[lbo-talk] NPR: A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret

[Matthias Wasser]

On Tuesday, June 29, 2010, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anything to do with correlates between brain states and
> behavior is strictly orthogonal to nature/nurture  questions, although
> of course plasticity matters.
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> Of course, but there's still an ideological predisposition towards highlighting research that seems to provide an optimistic prognosis for an individuals political program. Even the degree to which one stresses plasticity has political implications, and thus quite often also political motivations. This is all very old hat, but it remains as true as it was in the days of Spencer and Kropotkin.
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> Does anyone suppose Pinker would be so outspoken a proponent of evolutionary psychology if he was a supporter of Hugo Chavez? And vice versa, would otherwise atheistic or secular minded people on this list be so antagonistic to what they might characterize as reductionist neuroscience if it weren't for the fact that their ideology calls for remaking society in an entirely novel fashion?

Agreed on almost all counts - what I meant by plasticity mattering was
precisely that (unlike "sociopath MRIs look like *this*") it is
relevant to these ideological debates. (Indeed, you can make phrase
the much-mocked "how much does nature contribute and how much nature?"
coherently as "how much plasticity is there?)

Your comment about "otherwise atheistic" people seems to betray a
latent association between materialism and a relatively rigid human
nature. (Perhaps you mean neely to report Carrol &al.'s making of that
mistake.) And certainly Pinker has good reason to make this
identification. But this is just the relationship I mean to deny!
Genes and stuff other than genes result in brain states, which produce
behaviors. The fact that brain states form a middle term in this chain
is irrelevant to  the chain as a whole, taken as a input/output black
box.