Neuroscience and Critique: Exploring the Limits of the Neurological Turn

245 Pages·2016·1.836 MB·English

by  Jan De Vos, Ed Pluth (eds.)

NEUROSCIENCE AND CRITIQUE
Recent years have seen a rapid growth in neuroscientific research, and an expansion beyond
basic research to incorporate elements of the arts, humanities and social sciences. Some have
suggested that the neurosciences will bring about major transformations in the understand-
ing of our selves, our culture and our society. Ongoing debates within psychology, philoso-
phy and literature about the implications of these developments within the neurosciences,
and the emerging fields of educational neuroscience, neuroeconomics and neuro-aesthetics
also bear witness to a “neurological turn” which is currently taking place.
Neuroscience and Critique is a groundbreaking edited collection that reflects on the impact
of neuroscience in contemporary social science and the humanities. It is the first book to
consider possibilities for a critique of the theories, practices and implications of contemporary
neuroscience. Bringing together leading scholars from several disciplines, the contributors
draw upon a range of perspectives, including cognitive neuroscience, critical philosophy,
psychoanalysis and feminism, and also critically examine several key ideas in contemporary
neuroscience, including:
• The idea of “neural personhood”
• Theories of emotion in affective neuroscience
• Empathy, intersubjectivity and the notion of “embodied simulation”
• The concept of an “emo-rational” actor within neuroeconomics
The volume will stimulate further debate in the emerging field of interdisciplinary studies in
neuroscience and will appeal to researchers and advanced students in a number of disciplines,
including psychology, philosophy and critical studies.
Jan De Vos is a post-doctoral FWO Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical Philosophy
at Ghent University, Belgium. His main research area is that of the neurological turn and its
implications for ideology critique.
Ed Pluth is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at California State University,
Chico, USA. He works on issues and figures in contemporary continental philosophy, with
special attention to how language and the extra-linguistic are put into relation to each other,
and what this relation implies generally about the status of thinking and conscious life.
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NEUROSCIENCE
AND CRITIQUE
Exploring the Limits of the
Neurological Turn
Edited by Jan De Vos and Ed Pluth
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Jan De Vos and Ed Pluth
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Neuroscience and critique: exploring the limits of the neurological turn /
edited by Jan De Vos, Ed Pluth.
p.; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Vos, Jan de, 1967- , editor. II. Pluth, Ed, editor.
[DNLM: 1. Neurosciences. 2. Culture. 3. Humanities. 4. Psychoanalytic Theory. WL 100]
QP360
612.8—dc23
2015021514
ISBN: 978-1-138-88733-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-88735-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-71418-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
List of Contributors vii
Introduction: Who Needs Critique? 1
Jan De Vos and Ed Pluth
PART I
Which Critique? 9
1 The Brain: A Nostalgic Dream: Some Notes on Neuroscience
and the Problem of Modern Knowledge 11
Marc De Kesel
2 What is Critique in the Era of the Neurosciences? 22
Jan De Vos
3 Who Are We, Then, If We Are Indeed Our Brains?
Reconsidering a Critical Approach to Neuroscience 41
Nima Bassiri
4 Neuroscientific Dystopia: Does Naturalism Commit a
Category Mistake? 62
Peter Reynaert
PART II
Some Critiques 79
5 From Global Economic Change to Neuromolecular Capitalism 81
Jessica Pykett
vi Contents
6 What is the Feminist Critique of Neuroscience? A Call for
Dissensus Studies 100
Cynthia Kraus
7 Brain in the Shell: Assessing the Stakes and the Transformative
Potential of the Human Brain Project 117
Philipp Haueis and Jan Slaby
8 Confession of a Weak Reductionist: Responses to Some Recent
Criticisms of My Materialism 141
Adrian Johnston
PART III
Critical Praxes 171
9 The Role of Biology in the Advent of Psychology:
Neuropsychoanalysis and the Foundation of a Mental
Level of Causality 173
Ariane Bazan
10 Embodied Simulation as Second-Person Perspective on
Intersubjectivity 188
Vittorio Gallese
11 Empathy as Developmental Achievement:
Beyond Embodied Simulation 203
Mark Solms

Afterword 221
12 The Fragile Unity of Neuroscience 223
Joseph Dumit
Index 231
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Nima Bassiri, University of Chicago, USA
Ariane Bazan, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Marc De Kesel, Saint-Paul University, Ottawa, Canada
Jan De Vos, Centre for Critical Philosophy, Ghent University, Belgium
Joseph Dumit, University of California Davis, USA
Vittorio Gallese, University of Parma, Italy
Philipp Haueis, Max Planck Institut for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Leipzig, Germany
Adrian Johnston, University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and Emory Psycho-
analytic Institute in Atlanta, USA
Cynthia Kraus, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Ed Pluth, California State University, Chico, USA
Jessica Pykett, University of Birmingham, UK
Peter Reynaert, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Jan Slaby, Free University Berlin, Germany
Mark Solms, University of Cape Town, South Africa
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INTRODUCTION
Who Needs Critique?
Jan De Vos and Ed Pluth
If I have a brain that understands for me, a cortical region who has a conscience for
me, a neural network which decides upon a regimen for me, and so forth, I need
not trouble myself at all. I need not think: (…) others will readily undertake the
irksome business for me.
You might recognize in this passage a rather liberal rewriting of Kant’s famous lines
from “What is Enlightenment?”.1 For Kant, an immature humanity outsourced
its thinking to other people, to external authorities. Today it seems that the brain
has taken over this role. As Elizabeth Rottenberg succinctly remarks in relation to
Kant’s discussion of our immaturity: “it is so nice not to need to think” (R ottenberg,
2012, p. 138).
The concept of interpassivity is relevant here (see Pfaller, 2000; Žižek, 1997).
When we speak, the Other speaks through us, our desire is the Other’s desire … so,
given this situation, why heed any call to do any thinking or desiring for ourselves?
It’s impossible anyway! Rottenberg suggests that there could be a sort of ironic
pleasure in this outsourcing of responsibility: it is so nice not to need to think. The
pleasure itself, if it is too burdensome or awkward, could be outsourced too, and
taken on by the neuro-discourses themselves!
So, maybe Bartleby expresses our current situation very well: we prefer not to
be critical. The neurosciences may be even forcing the humanities to adopt this
extreme passivity, thereby renouncing their historical vocation: for the neurosci-
ences themselves seem to have taken over the role of critique quite well, shattering
so many of our humanist illusions – agency, free will, love, empathy, altruism, none
of these are what they seem to be.