by Denis Larrivee & Luis Echarte
Introduction
Philosophical roots of modern neuroethical
praxis and neuroscience are greatly influenced by the metaphysical approach to
natural reality developed by Descartes. Seen in contemporary trends like
cognitive ontology, neuroessentialism, posthumanism, and extended mind theory
these varying approaches reflect emphases on Cartesian philosophical attempts
to come to grips with the empirical reality of the phenomenal subject and its
fundamental, i.e., metaphysical, relation to natural reality.
1. The Cartesian
Legacy in Conceptions of Natural Reality.
A. The French
Philosopher’s Novelty and Enduring Influence in the Understanding of the
Natural World.
Heidegger points out that Descartes effected a
fundamental change in the understanding of natural reality by taking the ground
of reality to be the autonomous I (Onishi, 2011). Before Descartes, natural
reality was conceived as individuated, composed of entities or holisms that
possessed unique properties distinguishing them from all other entities
(Esfeld, 2004; Freddosso, 2010; Marion, 2007). Descartes’ introduction of the
divided and autonomous I, distinct from the individual – though Descartes attempted to link
the subject to a bodily location in the pineal gland – was consistent with his
understanding of efficient causality that attributed to the ‘mental’ I a causal
origin capable of effecting change. This exteriorized notion of causality
initiated a scientific revolution in succeeding centuries that explored
compositional and contiguous relations in natural phenomena and developed an
empiricist epistemology that interpreted nature as a product of more and still
more elementary components, which could exert direct, causal influences on one
another. Nonetheless, the introduction of the segregated I created an enduring
legacy in dualistic approaches to cognition.
B. Connecting the
Cartesian Interpretation of Natural Reality with Metaethics in Modern
Neuroethical Praxis
Cartesian compositional and dualistic
conceptions of nature, in concert with their subsequent evolution, yet
influence the understanding of the personal subject, cognition, neuroscience,
and neuroethical praxis. Cartesian influence is most directly seen in the
metaethical understanding of the personal subject and its manner of association
with the physical reality of the individual, as interpreted by neuroscience.
Because the personal subject constitutes a locus of value, the material reality
of the body acquires value through its association with the individual subject.
In general three modern metaethical variants trace their interpretation to
Cartesian influence on the manner of this association, 1) the autonomy of the
personal subject from the physical structure of the brain/body, seen, e.g., in
posthumanism (Bostrom, 2005), 2) a tenuous and amorphous link, initially
proposed by John Locke in his appropriation of the Cartesian subject, now
influencing extended mind theories (Levy 2011), and 3) a direct mapping of the
subject onto the material form of the brain/body, seen, for example, in
neuroessentialism and cognitive ontology (Reiner, 2011). In posthumanism, the
emancipatory and liberated I/ego validates plastic alteration of the material,
neural architecture. In extended mind theory, ethical parity notions between
the external and brain-based mind are used to justify neuromodulation of the
brain. In neuroessentialism/cognitive ontology the subject is situated only to
the brain or its parts which thereby acquire normative priority with respect to
the body or remainder of the brain.
2. Unresolved
Paradoxes Introduced by Cartesian Metaphysics
A. The Paradox of
Hierarchy and Order
Cartesian emphasis on causal relations that are
solely external, efficient interactions leaves unanswered the question of
organizational order and why only certain arrangements are selected. Indeed,
the explanation of preferred orders cannot be explained by efficient causal
relations alone, e.g., as in interlevel interactions, but necessitates the
invocation of a formal causal order that can account for such organization,
like the case of intrasystemic feedback (Bechtel, 2017). In its absence
features like neural integration are unexplained, leaving, unintegrated
functionalist accounts of neural network operation to explicate operation. Such
explanations, for example, are offered in cognitive ontology.
B. The Paradox of the
Self: The Dynamic Unity of the Individual
The Cartesian emphasis on the isolated ego
leaves unaddressed the necessity of the self as a principle of coordinated and
dynamic unity. Without an overall unity that is subject to guidance it is not
possible to engage in coordinated performance. This unity must emerge from
within the individual, and not outside the topological perimeter of the body,
that is, it is through the unique structural/operational order of the body and
neural architecture that the self emerges (Mossio and Moreno, 2015). Extended mind,
by contrast, presupposes that the self is emancipated from the body, lacking a
common neural and biological core.
C. The Paradox of
Subjectivity: The Mind Amidst the Material
The redaction of the autonomous ego that
transpired in the 18th century after Descartes, situated the subject
in the material composition of the body, leaving the generation of the subject
to be explained on purely material grounds.
Increasingly complex behavior, the product of evolutionary advances, (e.g.,
self-agency/agent causality, consciousness), became through the
Cartesian/materialist scheme the product of material forces alone. Yet, for
this explanation to suffice material reality must be pre-endowed with
properties that have a latent disposition to yield subjective order, a point
made by Thomas Nagel in Mind and Cosmos (Nagel, 2012). The posthumanist
challenge, however, presupposes that the materially altered - and emancipated
and autonomous – subject/ego will remain unchanged.
3. Conciliating
Cartesian Metaphysics and Neuroethics through Neuroscience
Modern neuroscience, once the province of
single cell analyses only, today tackles empirical questions dealing with mega
features of brain operation, like large scale network architecture or faculties
such as memory. These current studies, that adopt a methodological legacy from
Cartesian conceptions of reality, illuminate the organization and manner of
working of the human brain, arguably the most complex natural structure in the
known universe. However, they do not explain the why question for the brain and
body’s organization, which reflects a supra(meta)physical order, one extrinsic
to the brain and necessarily adopted in its design; e.g., the need for unity in
individuated and coordinated action. This metaphysical ordering is made evident
in neuroscience discoveries and can help to resolve paradoxes introduced by
Cartesian thinking and conciliate, in turn, their resolution with neuroethics.
A. Functionalist
interpretations of human faculties.
The inability of mechanistic – i.e., having a central causal nexus - views of brain operation to
explicate higher order argue for a systemic organization in which the brain
(and body) are intrinsically and holistically configured, much like the
autopoietic, recursive model of Varela and Maturana (1979).
B. Extended notions of
mind
The premise that the mind derives from an
elastic and intersystemic organization is challenged by the individuation that
is ubiquitous in goal directed, organismal life. The general observation of
integrated autonomous wholes that are endemic in natural life reveals, rather,
that living organisms must exist as entities in order to express properties
like agency (Hooker 2008). Modern neuroscientific evidence is consistent with a
dynamical self-organization that arises from within and extends throughout the
whole individual, but not beyond him (Allen and Friston, 2016).
C. Autonomous Ego
The Cartesian notion that the I/ego is
segregated from the material form of its expression, is challenged by the
failure to account for the appearance of subjectivity in material nature,
suggesting, rather, that the material character of the natural world is itself
impressed with a latent metaphysical order. The apparent existence of this
impressed order seems to mean that subjectivity is not itself a feature derived
from the physical reality of the world but rather one imposed from without
(Nagel, 20).
Observations
- Cartesian attempts to explain causality in nature introduce modern riddles of brain operation affecting neuroethics.
- Philosophy of science observations on neuroscience may help to resolve these ambiguities and offer a sounder metaethical foundation for neuroethics
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