Update

172

TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences

4 Chu, S. and Downes, J.J. (2000) Odour-evoked autobiographical memories: Psychological investigations of Proustian phenomena. Chemical Senses 25, 111–116 5 Shobe, K.K. and Kihlstrom, J.F. (1997) Is traumatic memory special? Current Directions in Psychological Science 6, 70–74 6 Buffalo, S.H. and Squire, L.R. (2000) Memory distortions develop over time: Recollections of the O.J. Simpson trial verdict after 15 and 32 months. Psychological Science 11, 39–45 7 Thompson, C.P. et al. (1996) Autobiographical Memory: Remembering What and Remembering When, Erlbaum

Vol.9 No.4 April 2005

8 Gonsalves, B. et al. (2004) Neural evidence that vivid imaging can lead to false remembering. Psychological Science 15, 655–660 9 Rubin, D.C. et al. (1998) Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best. Memory & Cognition 26, 3–19 10 Welzer, H. and Markowitsch, H.J. (2005) Towards a bio-psycho-social model of autobiographical memory. Memory 13, 63–78

1364-6613/$ - see front matter Q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.02.005

Letter

Neuroethics, reductionism and dualism Peter Jedlicˇka Institute of Physiology II, Goethe University, D-60590 Frankfurt, Germany

In her article on ethical implications of neuroscience, Martha J. Farah suggests that growing knowledge about the neural substrate of mental processes might undermine our traditional (Cartesian?) understanding of personal identity [1]. Is neuroscience on the road to showing that character, consciousness and sense of spirituality are in fact no more than ‘features of the machine’? Importantly, the question of our individuality and free will is a metaphysical problem, a problem that goes beyond (meta) physics. If a neuroscientist says that we are nothing else but ‘a pack of neurons’, he ceases to talk as an empirical scientist and begins to talk as a philosopher (though sometimes not being aware of it). Strong reductionism is a metaphysical point of view identifiable by the typical slang that Julian Huxley called ‘nothingelsebuttery’. There is a crucial difference between methodological (scientific) and ontological (metaphysical) reductionism. Reductionism is often a successful and therefore valuable scientific method [2], allowing us to explain complex processes in terms of more basic ones. However, if, even after successful reductive attempts, an unexplained residuum (for example ‘qualia’) remains, one should be careful to jump to the conclusion that mental events are nothing but neural states. From the fact that we can study psychic phenomena using empirical methods it does not follow that they are entirely reducible to lower ontological levels. (Conversely, success of empirical research shows clearly the inadequacy of ‘spiritualistic’ claims that the mind is wholly inexplicable by science.) Of course, one can believe that some day science will come to a completely reductionistic and deterministic picture of the world. Nevertheless, such a conclusion is not empirically justified from present evidence. On the contrary, several logical, empirical and philosophical arguments have been put forward to support the idea that consciousness is an emergent and indeterministic phenomenon, possibly endowed with a ‘downward

Corresponding author: Jedlicˇka, P. ([email protected]).

www.sciencedirect.com

causation’ ability (e.g. [3–6]). Particularly worth noting is a recent proposal of Jeffrey Satinover [7], which interestingly combines novel findings in computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamics and quantum physics. Satinover’s hypothesis of a hierarchy of nested networks (reminiscent of Hofstadter’s ‘tangled hierarchy’ [8]) challenges the conventional wisdom that quantum fluctuations are always self-averaging, and goes beyond Penrose’s suggestions [6]. In fact, while rejecting strong reductionism, one need not accept the dualism of body and mind as two separate substances. The psychosomatic unity of human beings suggests the possibility of seeing us as both an inseparable and complementary union of mind and matter. Acknowledgements The author is on leave of absence from Institute of Pathological Physiology, SK-81108 Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

References 1 Farah, M.J. (2005) Neuroethics: the practical and the philosophical. Trends Cogn. Sci. 9, 34–40 2 Popper, K. (1974) Scientific reduction and the essential incompleteness of all science. In Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, pp. 259–284, University of California Press 3 Lindahl, B.I.B. (1997) Consciousness and biological evolution. J. Theor. Biol. 187, 613–629 4 Wallace, R. and Price, R. (1999) Neuromolecular computing: a new approach to human brain evolution. Biol. Cybern. 81, 189–197 5 Crutchfield, J.P. (1994) Is anything ever new? Considering emergence. In Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Comlexity XIX (Cowan, G., Pines, D. and Melzner, D., eds), pp. 479–497, Addison Wesley 6 Penrose, R. (1994) Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Oxford University Press 7 Satinover, J. (2001) Quantum Brain, John Wiley & Sons 8 Hofstadter, D.R. (1979) Go¨del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Basic Books 1364-6613/$ - see front matter Q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.02.010

Neuroethics, reductionism and dualism - PhilArchive

challenges the conventional wisdom that quantum fluctuations are always self-averaging, and goes ... Basic Books. 1364-6613/$ - see front matter Q 2005 ...

44KB Sizes 0 Downloads 238 Views

Recommend Documents

Neuroethics, reductionism and dualism - PhilArchive
5 Shobe, K.K. and Kihlstrom, J.F. (1997) Is traumatic memory special? ... Memory & Cognition 26, 3–19 ... contrary, several logical, empirical and philosophical.

Symmetry and Equivalence - PhilArchive
My topic is the relation between two notions, that of a symmetry of a physical theory and that of the physical equivalence of two solutions or models of such a theory. In various guises, this topic has been widely addressed by philosophers in recent

Symmetry and Equivalence - PhilArchive
Unfortunately, these mutually reinforcing half-arguments don't add up to much: each ...... Torre, C. (1995), “Natural Symmetries and Yang–Mills Equations.” Jour-.

Dualism, Science, and Statistics
Dualism, Science, and Statistics ... Published By: American Institute of Biological Sciences .... can either collect more data or revise our research hypothe- sis.

innateness - PhilArchive
Aug 10, 2011 - data to which children are standardly exposed to determine the elaborate grammars that they quickly ..... particular developmental models and strategies. (See Griffiths ... close relation to the next conception we examine. 2.2.

Download - PhilArchive
Teoria delle grandezze, Pisa: Spoerri. [3] Bettazzi, Rodolfo (1891). 'Sui sistemi di numerazione per i numeri reali', Periodico di matematica per l'insegnamento ...

Why Care Final - PhilArchive
Why Justification Matters. Declan Smithies. Forthcoming in Epistemic Evaluation: Point and Purpose in Epistemology, edited by J. Greco and D. Henderson. Oxford University Press, 2015. Justification is one among many dimensions of epistemic evaluation

Rethinking Education - PhilArchive
In this series of posts I will break Mitra's Guardian article down and offer a critical response to each of his points. The first point I wish to address arises from this passage: "Any standard room in a Holiday Inn is better than the best facilities

Drawing the line - PhilArchive
beliefs that interpret evidence on the basis of grater individual happiness (all other things being equal), this suggests that the basis of choice goes beyond rationality. I contend that the case against the rationality of cognitive therapy is not ma

Transcendental Philosophy and Mind-Body Reductionism
Yet Kant does not take the same route they do. He is usually not ... Origin of the Whole Universe According to Newton's .... In short, we return in the end to the.

1 Embodied Cognitive Science and its Implications for ... - PhilArchive
philosophy, artificial intelligence, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience and related ..... perceptual content by active enquiry and exploration: “Perception is not ...

The Dualism of the Practical Reason: Some Interpretations and ...
this reading is consistent with Sidgwick's definition of methods as rational .... must be “ultimate and independent” in their very application, i.e. they ..... 15 See Schultz 2004 on this, and in general on the development and significance of the

Transcendental Philosophy and Mind-Body Reductionism
Allison, Henry E. 1996 “Kant's Refutation of Materialism”, in Ideal- ism and freedom: Essays on Kant's theoretical and practical phi- losophy, Cambridge ...

BEYOND REDUCTIONISM - Reinventing The Sacred ...
humanist professor at the University of Pennsylvania astonished me with her .... A computer computing a complex algorithm can be made of transistors or .... The first in the West, is that mind derives from direct connection to the mind of God —.

Institutional Reforms and Dualism in European Labor ...
Appendix A. The fRDB-IZA Social Policy Reforms Database. 1223. Appendix B. Institutions in the MP Model .... more unemployment benefits to attain the same objective. The political science literature ..... Table 4 Number of labor market reforms by ori

Why Care Final - PhilArchive
justified beliefs fall short of knowledge when they are false or when they are true but unreliable. Accordingly, one of the ... justification is the property that turns true belief into knowledge. But one lesson to be learned ..... corrupting influen

Different Flavours? - PhilArchive
With this distinction in mind, we can try to bridge the gulf between a wine's .... reflection of a wine's flavours we must turn to the suggestion of Haplern (1997) that.

Models as make-believe - PhilArchive
and Cohen ask us to suppose that we were to pick up a salt shaker and stipulate to our dinner partner that it represents Madagascar. As long as our stipulation is ...

Neuroethics-An-Introduction-With-Readings-Basic-Bioethics.pdf ...
Retrying... Whoops! There was a problem previewing this document. Retrying... Download. Connect more apps... Try one of the apps below to open or edit this item. Neuroethics-An-Introduction-With-Readings-Basic-Bioethics.pdf. Neuroethics-An-Introducti