Skip to main content
Log in

Philosophical implications of neuroscience: The space for a critique

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Subjectivity Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In an intellectual atmosphere still marked by the ideological failures of the twentieth century, the expectations for neuroscience are extremely high, even in fields traditionally sheltered from the seductions of neurobiological explanations, such as political theory, sociology and philosophy. In an attempt to problematize the reception that this neuroscientific vocabulary has received, I provide in this article a cartography of three major lines of philosophical criticism of neuroscience – ‘conceptual’, ‘societal’ and ‘embodied-enactive’ – put forward recently by philosophers of different intellectual traditions. Although these criticisms are important in shedding light on some epistemological inconsistencies of the neuroscientific programme, the need remains to supplement this philosophical work with a different kind of critique, one that could address more directly the social and political relevance of neuroscience as well understand our epoch's urge to ‘turn neurobiological’ previously cultural or sociological phenomena.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. A similar cartography, in a more detailed way, appears also in Meloni (2011c).

  2. From Dewey (1929/1958) to Thompson (2007), for instance.

  3. See the recent launch of the so-called ‘Critical Neuroscience’, ‘a reflexive scientific practice that responds to the social and cultural challenges posed both to the field of science and to society in general by recent advances in the behavioural and brain sciences’ (Choudhury et al, 2009, p. 62).

  4. In his classic article, Benton (1991, pp. 12–13) distinguished at least four different strands of this anti-naturalistic influence in social theory, all worthy to be recalled here to provide an idea of the powerful influence of this variegated intellectual tradition: (a) Durkheim's ‘insistence on the status of the social as a causal order in its own right’; (b) Max Weber's theoretical roots in the German neo-Kantian movement and his ‘basic oppositions between action and behaviour, meaning and cause, interpretation and explanation’; (c) the anti-naturalistic turn of much Western Marxism of the early twentieth century, from Lukacs to Gramsci; (d) ‘the influential tradition of American cultural anthropology’, from Boas to Kroeber and Lowie up to Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and Marshall Sahlins, with its roots in Boas's firm rejection of the scientific racism and biological determinism of his own time. See for a more general reading of the anti-naturalistic legacy of European philosophy and its threefold way of reacting to naturalism: Meloni (2011b).

  5. See also, for a revival of their criticism, Bennett and Hacker (2008).

  6. There is no way in this article to satisfactorily provide the full intellectual context of a book like Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. In a nutshell, this book represents the point of emergence for the struggle within the post-analytic tradition in philosophy between supporters of naturalism (Daniel Dennett to name one) and authors such as Hacker who defend an idea of philosophy as totally discontinuous from empirical research, only in business with ‘concepts’, ‘form of thought’ (BH, p. 404), and ‘normative connections’ (BH, p. 406): ‘philosophers’ BH claim ‘are not neuroscientists manqués’ (BH, p. 403). For the fierce debate between analytic and post-analytic philosophers following the publication of the book, see Bennett et al (2007).

  7. Similar points also made in Putnam (1994).

  8. Some of the sentences of this section on Descombes also appear in Meloni (2011a).

  9. Accents and tones may vary greatly between different authors. More friendly approaches to neuroscience prevail in many recent works that aim to offer ‘a more adequate model of perception for the scientist to work with’ (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2008, p. 9), thus promoting a sort of ‘mutually illuminating relationship’ with brain research (Thompson, 2007, p. X): neurophenomenology is the first example that comes to mind with such a perspective (Varela, 1996; see also Petitot et al, 1999). However, this neuroscience-friendly approach should not let the critical dimension of embodied-enactivism disappear. A typical case of this critical attitude is, Alva Noë's recent Out of Our Heads with its political ambition to ‘shake up the cognitive science establishment’ (2009, p. XIV), and ‘set aside’ the research programme of mainstream neuroscience (2009, p. 185).

  10. A different way to look critically at the philosophical implications of neuroscience, one that neither addresses principally the insignificance, as in Hacker and Descombes, nor the inadequacy of the scientific vocabulary to its object, as in embodied-enactivism, but mainly concerns issues of ‘manipulability’ and ‘reification’, engendered by the rise of a neuroscientific vocabulary, can be found in some recent writings of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, and particularly in three subsequent papers –‘Faith and Knowledge’ (2003), ‘Freedom and Determinism’ (2008) and a third one on the concept of nature in Adorno (2008). In the wake of the intellectual legacy of critical theorists (from Lukacs, to Horkheimer and Adorno, up today to Axel Honneth) who have explored the ways in which the ‘penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life’ (Habermas, 2008, p. 1) is related to political issues of ‘domination’, Habermas has criticized ‘the objectivating language of neurobiology’ that ‘attributes the grammatical role formerly played by the “I” to the “brain” ’ (Habermas, 2008, p. 152). Habermas's concern is that an ‘empiricist language’, one that aims to transform a discursive event ‘into a natural one that takes place “behind the backs” of subject’ (for instance describing it in terms of neural firings), may cause a growing colonization of the mentalistic language – which is ‘a language that includes predicates such as “believes”, “convinces”, “approves” and “rejects” ’. This ‘dualism of language games’, that is of causes versus reasons, remains for Habermas at all effects ‘inescapable (2008, pp. 157–158), something that cannot be replaced ‘by the naturalistic image of neural processes in the brain’ (Habermas, 2008, pp. 205–206, my italics). ‘Thoughts that can be expressed in mentalistic terms’ Habermas claims ‘cannot be translated without loss of meaning into an empirical vocabulary geared to things and events’ (Habermas, 2008, p. 167). However, beneath the surface of these more idiosyncratic reactions to neuroscience, Habermas identifies a very specific point that confers originality to his criticism, clearly distinguishing it from the others previously illustrated in my cartography. I refer here to the concept of Unverfügbarkeit (Unavailability) that Habermas draws from Adorno to emphasize features of inner and subjective nature that are not open to ‘technological manipulation’ and can therefore resist the kind of ‘causal determination’ (Habermas, 2008, p. 184) that is typical, for instance, of the neurobiological style of inquiry. Through recourse to the opposition of availability-unavailability, Habermas's goal is to underline how the penetration of a scientific understanding, by spreading ‘the concept of causation’, directly ‘intermeshes’ with instrumental action and therefore produces reification: ‘When we interpret the succession of two observable states of the world, A and B, as causal relation (…) we implicitly assume that we could give rise to state B ourselves by intervening instrumentally in the world to produce state A’ (Habermas, 2008, p. 168). In their subsuming ‘surrounding nature under the concepts of causality’ the natural sciences, Habermas writes, reduce nature to be ‘technologically manipulable’ (2008, p. 199). It is exactly ‘this interventionist background of the concept of causation’ that ‘makes clear why mental states and semantic contents, which cannot be manipulated instrumentally like things and events, elude this sort of causal explanation’ (Habermas, 2008, p. 168). In this sense a critique of the neuroscientific language represents, for Habermas, a political barrier against the risks of technical manipulation, domination and reification.

  11. Although the word ‘ideology’ may sound pejorative, I use it here in a technical sense to extend, to a scientific programme, Gramsci's idea (already present in Aristotle, in truth) that ‘everyone is a philosopher, though in his own way and unconsciously, since even in the slightest manifestation of any intellectual activity whatever, in “language”, there is contained a specific conception of the world’ (1971, p. 9, my italics). Bringing to light a similar nexus of neuroscientific language and implicit conception of the world (also not dissimilar to Althusser's ‘spontaneous philosophy of scientists’: 1967/1990, to which I have already referred in this text) is what is meant here by expressions like ‘broader ideological horizon’ and ‘ideological offer’ of the neuroscientific research-programme. That a certain science may have an ideological pendant does not mean anything particularly derogatory here, as if one could think of having a science (in a perfectly positivistic stance) without any metaphysical or normative kernel.

  12. I thank the anonymous referees and editors of Subjectivity for bringing to my attention the paper of Papoulias and Callard (2010).

References

  • Althusser, L. (ed.) (1967/1990) Philosophy and the spontaneous philosophy of the scientists. Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists and Other Essays. London and New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amodio, D.M., Jost, J.T., Master, S.L. and Yee, C.M. (2007) Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nature Neuroscience 10: 1246–1247.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, M. and Hacker, P.M.S. (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, M. and Hacker, P.M.S. (2008) History of Cognitive Neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benton, T. (1991) Biology and social science: Why the return of the repressed should be given a (cautious) welcome. Sociology 25: 1–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, M., Dennett, D., Hacker, P.M.S. and Searle, J. (2007) Neuroscience and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benton, T. (2001) Why are sociologists naturephobes? In: J. Lopez and G. Potter (eds.) After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism. New York: Athlone.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boella, L. (2008) Neuroetica. La morale prima della morale. Milan, Italy: Cortina.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bone, J. (2009) Beyond biophobia: A response to Jackson and Rees. Sociology 41 (5): 917–930.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cacioppo, J.T., Berntson, G.G., Carter, C.S. and Davidson, R.J. (2002) Foundations in Social Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cacioppo, J.T. and Berntson, G.G. (2005) Social Neuroscience. New York: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cacioppo, J.T., Visser, P.S. and Pickett, C.L. (2006) Social Neuroscience: People Thinking about Thinking People. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Canguilhelm, G. (1980/2008) The brain and thought. Radical Philosophy 148: 7–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chalmers, D.J. (1996) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Changeux, J.P. and Ricoeur, P. (2000) What Makes Us Think?: A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chiel, H. and Beer, R. (1997) The brain has a body: Adaptive behavior emerges from interactions of nervous system, body and environment. Trends in Neurosciences 20: 553–557.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choudhury, S., Nagel., S. and Slaby, J. (2009) Critical neuroscience: Linking neuroscience and society through critical practice. BioSocieties 4: 61–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Churchland, P.S. (1986) Neurophilosophy. Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Churchland, P.S. (2002) Brain-wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A. (1997) Being There. Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohn, S. (2004) Increasing resolution, intensifying ambiguity: An ethnographic account of seeing life in brain scans. Economy and Society 33: 52–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Connolly, W. (2002) Neuropolitics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cromby, J. (2004) Between constructionism and neuroscience. The societal co-constitution of embodied subjectivity. Theory & Psychology 14: 797–821.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cromby, J. (2005) Theorizing embodied subjectivity. International Journal of Critical Psychology 15: 133–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cromby, J. (2007) Integrating social science with neuroscience: Potentials and problems. Biosocieties 2: 149–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Damasio, A. (1999) The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Damasio, A. (2003) Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. New York: Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Damasio, A. (2006/1994) Descartes's Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. London: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daston, L. and Vidal, F. (eds.) (2004) The Moral Authority of Nature. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dean, M. (1996) Foucault, government, and the enfolding of authority. In: A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose (eds.) Foucault and Political Reason. London: UCL Press, pp. 209–230.

    Google Scholar 

  • Descombes, V. (1994/2001) The Mind's Provisions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Descombes, V. (1996) Les Institutions du Sens. Paris: Minuit.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1929/1958) Experience and Nature. New York: Dover.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dickens, P. (2001) Linking the social and natural sciences: Is capital modifying human biology in its own image? Sociology 35: 93–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dreyfus, H. (1972) What Computers Can’t Do. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dreyfus, H. (1992) What Computers Still Can’t Do. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dumit, J. (2004) Picturing Personhood. Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelman, G. (1992) Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehrenberg, A. (2004) Le sujet cerebral. Esprit 11: 130–155.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehrenberg, A. (2007) Brain, mind, society: The threefold cord. Paper presented at the Launch Conference of the European Neuroscience and Society Network; 12–13 November, London.

  • Ehrenberg, A. (2008) Le cerveau ‘social’. Chimère épistémologique et vérité sociologique. Esprit 1: 79–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenberg, L. (1995) The social construction of the human brain. American Journal of Psychiatry 152: 1563–1575.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, L. (1996) A discipline in peril: Sociology's future hinges on curing its biophobia. American Sociologist 27: 21–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferraris, M. (2004) Goodbye Kant! Cosa resta oggi della Critica della ragion pura. Milan, Italy: Bompiani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1986) Kant on enlightenment and revolution. Economy and Society 15: 88–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fowler, J.H. and Schreiber, D. (2008) Biology, politics, and the emerging science of human nature. Science 322: 912–914.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franks, D.D. (2003) Mutual interests, different lenses: Current neuroscience and symbolic interaction. Symbolic Interaction 26 (XX): 613–630.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franks, D.D. (2010) Neurosociology: The Nexus between Neuroscience and Social Psychology. New York: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Franks, D.D. and Smith, T.S. (eds.) (1999) Mind, Brain, and Society: Toward a Neurosociology of Emotion. Stamford, CT: JAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freese, J., Allen Li, J.C. and Wade, L.D. (2003) The potential relevance of biology to social inquiry. Annual Review of Sociology 29: 233–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galison, P. (1997) Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. and Zahavi, D. (2008) The Phenomenological Mind. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaukroger, S. (2006) The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210–1685. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gazzaniga, M. (1987) The Social Brain. Discovering the Networks of the Mind. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gazzaniga, M. (2005) The Ethical Brain. New York: Dana Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, J.J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gigerenzer, G. (2007) Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. New York: Viking Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunnell, J.G. (2007) Are we losing our minds? Cognitive science and the study of politics. Political Theory 35: 704–731.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haber, S. (2006) Critique de l’antinaturalisme. Paris: PUF.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, J. (ed.) (2003) Faith and knowledge. In: The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, J. (2008) Between Naturalism and Religion. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J. (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review 108: 814–834.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J. (2007) The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science 316: 998–1002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harrington, A., Rose, N. and Singh, I. (2006) Editors’ introduction. Biosocieties 1: 1–5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hegel, G.W.F. (1807/1977) Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hemmings, C. (2005) Invoking affect. Cultural theory and the ontological turn. Cultural Studies 19 (5): 548–567.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herrnstein Smith, B. (2009) Natural Reflections. Human Cognition and the Nexus of Science and Religion. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, K. (2008) Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, J.T., Freedman, J. and Iacoboni, M. (2007) Us versus them: Political attitudes and party affiliation influence neural response to faces of presidential candidates. Neuropsychologia 45: 55–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keil, F.C. (2003) Folkscience: Coarse interpretations of a complex reality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8: 368–373.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kotchoubey, B. (2005) Neuroscience through the looking glass. Journal of Psychophysiology 19: 232–237.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lavazza, A. and De Caro, M. (2010) Not so fast. On some bold neuroscientific claims concerning human agency. Neuroethics 3: 23–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Legrenzi, P. and Umiltà, C. (2009) Neuro-mania. Il cervello non spiega chi siamo. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levine, J. (1983) Materialism and qualia the explanatory gap. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64: 354–361.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leys, R. (2007) From Guilt to Shame. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lieberman, M.D. (2000) Intuition: A social cognitive neuroscience approach. Psychological Bulletin 1: 109–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malabou, C. (2008) What Should We Do with Our Brain? New York: Fordham University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marconi, D. (2001) Filosofia e scienza cognitiva. Roma-Bari, Italy: Laterza.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1998) The Tree of Knowledge. The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Boston, MA and London: Shambhala.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCabe, D.P. and Castel, A. (2008) Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition 107: 343–352.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCormack, D.P. (2007) Molecular affects in human geographies. Environment and Planning A 39: 359–377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McDermott, R. (2004) The feeling of rationality: The meaning of neuroscientific advances for political science. Perspectives on Politics 4: 691–706.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McDermott, R. (2009) Mutual interests: The case for increasing dialogue between political science and neuroscience. Political Research Quarterly 62: 571–583.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meloni, M. (2011a) The cerebral subject at the junction of naturalism and anti-naturalism. In: F. Ortega and F. Vidal (eds.) Neurocultures. Glimpses from an Expanding Universe. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 101–115.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meloni, M. (2011b) Naturalism as an ontology of ourselves. Telos 155: 151–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meloni, M. (forthcoming) On the growing intellectual authority of neuroscience for political and moral theory: sketch for a genealogy. In: F. Vander Valk (ed.) Neuroscience and Political Theory. London: Routledge, in press.

  • Merleau-Ponty, M. (1942/1963) The Structure of Behavior. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962) Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moro, A. (2008) The Boundaries of Babel. The Brain and the Enigma of Impossible Languages. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Naccache, L. (2008) Neuro-resistances. Une deshumanisation de l’esprit? Le Débat 152: 154–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, T. (1974) What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review 83: 435–450.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newton, T. (2007) Nature and Sociology. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Noë, A. (2009) Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. New York: Farrar Strauss.

    Google Scholar 

  • Noë, A. and Thompson, E. (2004) Are there neural correlates of consciousness? Journal of Consciousness Studies 11: 3–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ortega, F. and Vidal, F. (2007) Mapping the cerebral subject in contemporary culture. Reciis – Electronic Journal of Communication Information and Innovation in Health. Rio de Janeiro 2: 255–259.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ortega, F. and Vidal, F. (eds.) (2011) Neurocultures. Glimpses from an Expanding Universe. New York: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Papoulias, C. and Callard, F. (2010) Biology’s gift: Interrogating the turn to affect. Body & Society 16 (1): 29–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Petitot, J., Varela, F.J., Roy, J.-M. and Pachoud, B. (eds.) (1999) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Protevi, J. (2009) Political Affect. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1994) The Threefold Cord. Mind, Body, and World. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rasmusson, A. (2009) Neuroethics as a brain-based philosophy of life: The case of Michael S. Gazzaniga. Neuroethics 2: 3–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rizzolatti, G. and Sinigaglia, C. (2006) So quel che fai. Il cervello che agisce e i neuroni specchio. Milan, Italy: Cortina.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, H. (2001) Colonising the social sciences? In: H. Rose and S. Rose (eds.) Alas Poor Darwin. London: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (2001) The politics of life itself. Theory, Culture and Society 18 (6): 1–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (2007) The Politics of Life Itself. Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-first Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaeffer, J.-M. (2007) La fin de l’exception humaine. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shakespeare, T. and Erickson, M. (2001) Different strokes: Beyond biological determinism and social constructionism. In: H. Rose and S. Rose (eds.) Alas Poor Darwin. London: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2009) The Corporeal Turn, An Interdisciplinary Reader. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint-Academic.com.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shilling, C. (2003) The Body & Social Theory, 2nd edn. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (ed.) (2008) Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders and Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skolnick Weisberg, D., Keil, F.C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E. and Gray, J.R. (2008) The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 3: 470–477.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tamborino, J. (2002) The Corporeal Turn. Passion, Necessity, Politics. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • TenHouten, W. (1997) Neurosociology. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 20: 7–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • TenHouten, W. (1999) Explorations in neurosociological theory: From the spectrum of affect to time-consciousness. In: D.D. Franks and T.S. Smith (eds.) Mind, Brain, and Society: Toward a Neurosociology of Emotion. Stamford, CT: JAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thiele, L.P. (2006a) The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Thiele, L.P. (2006b) Making intuition matter. In: S.E. Schram and B. Caterino (eds.) Making Political Science Matter. New York: New York University Press, pp. 188–205.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E. (2007) Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, J.H. (1999) The neurology of emotion. Implications for sociological theories of interpersonal behavior. In: D.D. Franks and T.S. Smith (eds.) Mind, Brain, and Society: Toward a Neurosociology of Emotion. Stamford, CT: JAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, S. (2002) Brains Practices Relativism. Social Theory after Cognitive Science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, S. (2007) Social theory as a cognitive neuroscience. European Journal of Social Theory 10: 357–374.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Valentine, K. (2008) After antagonism: Feminist theory and science. Feminist Theory 9: 355–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varela, F.J. (1996) Neurophenomenology: A methodological remedy for the hard problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies 3: 330–350.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vidal, F. (2005) Le Sujet Cérébral: Une Esquisse Historique et Conceptuelle. Psychiatrie, Sciences Humaines, Neurosciences 3: 37–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vidal, F. (2009) Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity. History of the Human Sciences 22: 5–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, S.J. (2010) New developments in neuroscience and medical sociology. In: W.C. Cockerham (ed.) The New Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, S.J., Birke, L. and Bendelow, G.A. (eds.) (2003) Debating Biology. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, E.A. (2004) Psychosomatic. Feminism and the Neurological Body. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, E.A. (2006) The work of antidepressants: Preliminary notes on how to build an alliance between feminism and psychopharmacology. BioSocieties 1: 125–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, L. (1953/2001) Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, Z. (1987) Philosophy and The Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This article has been developed over a long period in which I benefited, first, from a European Neuroscience and Society Network research grant (funded by the European Science Foundation), and then a 2-year Marie Curie IEF (FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008: research titled ‘The Emergence of a Biosociety’) that was carried out at the Institute for Science and Society, School of Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Nottingham. Many thanks to Andrew Turner for his help with the English language in the text and to the anonymous referees of Subjectivity for their very helpful criticisms.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Meloni, M. Philosophical implications of neuroscience: The space for a critique. Subjectivity 4, 298–322 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2011.8

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2011.8

Keywords

Navigation