The neurosciences challenge the ‘standard social science’ model of human behaviour particularly with reference to violence. Although explanations of violence are interdisciplinary it remains controversial to work across the division between the social and biological sciences. Neuroscience can be subject to familiar sociological critiques of scientism and reductionism but this paper considers whether this view should be reassessed. Concepts of brain plasticity and epigenetics could prompt reconsideration of the dichotomy of the social and natural while raising questions about the intersections (...) of materiality, embodiment and social action. Although violence is intimately bound up with the body, sociologies of both violence and the body remain on the surface and rarely go under the skin or skulls of violent actors. This article argues for a non-reductionist realist explanation of violent behaviour that is also interdisciplinary and offers the potential to generate nuanced understandings of violent processes. It concludes that sociology should engage critically and creatively with the neuroscience of violence. (shrink)

in a nervous system of a given species. This chapter provides a critical perspective on the role of connectomes in neuroscientific practice and asks how the connectomic approach fits into a larger context in which network thinking permeates technology, infrastructure, social life, and the economy. In the first part of this chapter, we argue that, seen from the perspective of ongoing research, the notion of connectomes as “complete descriptions” is misguided. Our argument combines Rachel Ankeny’s analysis of neuroanatomical wiring diagrams (...) as “descriptive models” with Hans-Joerg Rheinberger’s notion of “epistemic objects,” i.e., targets of research that are still partially unknown. Combining these aspects we conclude that connectomes are constitutively epistemic objects: there just is no way to turn them into permanent and complete technical standards because the possibilities to map connection properties under different modeling assumptions are potentially inexhaustible. In the second part of the chapter, we use this understanding of connectomes as constitutively epistemic objects in order to critically assess the historical and political dimensions of current neuroscientific research. We argue that connectomics shows how the notion of the “brain as a network” has become the dominant metaphor of contemporary brain research. We further point out that this metaphor shares (potentially problematic) affinities to the form of contemporary “network societies.” We close by pointing out how the relation between connectomes and networks in society could be used in a more fruitful manner. (shrink)

This article is an account of the dynamics of interaction across the social sciences and neurosciences. Against an arid rhetoric of ‘interdisciplinarity’, it calls for a more expansive imaginary of what experiment – as practice and ethos – might offer in this space. Arguing that opportunities for collaboration between social scientists and neuroscientists need to be taken seriously, the article situates itself against existing conceptualizations of these dynamics, grouping them under three rubrics: ‘critique’, ‘ebullience’ and ‘interaction’. Despite their differences, each (...) insists on a distinction between sociocultural and neurobiological knowledge, or does not show how a more entangled field might be realized. The article links this absence to the ‘regime of the inter-’, an ethic of interdisciplinarity that guides interaction between disciplines on the understanding of their pre-existing separateness. The argument of the paper is thus twofold: (1) that, contra the ‘regime of the inter-’, it is no longer practicable to maintain a hygienic separation between sociocultural webs and neurobiological architecture; (2) that the cognitive neuroscientific experiment, as a space of epistemological and ontological excess, offers an opportunity to researchers, from all disciplines, to explore and register this realization. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the concept of robustness in neuroscience. Various mechanisms for making systems robust have been discussed across biology and neuroscience. Many of these notions originate from engineering. I argue that concepts borrowed from engineering aid neuroscientists in operationalizing robustness, formulating hypotheses about mechanisms for robustness, and quantifying robustness. Furthermore, I argue that the significant disanalogies between brains and engineered artifacts raise important questions about the applicability of the engineering framework. I argue that the use of such (...) concepts should be understood as a kind of simplifying idealization. (shrink)

Abstract:This short article proposes a conceptual structure for “neurolaw,” modeled loosely on the bipartite division of the sister field of neuroethics by Adina Roskies into the “ethics of neuroscience” and the “neuroscience of ethics.” As normative fields addressing the implications of scientific discoveries and expanding technological capacities affecting the brain, “neurolaw” and neuroethics have followed parallel paths. Similar foundational questions arise for both about the validity and utility of recognizing them as distinct subfields of law and ethics, respectively. In both, (...) a useful distinction can be drawn between a self-reflexive inquiry (the neuroscience of ethics and law) and an inquiry into the development and use of brain science and technologies (the ethics and law of neuroscience). In both fields, these two forms of inquiry interact in interesting ways. In addition to a proposed conceptual structure for neurolaw, the article also addresses the neurolegal versions of the critiques made against neuroethics, including charges of reductionism, fact/value confusion, and biological essentialism. (shrink)

An estimated 15% of patients seen by neurologists have neurological symptoms, such as paralysis, tremors, dystonia, or seizures, that cannot be medically explained. For a long time, such patients were diagnosed as having conversion disorder and referred to psychiatrists, but for the last two decades or so, neurologists have started to pay more serious attention to this patient group. Instead of maintaining the commonly used label of conversion disorder – which refers to Freud’s idea that traumatic events can be converted (...) into deviant behaviour – these neurologists use the term functional neurological disorder and explain that the problems are due to abnormal central nervous system functioning. The situation that some patients with medically unexplained neurological symptoms are diagnosed with CD and treated by psychiatrists while others are diagnosed with FND and stay under the control of neurologists provides a unique case for analysing how neurological and psychological explanations affect subjectivity. In this article, I compare patient reports from English-language websites from the past 15 years to find out how minds, bodies, brains, and selves act and interact in the accounts of both patient groups. I conclude that the change in label from CD to FND has not only influenced ideas of medically unexplained disorders, but also affected ideas of the self and the body; of self-control and accountability. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that thinking in terms of process metaphysics and seeing the mind and mental disorders as processual in nature allows for a more complete understanding of mental disorders than is allowed by non-processual frameworks, while it also allows us to incorporate what we currently know about them. In addition, it can address problems in psychiatry that arise when we ask the wrong kinds of questions that naturally arise within a non-processual metaphysical framework. In this paper I (...) address the problems of reductionism, essentialism and dualism. -/- . (shrink)

Our species of hominin, Homo sapiens, is an extremely social animal. We are born with social brains. The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl is a methodological approach to social consciousness that offers significant advantages in terms of uncovering and describing the essential structures of our social perceptions and actions. This is especially true in this period of post-neuro-turn social science, because the structures described by Husserlian “pure” phenomenology with its emphasis upon “returning to the things,” performing reductions, and developing the skills (...) available to the phenomenological attitude are in synch with neuroscientific research on the neural correlates of consciousness. For the anthropology of consciousness, the Husserlian methodology allows us to explore consciousness in cross-cultural settings in greater detail and depth of understanding. This is especially the case with respect to the experience of intersubjectivity, the roots of which are found to be part of the inherent life-world that all normal humans depend upon to true their experiences of the environing world, regardless of cultural background. The Husserlian approach to intersubjectivity challenges the discipline of anthropology to move past its knee-jerk distinction between nature and nurture, and its erroneous assumption that human experience is somehow “culture all the way down.”. (shrink)

The neuroscience of morality presents novel approaches in exploring the cognitive and affective underpinnings of moral conduct, and is steadily accumulating influence within discursive frames of biocitizenship. Many claims are infused with varieties of neuro-actuarialism in governing morally risky subjects, with implications that other fields should observe closely. Sociologists and other social scientists, however, have typically been reluctant to interject their expertise. However, a resurgent sociology of morality offers the means by which closer engagement may be realized. In encouraging this (...) interdisciplinarity, a brief outline of recent developments in the neuroscience of morality is provided. Some interdisciplinary collaborations are then explored, which weave together novel methodological affordances from the neurosciences with conceptual models from sociological inquiry. A brief overview of ‘neuroliberalism’ follows, to concretize the growing appeal and practical application of the psy- and neurosciences in governing moral conduct. Finally, some tentative ‘provocations’ are offered, towards fostering moralities that, ultimately, we can live with. (shrink)

This article looks at negotiations with state authorities and the evidentiary criteria they create in culturally contrasting contexts when phenomena deal with elements that for the dominant society are conceptualized as “supernatural.” We draw from the level of experiences of other-than-human beings, especially spirits and “ungraspable” presences, as social practices in and of themselves as well as acts of mobilizing those which are meaningful for knowledge production in Indigenous Amazonia and North European contexts. Our two cases show how in state (...) territorial protection debates and health services, visibility, quantification, measurability, Euro-American dominant, mainly binary, and bounded concepts are employed to create the grounds of validity. Yet, for actual individual or collective experiences, new types of evidence work can emerge in collaborations. Thus, this article sheds light on the needs for contextual and communicative actions to overcome contrasting onto-epistemologies in the context of the state. (shrink)

Since its emergence in the early 2000s, neuroethics has become a recognized, institutionalized and professionalized field. A central strategy for its successful development has been the claim that it must be an autonomous discipline, distinct in particular from bioethics. Such claim has been justified by the conviction, sustained since the 1990s by the capabilities attributed to neuroimaging technologies, that somehow ‘the mind is the brain’, that the brain sciences can illuminate the full range of human experience and behavior, and that (...) neuroscientific knowledge will have dramatic implications for views of the human, and challenge supposedly established beliefs and practices in domains ranging from self and personhood to the political organization of society. This article examines how that conviction functions as neuroethics’ ideological condition of possibility. (shrink)

Depictions of children in British science fiction and horror films in the early 1960s introduced a new but dominant trope: the ‘extraordinary’ child. Extraordinary children, I suggest, are disturbing because they violate expected developmental norms, drawing on discourses from both the ‘psy’ sciences and early neuroscience. This post-war trope has been considered by film and literature scholars in the past five years, but this existing work tends to present the extraordinary child as an American phenomenon, and links these depictions to (...) adults’ psychoanalytical anxieties about parenthood and the family. This article, considering Village of the Damned (1960), Children of the Damned (1963), The Damned (1963), and Lord of the Flies (1963), will contend that the extraordinary child was British before it was American, and tapped as much into nuclear anxieties generated by the early Cold War as fears about the ‘permissive society’, especially given that many of these films preceded the peak of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ and were based on British science fiction of the 1950s. The ‘psy science’ that was dominant in these films was developmental psychology, not psychoanalysis. Moreover, adolescents as well as adults were key audiences for these films. Drawing on self-narrative essays written by English adolescents aged 14 to 16 between 1962 and 1966, I will demonstrate that this age group employed their own fears of nuclear war and their knowledge of psychological language to challenge adult authority, presenting a counter-narrative to adult conceptions of the abnormal and irresponsible ‘rising generation’. (shrink)

The increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to help facilitate neuroscience adds a new level of complexity to the question of how ethical issues of such research can be identified and addressed. Current research ethics practice, based on ethics reviews by institutional review boards (IRB) and underpinned by ethical principalism, has been widely criticised and even called ‘imperialist’. In this paper, we develop an alternative way of approaching ethics in neuro-ICT research, based on discourse ethics, which implements responsible (...) research and innovation through dialogues. We draw on our work in Ethics Support, using the Human Brain Project as empirical evidence of the viability of this approach. (shrink)

Discourses on Responsible Innovation and Responsible Research and Innovation, in short RI, have revolved around but not elaborated on the notion of critique. In this article, generative critique is introduced to RI as a practice that sits in-between adversarial armchair critique and co-opted, uncritical service. How to position oneself and be positioned on this spectrum has puzzled humanities scholars and social scientists who engage in interdisciplinary collaborations with scientists, engineers, and other professionals. Recently, generative critique has been presented as a (...) solution to the puzzle in interdisciplinary collaborations on neuroscientific experiments. Generative critique seeks to create connections across disciplines that help remake seemingly stable objects in moments when taken-for-granted ways of seeing and approaching objects are unsettled. In order to translate generative critique from the neurosciences to RI, socio-technical integration research is proposed as a practice of generative critique in interdisciplinary RI collaborations. These collaborations aim to account for societal aspects in research and technology development. For this purpose, a variety of approaches have been developed, including STIR and video-reflexive ethnography. STIR and VRE resemble each other but diverge on affective, collaborative, and temporal dimensions. Their juxtaposition serves to develop suggestions for how STIR could be modified on these dimensions to better enact generative critique in interdisciplinary RI collaborations. In this way, the article contributes to ongoing discussions in RI and in the engaged programme in science and technology studies more broadly on the dynamics of positioning in collaborative work. (shrink)

The scientific concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each used independently of the other; uses that simultaneously evoke and obscure their historical connections. In this paper, I aim to illustrate the relevance of examining one of these historical connections for studying the current uses of these two concepts in neuroimaging experiments. To this end, I will highlight interdependent associations within the histories of each of the concepts that continue to contribute to their independent uses.That mental imagery and hallucinations are (...) used independently of each other is evident in the way that each concept influences investigations in isolation of the other. Within the neurosciences, mental imagery is... (shrink)

The concept of a socially extended mind suggests that our cognitive processes are extended not simply by the various tools and technologies we use, but by other minds in our intersubjective interactions and, more systematically, by institutions that, like tools and technologies, enable and sometimes constitute our cognitive processes. In this article we explore the potential of this concept to facilitate the development of a critical neuroscience. We explicate the concept of cognitive institution and suggest that science itself is a (...) good example. Science, through various practices and rules, shapes our cognitive activity so as to constitute a certain type of knowledge, packaged with relevant skills and techniques. To develop this example, we focus on neuroscience, its cultural impact, and the various institutional entanglements that complicate its influence on reframing conceptions of self and subjectivity, and on defining what questions count as important and what kind of answers will be valued. (shrink)

It was no accident that the first neuroscience community, the Neurosciences Research Program (NRP), took shape in the 1960s at MIT, the birthplace of cybernetics. Francis O. Schmitt, known as the founding father of the NRP, was a famous biologist and an avid reader of cybernetics. Focusing on the intellectual and institutional context that Schmitt was situated in, this article unveils the way that the brain was conceptualized as a distinct object, requiring the launch of a new research community in (...) the US. In doing so, this article moves beyond the dominant narratives on the triumph of molecularization of the brain at the beginning of neuroscience. Instead, it argues that what brought researchers together in the name of neuroscience was not just a molecule but an aspiration to develop biological theories of the brain/mind, which resonated with biologists in a postwar context and was materialized through support for basic research. The article highlights the tension over the computerization and molecularization of the brain, which shaped the interdisciplinary gathering of neuroscientists in the context of growing interest in basic research. Thereby, this article reveals the rise of theoretical concerns in brain science that reflect the distinct desires and concerns of biologists in the US at an intellectual and institutional level. By revisiting the launch of the NRP with a focus on Schmitt, the article sheds light on the historical contingencies in launching the new community as neuroscience in the US and their meaning for the locality and transiency of (inter)disciplinarity in brain science. (shrink)

Scientists, as human beings, sometimes make mistakes. The aim of this case study was to examine the misreferencing practice of scientists. Citations of two documents about the neuroimaging of a dead salmon were collected. A total of 173 references were extracted from Google Scholar and analyzed by both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings reveal a reference error rate of 93.1%, involving 419 authors. Sociological and bibliometric data about the authors were collected and revealed that referencing errors can be committed (...) by all types of researchers. Further, a major referencing error was discovered in 22.5% of the citing documents, involving 121 authors, that is, the citation of a poster as if it were an article published in a prestigious journal. This major error was committed by the more prolific and recognized researchers. The higher the first author’s number of citations, number of publications or h-index, the more major reference errors (citing a ‘ghost’ paper) were committed. Nevertheless, the ScienceDirect database bears some responsibility, as it indexed abstracts of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping meeting as journal articles that had never been published in the prestigious NeuroImage journal. Finally, this case study raises epistemological concerns about research and its dissemination. (shrink)

Our primary goal in this article is to discuss the cross-talk between biological and cultural factors that become manifested in the individual brain development, neural wiring, neurochemical homeostasis, and behavior. We will show that behavioral propensities are the product of both cultural and biological factors and an understanding of these interactive processes can provide deep insights into why people behave the way they do. This interdisciplinary perspective is offered in an effort to generate dialog and empirical work among scholars interested (...) in merging aspects of anthropology and neuroscience, and anticipates that biological and cultural anthropology converge. We discuss new theoretical developments, hypothesis-testing strategies, and cross-disciplinary methods of observation and data collection. We believe that the exigency of integrating anthropology and the neurosciences is indisputable and anthropology's role in an emerging interdisciplinary science of human behavior will be critical because its focus is, and has always been, on human biological and cultural systems. (shrink)

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is an important ethical, legal, and political theme for the European Commission. Although variously defined, it is generally understood as an interactive process that engages social actors, researchers, and innovators who must be mutually responsive and work towards the ethical permissibility of the relevant research and its products. The framework of RRI calls for contextually addressing not just research and innovation impact but also the background research process, specially the societal visions underlying it and the (...) norms and priorities that shape scientific agendas. This requires the integration of anticipatory, inclusive, and responsive dimensions, and the nurturing of a certain type of reflexivity among a variety of stakeholders, from scientists to funders. In this paper, we do not address potential limitations but focus on the potential contribution of philosophical reflection to RRI in the context of the Ethics and Society subproject of the Human Brain Project (HBP). We show how the type of conceptual analysis provided by philosophically oriented approaches theoretically and ethically broadens research and innovation within the HBP. We further suggest that overt inclusion of philosophical reflection can promote the aims and objectives of RRI. (shrink)

En el presente escrito se propone revisar los supuestos que guían la práctica neurocientífica al afirmar diferencias sexuales en el cerebro. Tras la constatación de que una gran parte de la investigación y publicación de hallazgos neurocientíficos dan por hecho tal diferencia, encontramos una gran carga de lo que se ha denominado neurosexismo. Como forma de superarlo y desde la teoría feminista y el compromiso político se propone un acercamiento crítico a las neurociencias, que a modo de colaboración reflexiva entre (...) las disciplinas, pueda constituir un marco de superación de los prejuicios a la hora de hacer, pensar y diseñar la ciencia. (shrink)

Don Ihde and Lambros Malafouris (Philosophy and Technology 32:195–214, 2019) have argued that “we are homo faber not just because we make things but also because we are made by them.” The emphasis falls on the idea that the things that we create, use, rely on—that is, those things with which we engage—have a recursive effect on human existence. We make things, but we also make arrangements, many of which are long-standing, material, social, normative, economic, institutional, and/or political, and many (...) of which are supported by various technologies, including AI, more and more. Critical theorists, such as Habermas, have argued that we need a “depth” or critical hermeneutics (one that combines hermeneutical understanding with scientific explanation) to provide a full account of this kind of recursivity. For Habermas, the explanatory aspect of critical hermeneutics has been modeled on neo-Marxist and neo-Freudian theories. We propose a new critical hermeneutical approach that uses the tools of embodied cognitive science, affordance theory, material engagement theory, and the concept of the socially extended mind. (shrink)

The incorporation of neural-based technologies into psychiatry offers novel means to use neural data in patient assessment and clinical diagnosis. However, an over-optimistic technologisation of neuroscientifically-informed psychiatry risks the conflation of technological and psychological norms. Neurotechnologies promise fast, efficient, broad psychiatric insights not readily available through conventional observation of patients. Recording and processing brain signals provides information from ‘beneath the skull’ that can be interpreted as an account of neural processing and that can provide a basis to evaluate general behaviour (...) and functioning. But it ought not to be forgotten that the use of such technologies is part of a human practice of neuroscience informed psychiatry. This paper notes some challenges in the integration of neural technologies into psychiatry and suggests vigilance particularly in respect to normative challenges. In this way, psychiatry can avoid a drift toward reductive technological approaches, while nonetheless benefitting from promising advances in neuroscience and technology. (shrink)

Brain reading technologies are rapidly being developed in a number of neuroscience fields. These technologies can record, process, and decode neural signals. This has been described as ‘mind reading technology’ in some instances, especially in popular media. Should the public at large, be concerned about this kind of technology? Can it really read minds? Concerns about mind-reading might include the thought that, in having one’s mind open to view, the possibility for free deliberation, and for self-conception, are eroded where one (...) isn’t at liberty to privately mull things over. Themes including privacy, cognitive liberty, and self-conception and expression appear to be areas of vital ethical concern. Overall, this article explores whether brain reading technologies are really mind reading technologies. If they are, ethical ways to deal with them must be developed. If they are not, researchers and technology developers need to find ways to describe them more accurately, in order to dispel unwarranted concerns and address appropriately those that are warranted. (shrink)

The widely touted discovery of mirror neurons has generated intense scientific interest in the neurobiology of intersubjectivity. Social neuroscientists have claimed that mirror neurons, located in brain regions associated with motor action, facial recognition, and somatosensory processing, allow us to automatically grasp other people's intentions and emotions. Despite controversies, mirror neuron research is animating materialist, affective, and embodied accounts of intersubjectivity. My view is that mirror neurons raise issues that are directly relevant to feminism and cultural studies, but interventions are (...) needed for the work to be compatible with nonreductionist critical thought. In this article I critique the dominant neuroscientific account of mirror neurons, called embodied simulation theory. I draw from feminist epistemologies as well as alternative interpretations of mirror neurons in cognitive science and philosophy of mind to consider mirroring as situated, embodied perception. (shrink)

This paper traces the unspoken, implicit white racial logic of the brain disease model of addiction, which is based on seemingly universal, disembodied brains devoid of social or environmental influences. In the United States, this implicit white logic led to “context-free” neuroscience that made the social hierarchies of addiction and its consequences invisible to, and thus exacerbated by, national policies on opioids. The brain disease model of addiction was selectively deployed among the white middle-class population that had long accessed narcotics (...) and pharmaceutical treatments for narcotics disorders from biomedical clinics, as opposed to from illegal sources subject to law enforcement. In turn, new treatments for opioid addiction were racially marketed to the same white clientele to which newly patented opioid analgesics were marketed, tapping into a circumscribed but highly lucrative consumer base that has long benefited from a legally protected, racially segregated safe space for white narcotics consumption. The connecting thread for the contemporary white opioid “crisis,” therefore, is white race as a ghost variable in addiction neuroscience and in its pharmaceutical and biotechnological translation. (shrink)

The diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders is embedded in a matrix of biological, social and ethical processes, making it an important topic for crossdisciplinary social and ethical research. This article reviews different branches of research relevant to understanding how FASD is identified and defined and outlines a framework for future social and ethical research in this area. We outline the character of scientific research into FASD, epidemiological discrepancies between reported patterns of maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and the incidence (...) of FASD, and the social and ethical considerations that may impact on who is, and is not, diagnosed. We highlight what further research investigating FASD diagnostic processes, as well as the multi-generational impacts of FASD, is needed. Important research priorities are to: 1) enumerate the variety of stakeholders involved in seeking FASD diagnoses; 2) understand the experiences and perspectives of mothers from different backgrounds who have consumed alcohol during pregnancy and their affected children; and 3) collect health histories of maternal alcohol consumption in families to determine the effect of FASD at sub-cultural and cultural levels. (shrink)

It is often claimed in parts of the psychiatric literature that neuroscientific research into the biological basis of mental disorder undermines dualism in the philosophy of mind. This paper shows that such a claim does not apply to all forms of dualism. Focusing on Kenneth Kendler’s discussion of the mind–body problem in biological psychiatry, I argue that such criticism of dualism often conflates the psychological and phenomenal concepts of the mental. Moreover, it fails to acknowledge that there are different varieties (...) of dualism, and so overlooks the important metaphysical insights of contemporary dualist philosophers. I argue that while the neuroscientific research underpinning biological psychiatry challenges the traditional dualism of René Descartes, it does not pose any problem for the more modern dualism of David Chalmers. It is possible to take seriously the scientific claims of biological psychiatry while holding that this latter form of dualism is true. This has implications for the positioning of the mind–body problem in psychiatry. While the “easy” problem of explaining psychological processes is relevant to the aims of biological psychiatry, psychiatrists need not worry about the “hard” problem of consciousness. (shrink)

This article examines three key aetiological theories of autism, which emerged within cognitive psychology in the latter half of the 1980s. Drawing upon Foucault’s notion of ‘forms of possible knowledge’, and in particular his concept of savoir or depth knowledge, two key claims are made. First, it is argued that a particular production of autism became available to questions of truth and falsity following a radical reconstruction of ‘the social’ in which human sociality was taken both to exclusively concern interpersonal (...) interaction and to be continuous with non-social cognition. Second, it is suggested that this reconstruction of the social has affected the contemporary cultural experience of autism, shifting attention towards previously unacknowledged cognitive aspects of the condition. The article concludes by situating these claims in relation to other historical accounts of the emergence of autism and ongoing debates surrounding changing articulations of social action in the psy disciplines. (shrink)

Building from recent attempts in the humanities and social sciences to conceive of creative, entangled ways of doing interdisciplinary work, I turn to Braidotti’s ‘nomadic ontology’ to (re)vision the human body without a brain. Her exploration of the body as a ‘threshold of transformations’ is put into conversation with Deleuze’s comments on neurobiology to consider what a brainless body might do, or undo, in neuroscientific practice. I ground discussion in a case study, detailing the practices of brain decoding or ‘mind (...) reading,’ re-interpreting Rose’s account. Therein, I argue that the technical-social configurations of brain decoding are unlikely to usher in a radically new ontology, as Rose suggests. To better match Rose’s vision and align with new ontologies in cultural theory, I argue that neuroscience must become nomadic and embrace a body without a brain. I then conclude with six recommendations towards a nomadic neuroscience. (shrink)

An important part of what it means for agents to be situated in the everyday world of human affairs includes their engagement with economic practices. In this paper we employ the concept of cognitive institutions in order to provide an enactive and interactive interpretation of market and economic reasoning. We challenge traditional views that understand markets in terms of market structures or as processors of distributed information. The alternative conception builds upon the notion of the market as a ‘scaffolding institution’. (...) Introducing the concept of market as a ‘socially extended’ cognitive institution we go beyond the notion of scaffolding to provide an enactive view of economic reasoning that understands the market participant in terms of social interactive processes and relational autonomy. Markets are more than inert devices for information processing; they can be viewed as ‘highly scaffolded’, where strong constraints and incentives predictably direct agents’ behavior. Building on this idea we argue that markets emerge from (a) the economic interaction of both supply and demand sides, in continual and mutual interplay, and (b) more basic social interactions. Consumer behavior in the marketplace is complex, not only determining the market price, but also extending the consumer’s cognitive processes to reliably attain a correct evaluation of the good. Moreover, this economic reasoning is socially situated and not something done in isolation from other consumers From a socially situated, interactive point of view buying or not buying a good is something that enacts the market. This shifts the status of markets from external institutions that merely causally affect participants’ cognitive processes to social institutions that constitutively extend these cognitive processes. On this view the constraints imposed by social interactions, as well as the possibilities enabled by such interactions, are such that economic reasoning is never just an individual process carried out by an autonomous individual, classically understood. In this regard, understanding the concept of relational autonomy allows us to see how economic reasoning is always embodied, embedded in, and scaffolded by intersubjective interactions, and how such interactions make the market what it is. (shrink)

This essay introduces a Focus section on “Neurohistory and History of Science” by distinguishing images of the brain as governor and as transducer: the former treat the brain as the executive control center of the body, the latter as an interface between the organism and reality at large. Most of the consternation expressed in the symposium about the advent of neurohistory derives from the brain-as-governor conception, which is rooted in a “biologistic” understanding of humanity that in recent years has become (...) bound up in various nefarious “neoliberal” political and economic agendas. However, given the sophisticated attitude that neurohistory’s leading champion, Daniel Smail, displays toward evolutionary theory’s potential impact on historical practice, he is perhaps better understood as part of the brain-as-transducer tradition. This tradition, largely suppressed in current representations of neuroscience, has a strong theological provenance, ultimately concerned with our becoming attuned to the divine frequency, not least by extending the powers of the human nervous system through technology. This essay sympathetically explores the implications of this perspective for historical practice. (shrink)

The analysis of the status of the constitutive metaphor in science is considered along with the examination of some principal models of metaphors among biology, medicine and neurosciences. This allows to highlight the two ages of the scientific metaphor, the crossover between metaphors and models, and some open questions about the hidden ideologies concealed in the scientific theoretical terms that come from the use of metaphors.

Reseña de la obra de Fernando Vidal & Francisco Ortega,_ ¿Somos nuestro cerebro? La construcción del_ _sujeto cerebral_, Alianza, Madrid, 367 pp.

The long standing reign of psychology as the privileged partner of education has, arguably, now been superseded by the neurosciences. Given that this helped to drive the emergent field of neuroeducation, it is crucial to ask what changes in education, if anything does in fact change, when the hitherto hegemonic psychologising discourse is substituted for a neurological one. The primary contention of this paper is that with the neuro-turn a process of “neurologisation” has also been initiated, which can be analysed (...) by taking into account its genealogical predecessor, psychologisation. In doing so, I argue, one ultimately discerns a primordial incompatibility between education and neuroscience, one that can be traced back to the fundamental and problematic reflexivity of modern subjectivity itself, which the discipline of psychology was never able to wholly resolve. From here, I proceed with the argument that while the eagerness of the psy-sciences to embrace neuroscience testifies to how much psychology needs neurology, the neurosciences are structurally incapable of disconnecting from the paradigms of the psy-sciences. Following on from this proposition, other strong/weak factors are brought into the equation: strong/weak nature, strong/weak culture, strong/weak subjectivity and, most pertinently, strong/weak education. Finally, the critical question becomes: if education in itself needs to take recourse to both the psy-sciences and the neurosciences, then how can we begin to account for the fact that these sciences invariably end up becoming captured within educational discourses themselves; that is, the fact that teachers, parents, and pupils themselves are taught the key insights of neuropsychology. (shrink)

Experimental design is one aspect of a scientific method. A well-designed, properly conducted experiment aims to control variables in order to isolate and manipulate causal effects and thereby maximize internal validity, support causal inferences, and guarantee reliable results. Traditionally employed in the natural sciences, experimental design has become an important part of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Experimental methods are also endorsed as the most reliable guides to policy effectiveness. Through a discussion of some of the central concepts (...) associated with experimental design, including controlled variation and randomization, this chapter will provide a summary of key ethical issues that tend to arise in experimental contexts. In addition, by exploring assumptions about the nature of causation and by analyzing features of causal relationships, systems, and inferences in social contexts, this chapter will summarize the ways in which experimental design can undermine the integrity of not only social and behavioral research but policies implemented on the basis of such research. (shrink)