Neuroimaging and Inferential Distance: The Perils of Pictures

Abstract

This chapter focuses on neuroimaging and inferential distance. It discusses the role played by various neuroimaging techniques in understanding brain activity, with special emphasis on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and provides information on the interpretation of neuroimages and its epistemic status. The chapter examines the relation between conclusions of cognitive neuroimaging studies and the data on which they are based, and provides a detailed discussion on the mismatch between actual inferential distance and the apparent inferential distance between neuroimages. It also discusses the role of photography in neuroimaging studies, with its three prominent features: Mimesis, counterfactual dependence, and theory-independence.