Neuroscience Vs Philosophy, Again.

Neuroscience wants to be the answer to everything. It isn't.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7714533/brain-drain.thtml


Nice article by Roger Scruton in The Spectator, concerning a particular thorn in my side. Just one example, from the article:

"So just what can be proved about people by the close observation of their brains? We can be conceptualised in two ways: as organisms and as objects of personal interaction. The first way employs the concept ‘human being’, and derives our behaviour from a biological science of man. The second way employs the concept ‘person’, which is not the concept of a natural kind, but of an entity that relates to others in a familiar but complex way that we know intuitively but find hard to describe. Through the concept of the person, and the associated notions of freedom, responsibility, reason for action, right, duty, justice and guilt, we gain the description under which human beings are seen, by those who respond to them as they truly are. When we endeavour to understand persons through the half-formed theories of neuroscience we are tempted to pass over their distinctive features in silence, or else to attribute them to some brain-shaped homunculus inside. For we understand people by facing them, by arguing with them, by understanding their reasons, aspirations and plans. All of that involves another language, and another conceptual scheme, from those deployed in the biological sciences. We do not understand brains by facing them, for they have no face."

I have the argument mentioned in the article all the time, albeit from varying angles. There is a hard dividing line that seems very difficult if not impossible to communicate across. Most of my efforts have been toward finding a way to communicate this that extreme scientific systemizers (in my case, usually those with significant social deficits) will be able to accept, if not understand. The arguments in the comments section of the linked article are all too familiar.

While it may seem unrelated on the surface, I couldn't help but recall Brugger's experiments regarding apophenia and dopamine. Among other things:

"In his July 2002 report, Brugger stated that during the first stage of the experiment the individuals who believed in the paranormal were much more likely to see a face or a word when there was none. The skeptics were more likely to miss the real words and faces when they appeared on the screen."*

The link between patternicity and paranormal beliefs aside, I had noticed something interesting. When trying to communicate the nuances of interpersonal social interaction to these extreme systemizers and analyzers, I was being asked the same questions again and again: How can it be possible to understand another's motivations if it's not explicitly stated? What is the mathematical formula for friendliness? What is "flirting" and why should I believe it exists if I can't perceive it? Feelings are only a neurochemical process, so why should they matter in relationships? Trying to explain that many people experience empathy and emotional attachment feels like trying to tell a skeptic there is a ghost standing behind them.

There was so much missing of what was actually there that I thought of the apophenia experiment. One day I asked, rather frustrated, "when you look at clouds, do you ever think they resemble other things? Like, faces.or horses or ships...anything like that?" The answer was (and almost always has been since) a puzzled no. Clouds look like clouds, those other things are not clouds, so why should there be any resemblance? What's more, people who said they saw such things were either lying or crazy, or perhaps these stories of cloud shapes were just a peasant superstition cherished by the ignorant. Sort of like sasquatch or God.

It might only be anecdotal (and hence unacceptable to those same folks I'm talking about) but such consistency perked my interest. For all the mockery of those who believe in the paranormal (or who experience apophenia, pareidolia, cartocacoethes, synchronicity or what have you) such a consistent absence of such among a group who were not seeing, nor sometimes even believing in things like empathy or social nuance was intriguing. Could it be that detecting patterns plays a not insignificant role in successful social interactions? Thanks to my own tendency toward patternicity, it was pretty easy to see the similarities between the two groups. :p In my estimation, it's not so different from those who would see consciousness as simply a neurobiological process and nothing more, a "brain in a box" more than a whole person.

Personally - in all my crazed, irrational, philosophical unscientific-ness - I don't believe the views (and the theories) of those who are super-rational are the only correct explanations. Nor do I believe those who grab hold of any pattern (or convenient bit of mysticism, or worse, conspiracy) to explain their world are necessarily correct either. However, I do believe (and have been damned many times for saying so) that there is an added level of experience for those who are able to sense something beyond being a bag of water and chemicals, where everything simply corresponds to a precise formula. Being a synesthetic, for instance, I am a great test taker, always have been. Why? Because I'm using several senses to peg the answers in my mind. It's that much easier when you know how the answer tastes, feels, and what color it is. My friend over there, the non-synesthetic, has far less sensory information to help him out. Our experience of the senses and how they affect us is not the same. By the same token, a person who has a feel and understanding of philosophical concepts as well as the scientific is going to have an edge. Just because a person experiences something and you don't, it doesn't always mean they are a fool. Sometimes it only means they have a different experience than you.

Neuroscience has its place and it's an important one to be sure, but more is necessary to help us explain our experience as people.

*I've lost track of the source of this quote. Will find and add later.