The Fallacy of Neuroscience and the Error of Radical Reductionism
FRECSKA Ede
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
FRECSKA Ede
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
Szöveg nagyítása:
The following article is a reflection to Tallis-Buda-Halasz debate on Neuromania.
From my perspective the problem is not the materialistic approach, but the radical reductionism, a mistake what every party can fall into. The fallacy of neuroscience is the assumption that every human experience results from the activity of one network, the neuroaxonal. As Francis Crick (1995) put it: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons!” He spelled out his radical reductionistic vision as follows:
“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
My usual, disrespectful response to such kind of statements is: “You, but not me!” This rudely radical reductionism is not a characteristic of the neuroscientific field only. A behavioral psychologist would state that you are not more than a package of adaptive behavioral patterns, a radical social psychologist would say that you are not more than the sum of social roles, or a classical psychoanalyst would suppose that you are a bunch of complexes. Richard Dawkins has moved in another direction stating that we are vessels of selfish genes. Science writer John Horgan (2000) criticized such narrow views:
“In a sense, Crick is right. We are nothing but a pack of neurons. At the same time, neuroscience has so far proved to be oddly unsatisfactory. Explaining the mind in terms of neurons has not yielded much more insight or benefit than explaining the mind in terms of quarks and electrons. There are many alternative reductionisms. We are nothing but a pack of idiosyncratic genes. We are nothing but a pack of adaptations sculpted by natural selection. We are nothing but a pack of computational devices dedicated to different tasks. We are nothing but a pack of sexual neuroses. These proclamations, like Crick’s, are all defensible, and they are all inadequate.”
Buda Béla stated that he had not been aware of any representatives of the psychosocial field ruling out the role of the biological level. That is probably true nowadays. However, the first findings of biological psychiatry have met a huge resistance from the psychosocial/psychoanalytical field. For example, the first brain imaging findings of schizophrenia elicited a furious response from those who supposed it to be “functional”. In sum, no representative of any field is vaccinated against radical reductionism.
The other fallacy (not of the neurosciences but its representatives) is the acknowledgment of the bottom-up effects with ignorance of the top-down relationships. In his book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker (2003) writes, “culture is crucial, but culture could not exist without mental faculties that allow humans to create and learn culture to begin with.” The effect of culture in shaping brain structure and neuroaxonal function is also permitted. This means that bottom-up and top-down interactions are at work bidirectionally. To avoid the trap of radical reductionism, one must assume that all levels of organization (Table 1) are at work with bidirectional inter-related causative effects.
Contemporary psychiatry suffers from identity crisis: it tries hard to catch up to other medical fields in being objective, biological. However, by doing this overzealously it has been losing its essence the “psyche”, and deserves to be called “brainiatry”. In order to relieve the “inferiority complex” of my colleagues and to avoid the sarcastic disdain of other medical professionals, I may say for encouragement that psychiatrists deal with something more complex than they are themselves. No other professionals of the medical field can come up with a claim like that. Or can you imagine a proctologist stating something similar (i.e. the rectum is above them)?
Table 1. Levels of organizations relevant to the conscious experience
Just in brief about consciousness. The neurological correlates of consciousness can only solve the “easy problem” (Chalmers 1995), what is related to the content of conscious experience but not to its subjective feature, to the phenomenological experience. That is the “hard problem” which is out of the reach of the objective scientific approach per definitionem (since it is subjective). What more is necessary for solving the “hard problem” of consciousness, what other networks may be involved in mediating human experiences – I have addressed in the book Inner Paths to Outer Space (Strassman et al. 2007).
Ede Frecska
References
Chalmers, David (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3):200-19.
Crick, Francis (1995). Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York, NY: Scribner Publishing.
Horgan, John (2000). The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation. New York, NY: Free Press.
Pinker, Steven (2003). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
Strassman, Rick; Wojtowicz-Praga, Slawek; Luna, Luis Eduardo; Frecska, Ede (2007). Inner Paths to Outer Space, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.
Original lecture:
Related materials (in Hungarian):
Halász Péter:Vajon megváltozik-e az agyunk különböző behatásokra?
Buda Béla: Bezárkózott a biológiai szemlélet
Halász Péter:Vajon megváltozik-e az agyunk különböző behatásokra?
Buda Béla: Tények és értelmezések az agykutatás terén
Raymond Tallis: Neurománia
Neuroscience
Interview with Prof Laurie Santos about her lecture held at Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development 2013.
Misleading information was disseminated on the internet about the contamination of commercial salt with great, thus toxic quantities of potassium chloride. In our study commercial salt samples were analyzed and potassium content was below 0,2% in regular salt samples. Homeostatic regulation of sodium and potassium was reviewed. Current concepts about the optional daily intake of these important electrolytes and fats regarding the correlation between salt intake and hypertension were discussed.
The VERITAS study showed that in hypertensive patients the imidazoline I1 receptor agonist, rilmenidine significantly decreased the office blood pressure as well as the blood pressure measured by ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM). The white-coat reaction and left ventricular hyperthrophy (LVH) were also decreased. Ain a separate study involving hypertensive subjects rilmenidine significantly increased baroreflex sensitivity. This effect may contribute - mainly during daytime - to the antihypertensive effect.
Intermittent claudication can seriously impair the patients’ quality of life. Cilostazol was registered in Hungary in 2014. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of cilostazol in patients with intermittent claudication. 1405 patients were enrolled to the 6 months, multicenter, non-interventional trial. From the 1331 patients, who completed the study, the data of 674 patients were subjected to efficacy analysis. Pain free and maximal walking distance and the 6 minute walking test improved significantly at 3 months (78.65%, 65.23%, 56.09%; respectively, p<0.001), and a further increase was observed after 6 months treatment (129.74%, 107.2, 80.38% respectively, p<0.001). Adverse events occured in 7.26% of the patients. The most frequent adverse events were headache, diarrhea, dizziness, tachycardia or palpitation. 24 patients (1.7%) stopped cilostazol treatment because of side effects. 6 month cilostazol treatment significantly increased the walking distance in patients with intermittent claudication, without important safety problems.
Original abstract:High body temperature in the first 12-24 h after stroke onset is associated with poor functional outcome. The Paracetamol (Acetaminophen) In Stroke (PAIS) trial aimed to assess whether early treatment with paracetamol improves functional outcome in patients with acute stroke by reducing body temperature and preventing fever. METHODS: In a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, patients with ischaemic stroke or intracerebral haemorrhage and body temperature between 36 degrees C and 39 degrees C were randomly assigned treatment with paracetamol (6 g daily) or placebo within 12 h from symptom onset. Treatment allocation was based on a computer-generated list of random numbers with varying block size. The primary outcome was improvement beyond expectation on the modified Rankin scale at 3 months, according to the sliding dichotomy approach. This trial is registered, number ISRCTN74418480. FINDINGS: Between March, 2003, and May, 2008, 1400 patients were randomly allocated treatment. 260 (37%) of 697 patients receiving paracetamol and 232 (33%) of 703 receiving placebo improved beyond expectation (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 1.20, 95% CI 0.96-1.50). In a post-hoc analysis of patients with baseline body temperature 37-39 degrees C, treatment with paracetamol was associated with improved outcome (1.43, 1.02-1.97). There were 55 serious adverse events in the paracetamol group (8%) and 70 in the placebo group (10%). INTERPRETATION: These results do not support routine use of high-dose paracetamol in patients with acute stroke. Paracetamol might have a beneficial effect on functional outcome in patients admitted with a body temperature 37-39 degrees C, but this post-hoc finding needs further study. FUNDING: Netherlands Heart Foundation.
1.
Clinical Neuroscience
[Headache registry in Szeged: Experiences regarding to migraine patients]2.
Clinical Neuroscience
[The new target population of stroke awareness campaign: Kindergarten students ]3.
Clinical Neuroscience
Is there any difference in mortality rates of atrial fibrillation detected before or after ischemic stroke?4.
Clinical Neuroscience
Factors influencing the level of stigma in Parkinson’s disease in western Turkey5.
Clinical Neuroscience
[The effects of demographic and clinical factors on the severity of poststroke aphasia]1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
COMMENTS
0 comments