Abstract
Is it possible to naturalize semantics? Starting from Libet’s 1983 studies, current research developments in neuronal bases of behavior reduce the mind to the brain, with significant implications in reference to issues of free will, imputability and individual behavioral responsibility. However, many criticisms can be made at this approach. This paper shows the limits of Cognitive Neuro-reductionism, especially in the light of Varela’s Systemic Cognitive Neuroscience or Neurophenomenology and the current theoretical revision process of social systems as complex—dynamical, emergent and unpredictable—social systems, or Complex Realism Sociology. Here, there is an agreement point. The conception of living systems as complex system as well as that of social system as complex systems acknowledge the autonomy of human reflexivity capability and free will be able to initiate the chain of events that triggers the process of adaptation to environment and change and social emergence ones, and, in so doing, problematize a neuro-reductionist determinism of cognitive life and behavioral processes, with its dilemmatic consequences on individual social responsibility and, ultimately, on social order possibilities. This being stated, this paper reflects on dialogue possibilities between Varela’s neuroscientific revolution and Complex Realism Sociology. Going beyond the Parsonsian functionalism’s social homeostasis and maintaining the point firm of social emergence and relationship between reflexivity and social morphogenesis, Complex Realism Sociology can dialogue well with Varela’s Neurophenomenology. Lieb’s disciplined analysis shows to be a fruitful ground for interlocution about the understanding of that Organism which cannot be liquidated but must be reinterpreted in its function, about the understanding of neuronal circuits that mediate free will and intersubjectivity, conscious deliberative intentionality and awareness of oneself and others, self-control, perception of time and risk, in other terms, about the understanding our ability to give meaning to the world, to adapt or change it, to know, remember, desire, empathize, socialize and interact. In Varela’s revision, stripped of problematic reductionist claims, Neuroscience can provide to Sociology a wealth of observations that contribute to the understanding of the bodily basis of social interactions and social order. This paper is within Piaceri’s research.
Highlights
This paper shows the limits of Cognitive Neuro-reductionism, especially in the light of Varela’s Systemic Cognitive Neuroscience or Neurophenomenology and the current theoretical revision process of social systems as complex—dynamical, emergent and unpredictable—social systems, or Complex Realism Sociology
This being stated, first, this paper shows the limits of Cognitive Neuro-reductionsm. It shows how the conception of living systems and social systems as complex system—dynamical, emergent and creative systems—contributes to problematizing a neuro-reductionist determinism of cognitive life and behavioral processes, with its dilemmatic consequences on individual social responsibility and, on social order possibilities. It reflects on fruitful dialogue possibilities between Varela’s neuroscientific revolution and Complex Realism Sociology, beyond reductionism, in Varela’s revision, Neuroscience provides to Sociology a wealth of observations that contribute to the understanding of the bodily basis of social interactions and social order
Out of the physicalist chorus, Enactivism drives us to consider the processes of signification underlying experience more than a certain neuro-reductionism à la Libet is willing to accept, or, on other fronts, more than a certain social naturalism—a reductionism inspired by Lombroso’s Sociology, for example, or Wilson’s Sociobiology—was willing to accept, later surpassed within the heart of the Social Sciences by micro theories of action, from Simmel to Weber and from Weber onwards, as well as from the macro theory of Parsons’ structural-functionalism
Summary
Conscious intention of the action be causally ineffective for the production of the action itself? Is it possible to biologize ethics? To reduce mental processes to brain processes? In other words, can the mind be reduced to the functioning of brain, to the sum of its organic parts or is it something more and different from this sum?. Stripped of problematic reductionist claims and reinterpreted in the perspective of mediation relationships, and not one-way causal determination relationships, between neuronal activities and behavioral traits (economic, political, moral, and so on), the studies à la Libet on neural circuits at the base of cognition, experience and behavior, can be virtuously placed in this programmatic framework This neurophenomenological rearrangement of the question on the theoretical level, that is, the acknowledgment of a relationship of dynamic, circular, interaction in which the organism forms and is formed by the environment, the biological mind structures the experience and is structured by the experience of what it puts in place, becomes a fruitful ground for dialogue with Sociology, with particular reference to the current theoretical revision process of social systems as complex—dynamical emergent and unpredictable—social systems. It reflects on fruitful dialogue possibilities between Varela’s neuroscientific revolution and Complex Realism Sociology, beyond reductionism, in Varela’s revision, Neuroscience provides to Sociology a wealth of observations that contribute to the understanding of the bodily basis of social interactions and social order
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