Coghlan Simon, D'Alfonso Simon
School of Computing & Information Systems, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Philos Technol. 2021;34(4):1905-1928. doi: 10.1007/s13347-021-00492-1. Epub 2021 Nov 11.
Some claim that digital phenotyping will revolutionize understanding of human psychology and experience and significantly promote human wellbeing. This paper investigates the nature of digital phenotyping in relation to its alleged promise. Unlike most of the literature to date on philosophy and digital phenotyping, which has focused on its ethical aspects, this paper focuses on its epistemic and methodological aspects. The paper advances a tetra-taxonomy involving four scenario types in which knowledge may be acquired from human "digitypes" by digital phenotyping. These scenarios comprise two causal relations and a correlative and constitutive relation that can exist between information generated by digital systems/devices on the one hand and psychological or behavioral phenomena on the other. The paper describes several modes of inference involved in deriving knowledge within these scenarios. After this epistemic mapping, the paper analyzes the possible knowledge potential and limitations of digital phenotyping. It finds that digital phenotyping holds promise of delivering insight into conditions and states as well producing potentially new psychological categories. It also argues that care must be taken that digital phenotyping does not make unwarranted conclusions and is aware of potentially distorting effects in digital sensing and measurement. If digital phenotyping is to truly revolutionize knowledge of human life, it must deliver on a range of fronts, including making accurate forecasts and diagnoses of states and behaviors, providing causal explanations of these phenomena, and revealing important constituents of human conditions, psychology, and experience.
一些人声称，数字表型分析将彻底改变对人类心理和体验的理解，并显著促进人类福祉。本文探讨了数字表型分析的本质及其所谓的前景。与迄今为止大多数关于哲学与数字表型分析的文献不同，那些文献主要关注其伦理方面，本文聚焦于其认识论和方法论方面。本文提出了一种四分法，涉及四种场景类型，在这些场景中，知识可以通过数字表型分析从人类“数字类型”中获取。这些场景包括两种因果关系以及一种相关关系和构成关系，它们可能存在于一方面由数字系统/设备生成的信息与另一方面的心理或行为现象之间。本文描述了在这些场景中获取知识所涉及的几种推理模式。在进行这种认识论映射之后，本文分析了数字表型分析可能的知识潜力和局限性。研究发现，数字表型分析有望深入了解各种状况和状态，并产生潜在的新心理类别。本文还认为，必须注意数字表型分析不要得出毫无根据的结论，并且要意识到数字传感和测量中可能存在的扭曲效应。如果数字表型分析要真正彻底改变对人类生活的认识，它必须在一系列方面取得成效，包括对状态和行为做出准确预测和诊断、对这些现象提供因果解释，以及揭示人类状况、心理和体验的重要组成部分。
