The Paradox of Neurotechnology II

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Date: TBA

As the fields that are broadly grouped under the rubric of neuroscience provide increasingly more information about the structure and function of neural systems and the brain, it becomes relatively easier to accept and use this data as “facts” to guide, if not actually dictate, our perspectives and activities. Indeed, in the past decade neuroscience has become something of a focal point for applications of genetic and nanotechnologies. The pace of neuroscientific discovery is fueled in part by the synergy of new technology in these and other areas, as neuroscientific advances are both being applied in medicine and integrated into the fabric of social conduct and daily life. This in turn has spawned incipient fields of “neuroeconomics,” “neuromarketing,” “neurolaw,” “neurotheology,” etc. But given the reality that knowledge of the brain and mind remains incomplete and contingent, the ‘neuro’ prefix seems to have become synecdoche for the reductionist/anti-reductionist debate in each of the areas in which it is used, prompting us to consider what some have regarded as “the limits of neuro-talk.”

In this second symposium, a host of distinguished participants will address the question of the changes that might be needed in the theories and concepts of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology if a holistic concept of the human person is to emerge from them. The core discussion will center on questions of how the brain creates the phenomenal “mind,” and if and how this phenomenal mind can affect the neural mechanisms of decision-making, deliberation, and resolutions that impact much of our individual and social behavior. In particular, the speakers will address what is often referred to as the “Hermeneutic Circle” that questions the relationships of part and whole, causes and effects, and the implications that these issues raise. Key questions include the extent to which conscious choices can reclaim the self from patterns of intention, behavior and need, and the degree to which we can properly speak of a self concept as having a determining role in our life choices.