Hello All, Reductionism is not a philosophy as much as a practice in parts of science. However, the method has drawn substantial fire as a philosophy. I am going to examine one such attack. In this case this is an interesting wide ranging criticism of not Reductionism but of the established Neuroscientific community. A book has come out, "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" by M.R. Bennett (a neuroscientist) and P.M.S. Hacker a philosopher. They take on virtually all the famous names of Neuroscience, such as Crick, Churchland, Damasio. This review takes a look at some of this conflict over amongst many things, Reductionism.
Hacker is a student of Wittgenstein. For those who know of Wittgenstein, it is no revelation that the Vienna Positivist philosophical group were influenced greatly by Wittgenstein. These Positivists and the Anglo American analytical philosophy movement inspired by English Cambridge philosophy tried to bring 'science' to philosophy. Hacker turns his back on these roots to attack 'scientism' in Neuroscience. This book is fairly readable. Given the subject matter especially. However, the subject matter of neuroscience has been growing in importance in U.S. culture at least since the mid 1970's when it began to appear that the brain would reveal it's secrets. The authors of this book look at a broad range of underlying thinking behind this movement. They assert that four conceptual commitments form a crypto-Cartesian picture of the mind. The Cartesian split between mind and body according to these authors permeates the Neuroscientific investigation of the human brain. The four assertions are: 1. The mental is a private domain. Kosslyn, Searle, Damsio, 2. The private can be understood by private introspection. William James, Humphrey, 3. The domain of the private is accessible only to the subject. Searle, Blakemore, Crick, 4. Psychological predicates name inner states of the 'mind'. Crick, Edelman, To which Bennett and Hacker counter these four rejections of Crypto-Cartesianism; 1. Truly someone experiences pain themselves, but the experience is shared by others. 2. Introspection is not the source of knowledge about the 'inner'. 3. The subject does not have access to anything inner at all, she has pains not access to pains. 4. Names of inner experiences do not explain inner experiences they are associated with. As one can see above very substantial criticisms of the underlying theory of Neuroscience are being made. The above comments of mine are adapted from pages 87 and 88 of the text. The authors say that in many many cases that various assertions are factually wrong. The authors therefore are extremely controversy provoking. Oddly too coming from a follower of Wittgenstein, the authors are attacking what they call 'scientism' They take great pains to describe 'reductionism' and the problems they see with it. Primarily that Reductionism claims universal truths of the parts over the whole. This rejection of the parts as explaining the whole comes explicitly for example where they say 'the brain does not think', the woman thinks. The mind does not think the person thinks. The brain has no, - to reiterate for emphasis, - has no capacity to think, and the concept of the 'brain' thinking is factually wrong. Perhaps this makes sense given our culture if one observes that the brain cannot exist outside the body. Otherwise these claims seem like rather strange claims about the brain. Page 290, ".For there is, and can be, no such thing as a private sample by reference to which an expression in a language is defined and which functions as a standard for the correct use of a word. Not only could other speakers of the language not know what the word, as used by the speaker, means; the speaker himself could not know what he means by it either. And, indeed, it would mean nothing at all." In the appendix two major American philosophers are 'refuted' in detail about their Cartesian thinking. Daniel Dennett, and John Searle. The Denne tt critique is an excellent description of Dennett's thoughts, and then the attack upon his 'crypto-cartesian' theories. The authors emphasize the whole to explode the 'conceptual' confusion that for example 'reductionism' bring to Neuroscience'. They point to the job of philosophy to create conception, and destroy confusion. The point they make that the philosopher does concepts certainly leads to a whiff of idealism on their part, though given their commitment to materialism this seems contradictory. Surely this book stands out as a contribution to thought about consciousness and opens the door to serious challenge to current established beliefs in the extreme. I recommend this book. My own received opinions were shaken. One can of course run into people who will challenge one's preconceptions. I remember my few encounters with James Blaut over the issue of the modularity of the mind. Be that as it may this book is an excellent read in a difficult area in the most far ranging way. Anyone interested in computer science, mass communications theory, and neuroscience will find this a deep source of interesting and arresting claims about the truth of a major sector of science. The authors in their words do not create anew, but they tear down the confusions and incoherence of the scientism of the whole range of the Neuroscientific community. Makes one appreciate certain figures like James Blaut for the independence of thought and questioning stance toward what is dominate in American Science. Thanks, Doyle
