Viewing neuroscience as a box opener is tempting. The box conceals the human mind; opening the box reveals it.

According to this image, neuroscience uncovers reality. It lays bare the truth about our taken for granted notions of mind: about our concepts of ‘self,’ ‘will,’ ‘belief,’ ‘intention’… Neuroscience reveals the underlying facts about us humans.

How exciting…, and how terrifying! What will they find in the box? And what will they not find? Will they find my ‘self’ there – the entity that is me and that writes these words?

What if they don’t find my ‘self’ in the box! What if my ‘self’ turns out to be an illusion! Can they engineer one for me instead? My life would be so desolate without ‘me.’

But neuroscientists are clever. They control what’s in the box. They surely will be able to enhance my brain and create the ‘self’ that didn’t exist in the first place.

Ideas like these are discussed in a mind-boggling interview entitled,

What strikes me about the neurophilosophical discussion is that it does NOT question the notion of the self. The notion is discussed as if it were self-evident to all of us, as some sort of ‘entity.’ The notion is supposed to be present in ordinary (culturally shaped) self-understanding. What is lacking is the evidence for the notion of ‘the self.’

You’ve guessed where the evidence is hiding: it’s in the box!

Neuroscientists opening the box threaten to disclose that the brain is naked. It might not be garmented in a ‘self’ or in a ‘free will.’ That these ‘entities’ exist in the box were perhaps just illicit reifications of modes of speech present in everyday discourse.

But what is ‘reification’?

Is it not precisely the image of ‘the box’ concealing the realities of mind?

If the tempting ‘box’ image supplies the model of reification – the very form of reification – isn’t the notion that neuroscience, by opening the box, is exposing reifications in ordinary discourse a whirling dance with the same reifying tendency that it is supposed to expose?

The ‘box’ mode of thinking is a simplified use of psychological nouns and verbs as if they referred to ‘entities’ and ‘processes’ in a hidden realm. It is difficult to resist such simplified linguistic imagery.

I’m convinced that neuroscience is making important discoveries that will challenge our self-understanding. But I question the ‘box’ image of these developments as an oversimplification of the very modes of speech it makes it seem we can transcend.

Pär Segerdahl

Minding our language - the Ethics Blog