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Quantifying What Is Efficacious Yet Not Observable: Cognitive Neuroscience's Measurement Problem Has a Solution

Tom Froese

Cognitive Science2026https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70170article
AJG 3
Weight
0.37

What the paper says

Cognitive neuroscience faces a measurement problem: core features of the human mind cannot be directly observed in the brain. For example, intentions are efficacious in behavior generation yet cannot be reduced to the sub-personal quantities of neural activity without losing their purpose-driven, normative character. This instrumental limitation is fundamental yet remains insufficiently recognized. To bring this issue to the forefront and reorient the field toward a solution, this brief commentary argues that theories of the mind-brain relation must meet the "Participation Criterion": they must specify what measurable difference the presence of mental efficacy produces compared to its absence. When the Participation Criterion is accepted alongside the measurement problem, a feasible solution arises: the dynamical relevance of unobservable mental efficacy may manifest indirectly as increased unpredictability of observable brain activity, quantifiable via information-theoretic entropy. The concept of "irruption" is introduced to specifically formalize this efficacy-derived part of unexplained variability, thereby reframing context-dependent "noise" in the brain as a key signature of the intentional mind at work. The theoretical proposal offers new avenues for research in cognitive science and clinical interventions.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70170

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@article{tom2026,
  title        = {{Quantifying What Is Efficacious Yet Not Observable: Cognitive Neuroscience's Measurement Problem Has a Solution}},
  author       = {Tom Froese},
  journal      = {Cognitive Science},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70170},
}

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Quantifying What Is Efficacious Yet Not Observable: Cognitive Neuroscience's Measurement Problem Has a Solution

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Evidence weight

0.37

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06
M · momentum0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.