Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0465062911
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In Brainwashed, psychiatrist and AEI scholar Sally Satel and psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld reveal how many of the real-world applications of human neuroscience gloss over its limitations and intricacies, at times obscuring—rather than clarifying—the myriad factors that shape our behavior and identities. Brain scans, Satel and Lilienfeld show, are useful but often ambiguous representations of a highly complex system. Each region of the brain participates in a host of experiences and interacts with other regions, so seeing one area light up on an fMRI in response to a stimulus doesn’t automatically indicate a particular sensation or capture the higher cognitive functions that come from those interactions. The narrow focus on the brain’s physical processes also assumes that our subjective experiences can be explained away by biology alone. As Satel and Lilienfeld explain, this “neurocentric” view of the mind risks undermining our most deeply held ideas about selfhood, free will, and personal responsibility, putting us at risk of making harmful mistakes, whether in the courtroom, interrogation room, or addiction treatment clinic.
A provocative account of our obsession with neuroscience, Brainwashed brilliantly illuminates what contemporary neuroscience and brain imaging can and cannot tell us about ourselves, providing a much-needed reminder about the many factors that make us who we are.
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Found that when subjects were primed with anti-free-will messages, they reported less punitive attitudes toward hypothetical murderers and greater forgiveness of interpersonal transactions, consistent with the notion that actors may regard both themselves and others as less accountable in a deterministic milieu. Azim Shariff et al., “Diminished Belief in Free Will Increases Forgiveness and Reduces Retributive Punishment,” Psychological Sciences, in preparation. One crime was designed to arouse.
Experiments, Jennifer Kenworthey Bilz found that being victimized tends to reduce the victim’s standing in her own eyes and in the eyes of those around her, and that the effect is worse if no retribution is exacted from the perpetrator. Jennifer Kenworthey Bilz, “The Effect of Crime and Punishment on Social Standing” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2006), 72–73. Unfortunately, her sample size was limited to twenty undergrads. See also Kenworthey Bilz and John M. Darley, “What’s Wrong with.
Would be neuroscientific guidance in vexing problems, such as identifying defendants who are faking mental illness to avoid standing trial, or distinguishing false memories of sexual abuse from accurate ones. Whether the formidable technical hurdles involved in drawing inferences from imaging can be cleared remains to be seen, but even if they are, subjective judgments are inescapable. Let us say, for example, that brain evidence will someday be able to show that a defendant lacks the capacity.
Midnight to phone Franks’s family and tell them to expect a ransom note for their kidnapped son. Leopold and Loeb never fathomed that they might be caught. These brilliant sons of privileged Chicago families—Leopold allegedly had an IQ of 200; Loeb had graduated from college by age eighteen—believed themselves exempt from the laws that governed ordinary men. Several days later, their plan unraveled when police found a distinctive pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses at the crime scene and traced them.
“Poldrack Replies to Iacoboni Neuropolitics Discussion,” Neuroethics & Law Blog, June 3, 2008, http://kolber.typepad.com/ethics_law_blog/2008/06/poldrack-replie.html, and Adam Kolber, “Iacoboni Responds to Neuropolitics Criticism,” Neuroethics & Law Blog, June 3, 2008, http://kolber.typepad.com/ethics_law_blog/2008/06/iacoboni-respon.html. On the functions of the amygdala, see Shermer, “Five Ways Brain Scans Mislead Us”; Elizabeth A. Phelps and Joseph E. LeDoux, “Contributions of the Amygdala to.