The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
I would like to thank the readers of The Stone for their insightful feedback on my recent post, "Bursting the Neuro-Utopian Bubble." There seemed to be a few questions about my basic argument, which I will do my best to clarify here.
First, in opening the piece by contrasting Columbia's new interdisciplinary science building and the old gothic tower of Union Theological Seminary, my intention was not to indicate that a theological or religious perspective on the advances of neuroscience was being tendered, but to suggest that what many would recognize to be distinctly religious features — the fervent investment in one way of doing things rather than another, the defensive monopoly on the "truth," the castigation of nay-sayers according to a strict "with us or against us" ethos — have made their way into the "scientific" mindset. As one of my mentors is fond of saying, religion is often most palpable where it is least evident.
One way to present my view would thus be to say that I would like to see a more comprehensive view of scientific inquiry that tames its more "religious" elements, which have gravitated to a particular position that accords the study of the brain a primary importance, and the investigation of psychosocial factors a definitively secondary one. No doubt there are many scientists who reject this viewpoint, and I have heard from quite a few of them.
Still, I believe that the $100 million going to the Brain Initiative shows where our priorities lie. We are still far from rectifying a gross imbalance in funding and focus, one that has stemmed, in my view, from an ardent desire for an increasing instrumental control over the world and ourselves. While I admittedly worry about the effects — both good and bad — of this desire, my concern in the piece was not with "abuses" of science but with the very desire itself and what it unconsciously represses. One does not have to be a psychoanalyst to know that our desires often make us do things of which we are not aware.
I attempted to consider two conceptions of scientific inquiry, one of which (science as agent of technological mastery) has come to dominate the other (science as critical examination of our current practices). Drawing on the tradition of critical social theory, I called one "instrumental" and the other "communicative." My point in distinguishing these two forces was not to give preference to the subordinate party but to argue for the necessity of maintaining a healthy tension between them, especially when it comes to the problem of mental health. I thus heartily agree with many responders that we need both.
In short, it was not my primary intention to argue against the advances of neuroscience, but simply to convey a philosophical wonder about the fact that the idea of changing human physiology — transforming the human being itself — is, at least in some circles, both more "scientific" and more "realistic" than changing human society.
As a final, and broadly methodological note, I am not a neuroscientist, but I do not believe that this fact – that I am not an "insider" – renders me incapable of articulating something meaningful about neuroscience. I say this not to defend myself against charges of dilettantism but as encouragement to anyone who feels hushed by what the political theorist Timothy Mitchell calls the "rule of experts." As Edward Said argued in "Representations of the Intellectual," a vibrant intellectual culture needs both specialists willing to entertain the questions of amateurs, and amateurs willing to question specialists. Both sides suffer without this necessarily fraught interplay.
(Read the original post, "Busting the Neuro-Utopian Bubble.")
Benjamin Y. Fong is a Harper Fellow at the University of Chicago and is at work on a manuscript on psychoanalysis and critical theory.
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