Saturday, October 08, 2011

Neuroscientific Totalitarianism & Brain-Overclaims

Some neuroscientists are saying that "evil" does not exist. See "The End of Evil?" by Ron Rosenbaum.

People still commit bad actions. "But the idea that people make conscious decisions to hurt or harm is no longer sustainable, say the new brain scientists. For one thing, there is no such thing as "free will" with which to decide to commit evil. (Like evil, free will is an antiquated concept for most.) Autonomous, conscious decision-making itself may well be an illusion. And thus intentional evil is impossible."

"Evil" is reduced to neuro-physical activity. And moral agency and moral responsibility are gone. Neuroscince is reducing such things to pure physicalism. If free will doesn't exist moral evul doesn't exist.

This is another essay in a growing and important discussion. It does a nice job referencing and explaining "brain-overclaims"; viz., neuroscientific over estimating of the causal efficacy of the physical brain. This is neuroscientific totalitarianism.

Rosenbaum cites a recent book called Neuroethics, which looks like a good, edited collection of readings. He thinks "we can do better than the mechanistic, deterministic, denial of personal responsibility the neuroscientists are offering to "replace" evil with." And again, on their own reductionistic theory, they don't have free will either.