Why scientistic neuroscience scares the hell out of me

[edragone]

I believe I've said here that I don't yet consider myself a "proponent" or a "skeptic" on psi phenomena/NDEs/the rest, just curious. Part of the reason neither side has sold me yet is the negative examples you get on either camp. But while fake psychics or self-deluded researchers can be annoying or pitiful, pseudo-skeptics and followers of scientism are much more liable to get me angry or leave me terrified.

This is a good example of the latter, albeit from 2006:

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/...Last-Stand.pdf

The over-reaction to the "dangers" of dualism (apparently it's not enough to blame organized religion for all the ills of society anymore, it's got to be a fundamental philosophical notion), and the fact that some of the notions alluded to here ("science of morality," the soul/consciousness, etc.) are still hotly debated six years later doesn't say much for this guy having a rock-solid case. But this sh*t still scares me more than the scariest movie monster (Pale Man) out there.

What we really want, I think, is to see the mind’s clockwork, “as clear and complete as those see-through exhibitions at auto shows.” That’s not all we’re after, of course. We’d like to cure diseases and do other patently useful things. But the promise of useful applications is not what fascinates us. Our fascination is existential. We are hooked on the idea of understanding ourselves in transparently mechanical terms. But a strange feature of this impulse to see the mind’s clockwork is that, so far as this impulse is concerned, the clockwork’s details are almost irrelevant. We don’t care how it works, exactly. We just want to see it in action. Is that foolish? I don’t think so. On the contrary, when we think about how our minds work more generally, this bare yearning to perceive the mechanical details of our minds, whatever they happen to be, makes perfect sense.

As someone involved in the arts, the hand-made and the folkloric especially, I'm not naturally drawn to a fascination or interest in much of any kind of machinery. I fundamentally don't get that interest, but plenty of people love understanding the technicalities of technology, and more power to 'em. But I've never been able to grasp why *anyone* would want to think of people - or any living thing - as "simply complex biological machines," let alone huge swaths of the scientific community. I would think that, if you go into fields like biology, zoology, or psychology - or even neuroscience, with its focus on how people function - it's presumably because you love people and organisms as a whole and want to help and understand the whole, not break every last one of them down to a wind-up clock with no spontaneity or life to them. I suppose that line of thinking is more amenable to the conditions science operates under. It also gives one the notion that these biological machines, once understood, can be easily controlled, and I think some people, at least unconsciously, get off on that. But never mind the fact that someone like me, who thinks that the message of the first stanza of "Rainbow Connection" just might be true after all, has an allergic reaction to reductionism. The truly worrisome fact for me is the bold in the quote - that understanding the machinery is considered more interesting, and more worthwhile, than the value of that knowledge. Seeing the gears move is more important than whether or not they do anything. Watching lights go off on a brain scan matters more, at least to this author (apparently), than whether those lights can give us a clue on how to cure cancer or slow biological decay. I think this notion can be found at the heart of a great many "mad scientist" stories, and apparently, it's not unfounded.

The other thing that scares me about neuroscience is the hubris it's already acquired, despite being only a few years older than this 22-year old. For why that scares me, I refer you here:

Does evil exist? Neuroscientists say no. - Slate Magazine

[Limbo]

Take a stand against neurobabble!

Edward Feser: Against “neurobabble”

[fls]

The mention of clockwork is a metaphor - best not to read too much into it. I also do not always like the metaphors which various authors use to express themselves.

Also, best not to get your understanding of neuroscience from an article written by a journalist for the lay press.

Linda

[gabriel]

Originally Posted by fls

The mention of clockwork is a metaphor - best not to read too much into it. I also do not always like the metaphors which various authors use to express themselves.

Also, best not to get your understanding of neuroscience from an article written by a journalist for the lay press.

Linda

Laity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metaphors, science and priesthoods, huh?

[FallingLeaf]

Originally Posted by fls

The mention of clockwork is a metaphor - best not to read too much into it. I also do not always like the metaphors which various authors use to express themselves.

Also, best not to get your understanding of neuroscience from an article written by a journalist for the lay press.

Linda

Since metaphors are the way we understand the world, it's too much to ask not to read too much into them - see the selfish gene, computer metaphors for the brain, ecosystem/ecological metaphors in recent economic theory or the role of Lovelock's Gaia in sanitising the ecological crisis etc.

Agreed, that it's sometimes best to read what the scientists write but even they can walk into the same pitfalls as journalists.

[fls]

Originally Posted by gabriel

Laity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metaphors, science and priesthoods, huh?

Well, I used it as "the mass of people as distinguished from those of a particular profession". But whenever there's another meaning which adds an element of irony, I'm all for that.

Linda

[fls]

Originally Posted by FallingLeaf

Since metaphors are the way we understand the world, it's too much to ask not to read too much into them - see the selfish gene, computer metaphors for the brain, ecosystem/ecological metaphors in recent economic theory or the role of Lovelock's Gaia in sanitising the ecological crisis etc.

Those are good examples where reading too much into the metaphor becomes misleading (for those who didn't bother reading the book). I guess it depends upon how interested someone is in making sure they are not misled. Some people like the hell scared out of them, after all.

Agreed, that it's sometimes best to read what the scientists write but even they can walk into the same pitfalls as journalists.

Sure. Like a poor choice of metaphor, for example.

Linda

[FallingLeaf]

Originally Posted by fls

Those are good examples where reading too much into the metaphor becomes misleading (for those who didn't bother reading the book). I guess it depends upon how interested someone is in making sure they are not misled. Some people like the hell scared out of them, after all.



Sure. Like a poor choice of metaphor, for example.

Linda

Points taken. I would add, however, that a metaphor is poor only in degree: metaphors can only give us a glimpse, a certain way of viewing what it has been deployed to illustrate e.g. there are aspects of the brain that are computer-like and the metaphor is deployed to bring out that aspect. Of course, one could read too much into it, as with all metaphors but that wouldn't necesarilly make it a poor metaphor, just a poor use/reading of one. Nonetheless, I do believe that some metaphors are better than others - not 100% how to measure that, the progress a metaphor brings about is one but perhaps accordance with experience (where valid?)?

[gabriel]

Metaphors, similes, tropes, figurative allusions of all kinds, are a useful way of perceiving the world. Much of the law and science is based on allusive likenesses.

[fls]

Originally Posted by FallingLeaf

Points taken. I would add, however, that a metaphor is poor only in degree: metaphors can only give us a glimpse, a certain way of viewing what it has been deployed to illustrate e.g. there are aspects of the brain that are computer-like and the metaphor is deployed to bring out that aspect. Of course, one could read too much into it, as with all metaphors but that wouldn't necesarilly make it a poor metaphor, just a poor use/reading of one. Nonetheless, I do believe that some metaphors are better than others - not 100% how to measure that, the progress a metaphor brings about is one but perhaps accordance with experience (where valid?)?

For example, the selfish gene is a good metaphor (if you read the book) as what one reads into it adds to what Dawkins was illustrating. Maddox's "a book for burning" was a poor choice, as the comparisons it draws are antithetical to what he was trying to illustrate.

A metaphor which "scares the hell" out of someone it is meant to inspire could be poor?

Linda