What is Real About Reductive Neuroscience?. Issue 3 (27th May 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tortorello, Frank
• Is Part Of: Journal of critical realism. Volume 16:Issue 3(2017)
• Page Start: 235
• Page End: 254
• Publication Date: 2017-05-27
• Subjects: Neuroscience -- brain -- ethics -- reduction -- social -- semantic -- person -- science; Critical realism -- Periodicals; Réalisme critique; 149.205
• DOI: 10.1080/14767430.2017.1312214
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1476-7430

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I critique those brands of contemporary neuroscientific research into human health that rest on a set of interrelated, reductionist assumptions. These assumptions result in the claim that grieving or loving are caused mechanically by physiological, chemical, and electrical processes in the brain. I employ a critical realist understanding of scientific practice to detail methodological impossibilities entailed in reductionist neuroscience that are nevertheless used to justify claims to scientific knowledge and authority. I use an exemplar of such research to delineate specific errors and to show how knowledge claims based on them are therefore ideological, not scientific.