Read the rest of this cogent review.Freedom is a no-brainer
Modern science has made great strides in knowledge of the brain. But our brains are not us.
If you knew everything about how the human brain works, would you know everything about humanity? A growing number of scientists nowadays say Yes, including Susan Greenfield in her recent book, ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century. However, I find her attempt to prove that we are our brains less than convincing.
The author is no scientific lightweight. As director of the Royal Institution and professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, Baroness Susan Greenfield is one of the world’s best-known scientists. She is even known in the Antipodes as an honorary Australian of the year.
Greenfield writes with mastery about the history and breadth of brain exploration. Her explanations of recent breakthroughs such as the interplay of multiple brain regions in every brain function and of the key role that lower, sub-cortical, regions of the brain exercise in higher brain function, are superb. She is also refreshingly frank about the current limitations of research and the daunting complexity of the task that scientists face.
She is particularly good when she describes how experience changes our brains and about the impact of powerful sensory experiences. Her warnings about how the brain changes because of contemporary teenage lifestyles are sobering: an inability for reflective thought, attention and learning problems caused by a screen culture, addictions, cultures of passivity and hedonism "obliterating the individual", and the virtually irreversible modifications wrought by cannabis usage.
The discussion is grounded squarely on recent research and is aligned with landmark texts of popular sociology like Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death and Oliver James’s Affluenza.
But ultimately ID is disappointing. Greenfield thinks that neuroscience is on track to answer the big questions of How can I be happy? and What is the meaning of life? But instead of simplistic analogies and rambling ruminations on the effects of environment on personality there is a need for a reasoned understanding of personhood and human nature. Although many philosophies are arcane constructions of the mind, lack common sense, seem out of date, or are just bluntly contradictory there is at least one philosophy which she could have relied upon, one which fulfills the five requisites for being compatible with science.
> Both must be concerned with existent reality.
> Both must seek truth and subscribe to the objectivity of that truth. Philosophical and scientific truth cannot be in contradiction.
> Both must uphold the reliability of sense evidence and admit no other forms of data.
> Both must use reason to explore sense evidence.
> Both must accept the causality evident in the world around us.These common sense tests effectively rule out many philosophies -- but not all. Aristotle laid the foundations for the development of modern science with his insistence on factual knowledge and empirical investigation. It is to Aristotle, too, that we must turn for a compatible philosophy.
Let us examine three key areas in which contemporary neuroscience could make good use of Aristotle’s insights.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Andrew Mullins - Freedom Is a No-Brainer
MercatorNet posts some very interesting articles. This one by Andrew Mullins - Freedom Is a No-Brainer - takes a look at one of the hot issues in the philosophy of neuroscience, that we are our brains (and nothing more). Many of us see this idea as flawed in many ways, as does Mullins. He reviews the new book by Susan Greenfield, ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century, and finds her argument less than convincing.
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