cancer care practice of the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center as our case study because they specialize in cancer care and have developed comprehensive cancer care plans. We will use the qualitative research method of cognitive ethnography to explore the cognitive processes and experiences of relevant medical staff and cancer patients to analyze the actual clinical situation in Taiwan. How does medical staff practice patient-centered care, and how does patient-centered care affect or change the experience of cancer patients? The project has four expected outcomes: First, the project will produce qualitative case study results to identify critical success factors of the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center’s practice. Second, the project will compare and contrast the differences between the practice in Taichung Veterans General Hospital and the practice in the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center. Third, the project will identify which critical success factors are transferable to Taichung Veterans General Hospital. Fourth, among those nontransferable factors, we will develop generalizable care suggestions for Taichung Veterans General Hospital based on the insights from the non transferrable factors.
Patient-centered care is a medical goal and value generally pursued in the medical field in recent years. In the literature, patient-centered care is further analyzed from three different perspectives. First is the holistic care perspective. It emphasizes taking care of patients' biomedical problems and paying attention to their psychological, social, and spiritual aspects. The second is the individualized medicine perspective. It means that in clinical care, the uniqueness of individual patients should be considered, including various physiological signs, growth background, values, and beliefs to provide customized care and assistance. The third is the patient autonomy and shared medical decision making perspective. It emphasizes the patient's active role in medical decision-making. Medical decision-making should respect the patient's values and assist patients in every medical process through effective communication to empower the patient's ability to make independent decisions. This project will use the cancer care practice of the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center as our case study because they specialize in cancer care and have developed comprehensive cancer care plans. We will use the qualitative research method of cognitive ethnography to explore the cognitive processes and experiences of relevant medical staff and cancer patients to analyze the actual clinical situation in Taiwan. How does medical staff practice patient-centered care, and how does patient-centered care affect or change the experience of cancer patients? The project has four expected outcomes: First, the project will produce qualitative case study results to identify critical success factors of the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center’s practice. Second, the project will compare and contrast the differences between the practice in Taichung Veterans General Hospital and the practice in the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center. Third, the project will identify which critical success factors are transferable to Taichung Veterans General Hospital. Fourth, among those nontransferable factors, we will develop generalizable care suggestions for Taichung Veterans General Hospital based on the insights from the non transferrable factors.
Current non-research projects:
(1) 2020-2022 University Social Responsibility HUB Project, National Yang-Ming University.
(2) 2019-2022 University Social Responsibility Project, National Yang-Ming University.
Video
------------------------------------------
Completed research projects:
(1) Defending Structural Realism: A Case Study from the Scientific Practice of the Human Connectome Project (MOST 104-2410-H-010-019)
One of the most important debates in the philosophy of science is the scientific realism debate. According to scientific realists, our best scientific theories are approximately true. According to their anti-realist opponents, our best scientific theories make true claims about the observable, but not about the unobservable. Structural realism has been introduced as a kind of middle ground between scientific realism and anti-realism. Structural realists claim that our best scientific theories tell us about the unobservable structure of the world, but not about any unobservable entities that may instantiate that structure. I aim to move this debate forward by defending a novel position within the position space occupied by structural realists.
What makes my position novel is the way in which I defend it. Philosophers of science involved in the realism debate often defend their positions by appeal to scientific theories in general, as opposed to specific case studies. As a result, they face some serious problems. My first research goal is to introduce a new position, what I call case-based structural realism (CBSR), into the realism debate. The idea behind CBSR is that structural realism should be defended on a case-by-case basis, in which case my position will avoid some of the above-mentioned problems faced by other positions.
In addition, philosophers involved in the realism debate often focus on scientific theories, as opposed to scientific practices more generally. Hence, they have trouble accommodating various theory-independent aspects of science. In some branches of biology and cognitive neuroscience, scientific activity is not as theory-guided as it may be in, say, physics, and scientific achievements may come about in a theory-independent way. My second research goal is to develop CBSR further by focusing on how one can appeal to scientific practice in order to defend structural realism.
Philosophers involved in the realism debate also tend to neglect case studies from cognitive neuroscience. One possible explanation is that, if they focus only on the truth and falsity of scientific theories, they will lack adequate philosophical tools to analyze the scientific activities in cognitive neuroscience, which are highly practice-driven. In my reading of the literature, no one has used case studies from cognitive neuroscience to defend structural realism. My third research goal is to provide such a case study from cognitive neuroscience, which is drawn from the Human Connectome Project, a currently ongoing project that attempts to map the structural and functional connectivity of the brain. I aim to defend CBSR by examining the scientific practices within this case.
(2) The Explanatory Power of Dynamical Models in Systems Science (MOST 105-2410-H-010-003)
Proponents of mechanistic explanation argue that dynamical models in systems science are explanatory if only if they are coordinated with mechanistic models. This idea is encapsulated by Kaplan and Craver’s (2011) model-to-mechanism mapping constraint (the 3M constraint). In contrast, others, like Ross (2015), argue that dynamical models can be explanatory without meeting this constraint. Against Kaplan and Craver, I point out a deficiency in the 3M constraint, namely, that it neglects causal relations among the activities of a mechanism. And against Ross, I argue that the dynamical model in her case study is explanatory in a mechanistic sense. In order to do so, I propose a modified mapping constraint that accords an important role to the kinds of causal relations that Kaplan and Craver neglect, and I show that the dynamical model from Ross’s case study satisfies this modified constraint.
(3) A Practice-Based Account of Mechanistic Explanation in Biological Sciences: A Case Study on Circadian Rhythm (MOST 106-2410-H-010-016)
Bechtel (2015) uses a case study on circadian rhythms to argue for some kind of explanatory power for graph-theoretic models. He maintains that these models can provide a “distinctive explanation” (220) that “mechanistic or dynamic mechanistic explanation of mechanisms” (201) cannot provide. This is because graph-theoretic models can generalize their explanatory power to types/tokens of mechanisms in virtue of abstraction techniques. But Bechtel’s work is unclear regarding whether he takes this distinctive explanation to be a subtype of mechanistic explanation or a kind of non-mechanistic explanation, such as topological explanation defended by Huneman (2010). In this project, I aim to provide an in-depth analysis of Bechtel’s case study by conducting both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the relevant literature. I aim to show that the graph-theoretic model in the case study provides neither mechanistic nor topological explanation. Instead, researchers use the model as a tool to engage in model-based reasoning. This in turn helps them generate testable hypotheses to further implement their mechanistic explanatory strategy. I conclude by offering a general receipt for conducting a practice-based analysis of explanatory strategy underlying modeling practices.
(4) Developing Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment Tools for Taiwanese Spirituality (TCVGH-YM1070301; TCVGH-YM1070302; TCVGH-YM1070303; TCVGH-YM1070304) (Collaborate with a research team at Taichung Veterans General Hospital)
(5) Using a Computational Approach to Study Exemplars in Biological
Sciences: Heart-Rate Variability from 1970-2016 (MOST 107-2410-H-010
-008 -MY2)
This project aims to address the following two questions: Are Kuhnian paradigms applicable to biological sciences? If so, what information about biological sciences can we gain from applying these paradigms? Yan, Tsai, and Huang (2017) argue that Kuhnian paradigms are also applicable to biological sciences provided that one adopts Rouse’s practice-based understanding of Kuhnian paradigm. We argue for this claim by analyzing 19,795 articles on heart-rate variability (HRV) from 1970 to 2016. We use three sets of tools to conduct our analyses: (1) a large-scale citation analysis, (2) a large-scale qualitative analysis, and (3) a large-scale text analysis. The resulting data supports the claim that there is a significant relationship between the quantitative and qualitative changes of HRV field and the publication of one highly cited review article. We then analyze the review article in detail and show that standardizing HRV practices is the core achievement of the article. We then suggest that a practice-based Kuhnian paradigm provides an understanding of how the standardizing work influences the quantitative and qualitative change of HRV field. In this project, I aim to apply a more advanced set of computational tools to analyze our preliminary data in order to validiate our interpreation of the HRV field based on a practice-based Kuhnian pardigm.
This project aims to address the following two questions: Are Kuhnian paradigms applicable to biological sciences? If so, what information about biological sciences can we gain from applying these paradigms? Yan, Tsai, and Huang (2017) argue that Kuhnian paradigms are also applicable to biological sciences provided that one adopts Rouse’s practice-based understanding of Kuhnian paradigm. We argue for this claim by analyzing 19,795 articles on heart-rate variability (HRV) from 1970 to 2016. We use three sets of tools to conduct our analyses: (1) a large-scale citation analysis, (2) a large-scale qualitative analysis, and (3) a large-scale text analysis. The resulting data supports the claim that there is a significant relationship between the quantitative and qualitative changes of HRV field and the publication of one highly cited review article. We then analyze the review article in detail and show that standardizing HRV practices is the core achievement of the article. We then suggest that a practice-based Kuhnian paradigm provides an understanding of how the standardizing work influences the quantitative and qualitative change of HRV field. In this project, I aim to apply a more advanced set of computational tools to analyze our preliminary data in order to validiate our interpreation of the HRV field based on a practice-based Kuhnian pardigm.
(6) Joint Attention and Action in Caring and Living with Illness
Illness qua experience is different from disease qua dysfunctional
biological mechanism (Carel, 2016, pp. 15-16). Moreover, illness is a
transformative type of experience in the sense that it radically
transforms the relationship between one’s own embodiment or agency and
one’s lived world (Carel, 2016, p. 14). Because of this radical
transformation, it makes the experiential content and structure of
illness difficult to understand and share, and hence compromise the
quality of caring in clinical contexts. Without a properly designed
training protocol, it is difficult for caregivers and health
professionals to care illness in an epistemically just way, and it is
also difficult for patients to live with illness in a positive and
fruitful way. In this paper, I will suggest a training protocol to
improve the quality of caring and living with illness. This is what I
call “joint attention and action technique” (JAAT). JAAT is inspired by
Carel’s (2016, pp. 197-203) phenomenological toolkit. Her idea is to use
her tool to import phenomenological insights to empower both patients
and health professionals to articulate and understand illness. My
proposal still employs her insights, but it differs from her work in
that it centers on the role of joint attention, and is designed within
the framework of joint action, i.e., “multiple people coordinate their
actions to perform a task together” (Vesper et al. 2016, p.1). JAAT can
bring ill people, caregivers, health professionals together to engage in
a process of joint action. The achievement of joint action then becomes
the basis of sharable, testable, and improvable understanding of
illness. JAAT involves four steps: (1) jointly shift attention away from
the relationship between illness and disease, (2) jointly refocus
attention on illness as dynamical patterns of experiential and meaning
structures based on the interactive relationships between patients and
health professionals/caregivers, (3) jointly coordinate forms of living with and caring illness, and (4) test the degree of coordination.
(7) Developing a Philosophy for the Science of Spiritual Well-Being
In
recent years, experts in the fields of sociology, economics,
psychology, clinical healthcare, and social work have devoted themselves
to the research of the science of well-being. Spiritual well-being has
also become a research topic in the science of well-being. Well-being
science is a science because researchers in this field assume that
well-being is an object that can be objectively measured. They use
specific research methods to illustrate how to objectively use
measurement tools to measure a particular construct that represents
well-being. This project will examine the research methods in the
well-being science. We will use the research tools from scientometrics
and the philosophy of science to conduct quantitative and qualitative
analyses of a large number of scientific literature on spiritual
well-being. Based on the results of the literature analysis, we will
further examine the relevant methodological details. This project aims
to produce a comprehensive evaluation report on the methods of spiritual
well-being science, and point out the areas that need to be
strengthened, and how to use existing resources from the philosophy of
medicine to improve it. The expected effect of this research is to
optimize the spiritual well-being assessment tools used by clinical
healthcare professionals.
(8) Philosophical Issues about the COVID-19 Pandemic (MOST 109-2321-B-010-007)
This project focuses on the following three issues in the pandemic: (1) epistemic dependence and epistemic trust, (2) distributive justice in the allocation of medical resources, and (3) government transparency and participatory democracy. The project aims to produce journal articles, policy analyses, and public philosophy articles and videos to enhance philosophical discussion among the government and the public.
(9) Assessing Cognition of Spirituality and Predicting Local
Effectiveness of Caring Strategies (Collaborate with a research team at
Taichung Veterans General Hospital)
In the past two decades, we face increasing demand for appropriate tools
in order to assess aspects of spirituality that is an essential part of
the holistic care. Currently, clinical researchers heavily rely on
quantitative questionnaires to perform assessment tasks. But in our own
research experience, it seems to us that using the questionnaires alone
cannot assess what actual cognitive contents of spirituality our
subjects have in mind. Without this concrete and specific information,
it is very difficult to develop an effective and personalized caring
strategy for an individual subject. Thus, in this research project, we
aim to develop a new assessment method that integrates qualitative and
quantitative methods within a single experimental design. We will
contrast this with the experimental design that only uses quantitative
questionnaires. The contrast aims to compare and examine which design
works better with our subjects. We aim to show that our new integrated
method works better because it can assess the actual cognitive cognitive
contents of spirituality from each subject, and also provide predictive
information about which type of spiritual care is going be more
effective for a subject.
Completed non-research projects:
(1) Cognitive Development and Aging: Integrative Inquiry from Science, Philosophy, and Bioethics, and Its Application (MOE-104-3-4-003) (project website).
(2) Cognitive Enhancement for Seniors (MOE-106-3-4-008) (project website).
(3) Health Promotion for Senior Mind (MOE-107-3-4-008) (project website).
(4) 2017-2019 University Social Responsibility Project, National Yang-Ming University.