Not so Fast. On Some Bold Neuroscientific Claims Concerning Human Agency

According to a widespread view, a completeexplanatory reduction of all aspects of thehuman mind to the electro-chemical functioning ofthe brain is at hand and will certainly produce vastand positive cultural, political and social consequences.However, notwithstanding the astonishing advancesgenerated by the neurosciences in recent years forour understanding of the mechanisms and functions ofthe brain, the application of these findings to thespecific but crucial issue of human agency can beconsidered a “pre-paradigmatic science” (in ThomasKuhn’s sense). This implies that the situation is, at thesame time, intellectually stimulating and methodologicallyconfused. More specifically—because of thelack of a solid, unitary and coherent methodologicalframework as to how to connect neurophysiologyand agency—it frequently happens that tentativeapproaches, bold but very preliminary claims andeven clearly flawed interpretations of experimentaldata are taken for granted. In this article someexamples of such conceptual confusions and intellectualhubris will be presented, which derive from themost recent literature at the intersection betweenneurosciences, on the one hand, and philosophy,politics and social sciences, on the other hand. It willalso be argued that, in some of these cases, hasty andover-ambitious conclusions may produce negativesocial and political consequences. The general upshotwill be that very much has still to be clarified as towhat and how neurosciences can tell us about humanagency and that, in the meantime, intellectual andmethodological caution is to be recommended.