Everything related to the functioning of the brain fascinates us. We have assumed that the mystery of our mental life is hidden in the brain, so it seems obvious to us why we are so passionate about studying it. If in the past we considered that the nervous center of our being was in the heart, where even “memories” (from the Latin, cor-cordis), we now assume that everything happens in the head. Someone may say that there must be something left of this ancestral understanding when we say that for important things we must follow what our heart whispers to us, but deep down we know that it is the brain connections that dictate the sentence.
Because of this fascination with brain life, we can say that we live in the age of neurolatry, a doctrine that requires everything to be explained and approved by neuroscience to give it authority. It is even common to find information in the daily press reporting new neuroscientific advances linked to central phenomena in our lives. It is information that quickly attracts our attention because through it we aspire to clarify some of the mysteries of life that disturb us so much (the circuit of love, that of empathy, that of violence or that of benevolence for example). . A short story therefore through which we aspire to discover the philosophical synapse of life.
A little over a year ago, certain media reported on an event destined to substantially modify our approach to the subject. It is an atlas that brings together and details the knowledge about the brain highlighted by a macro-project launched a few years ago and presumed to have a great impact on the multiple derivatives linked to this complex and enigmatic organ. The scale of this step could reach proportions and consequences never seen before, because the only certainty we really have about the brain is that, for the moment, we do not know much about it.
World Philosophy Day is celebrated on the third Thursday of each November (this year it was last Thursday), and I believe that this anniversary is a good opportunity to demand that all of us who devote ourselves to philosophy (and by extension to all humanist disciplines) pay more attention to the discoveries that are being made in the field of science, particularly in that of neuroscience. Sometimes it seems that we philosophers have a certain distrust of this knowledge, as if there is something that makes us insecure or hurts our pride, when in reality there is nothing no reason. If neuroscience does anything, it is to broaden the debate on subjects as central to philosophy as ethics, the theory of knowledge or spirituality. The danger (if we can call it that) that neuroscience will monopolize the discourse and that philosophers and literary people will find themselves speechless is more of a fear (if we can also call it that) than a reality. Among other things, because the importance of science and its value for society do not arise solely from scientific data.
Indeed, the value of science for a given society is based on data but is corroborated by the cultural recognition of these data. Science is also represented in our scale of values by the cultural and social validation it obtains. This is what the psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers warned a few years ago and we see it daily. In fact, one of the questions that continually arises about the brain is the mystery of its plasticity, a dynamism that involves many philosophical and social questions that go far beyond “mere” scientific data. Knowing why we expect so much from neuroscience, what it provides and how this knowledge can and should impact social and personal life are questions that cannot be answered solely from the microscope.
The human being is a form of life to always be discovered. What are we, human beings? The radicality and depth of this question made the philosopher Immanuel Kant (whose tercentenary of his birth we are celebrating this year) affirm that it encompasses the rest of the great questions which, according to him, concern us: what can I know? ? What should I do? what can I expect? World Philosophy Day is also a good date to remember that even if we don’t do it consciously, we constantly question ourselves. And precisely because we live in an age of neurolatry, transhumanism and intelligent artifice, it becomes more urgent to thematize what homo sapiens sapiens is and what role we play in the plot of life.
Philosophy and the human sciences cannot turn their backs on the experimental sciences, because they would boycott themselves, but at the same time, the experimental sciences must defend the many existential implications that their research entails, because the sciences are also subjected to the vulnerability and contradiction of human experience.
It is likely that we will never be able to satisfactorily answer the Kantian question: in the same way that the brain is modulated by breathing, humanity arises by walking. Everything indicates that any possible solution to the riddle of knowing who we are will be more a matter of performative action than of theoretical reflection. But even there, we have no excuse for ceasing to be attentive to everything that is happening in the diversity of fields of knowledge. Both on a scientific and humanistic level. Ultimately, our brains are as interested in science as they are in literature, whether the bodies that house them are dedicated to the work of the microscope in the laboratory or to the books in the library. Why tire him out with small guild battles that distract him so unnecessarily.
** Miquel Seguró is the author of “Life is also thought” (2018) and ‘Vulnerability’ (2021).
