Here I shall highlight two books that I recently read which share a common theme – criticism of the improper aggrandizement and misapplication of findings in brain-imaging studies. The books are:
- Satel & Lilienfeld (2013) – Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience
- Raymond Tallis (2011) – Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
Important to note is that I have already discussed a related topic in Schizophrenia of our times – my brain and me. One shall also notice that some points covered in this post may resemble arguments in How Emotions Are (Not) Made where Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) – How Emotions Are Made is reviewed. The topic is worth revisiting due to the spread of “brain”, “synaptic”, “neuro-transmitter” and similar “neuro” phrases in any kind of context and in everyday language.
A pseudo-materialistic fad in psychological “science”
The main crux of both works is to express doubt regarding the applicability of brain imaging studies in explaining human behavior and reveal shortcomings thereof. Satel & Lilienfeld demonstrate a controlled and polite disagreement with conclusions derived from brain scan studies:
Scans alone cannot tell us whether a person is a shameless liar, loyal to a product brand, compelled to use cocaine, or incapable of resisting an urge to kill. In fact, brain-derived data currently add little or nothing to the more ordinary sources of information we rely on to make those determinations; mostly, they are neuroredundant. At worst, neuroscientific information sometimes distort our ability to distinguish good explanations of psychological phenomena from bad ones.
Satel & Lilienfeld (2013, p. 150) – Brainwashed
Raymond Tallis is more candid as he calls the brain-imaging trend Neuromania. In his book he also criticises the inadequacy of strictly evolutionary and genetic theories when explaining behavior – this is what he refers to as Darwinitis. One will find well-deserved jabs at famous advocates of biologism – including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett etc.
Within the secular world picture, Neuromania and Darwinitis are the biggest piles of rubbish. (p. 12)
[Neuro-talk] is often accompanied by a picture of a brain scan, that fast- acting solvent of critical faculties. (p. 73, from Crawford, “The Limits of Neuro-Talk”)
And a more recent, admirably painstaking, review concludes that “the reliability of fMRI scanning is not high compared to other scientific measures”; moreover, there is no agreement as to what would count as a measure of reliability; and, finally, reliability is even worse in studies of higher cognitive tasks (experiencing beauty, deploying wisdom, being stupid) than in the case of simple motor or sensory tasks – in short, in the case of those papers that have made the popular press go pop- eyed with excitement. (p. 81)
Unfortunately, some of these deicides – notably Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins – do indeed have their own fundamentalism, namely biologism. (p. 321)
Raymond Tallis (2011) – Aping Mankind – Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
Voodoo correlations
Edward Vul is best known for his work in discovering fallacious statistical methods used in fMRI studies – the results of which he initially denoted as “voodoo correlations”. His papers have caused reverberations throughout the neuroscientific community and the effect is proved by the fact that he is mentioned in both of the books:
In a “bombshell” paper, as a fellow neuroscientist put it [Jon Bardin], MIT graduate student Edward Vul concluded that something was deeply wrong with how many brain-imaging researchers were analyzing their data.
Many aspects of Vul’s critique are technical, but his basic point is easy to grasp: If you search a huge set of data— in this case, tens of thousands of voxels— for associations that are statistically significant and then do more analyses on only those associations, you are almost guaranteed to find something “good.” (To avoid this mistake, the second analysis must be truly independent of the first one.) This error is known variously as the “circular analysis problem,” the “nonindependence problem,” or, more colloquially, “double-dipping.”
Satel & Lilienfeld (2013, p. 20-21) – Brainwashed
I am not alone in questioning the validity of an approach that identifies activity in certain parts of the brain with aspects of the human psyche. In a controversial, but to me compelling, paper published in 2009 (originally provocatively entitled “Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience”), the authors found serious problems with the localisations observed in such studies. The authors concluded that “in most of the studies that linked brain regions to feelings including social rejection, neuroticism and jealousy, researchers … used a method that inflates the strength of the link between a brain region and the emotion or behaviour”.
Raymond Tallis (2011, p. 80) – Aping Mankind – Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
The brain (dis)obeys the law?
Authors of both books notice worrying applications of neuroscience in legal matters. Lucrative opportunities arise for vested interests here, but that is not a good reason to promote shaky science, especially in such a high stakes field as law:
Along similar lines, when psychologist Deena Weisberg and colleagues inserted the phrase “brain scans show” into illogical explanations of behavior, those explanations became more compelling to neuroscience nonexperts (but not neuroscience experts). Taken together, these findings raise the possibility that neuroimagery—sometimes humorously called “brain porn”—and neurolanguage can seduce jurors and others into drawing erroneous conclusions.
Satel & Lilienfeld (2013, p. 114) – Brainwashed
If I claim that, say, balance between the activity in the frontal lobes and in the amygdala is abnormal, this must be judged against a normal population, as must always be the case when we determine the normal range for a particular measure. There has been a pitifully small amount of work done to establish norms and the numbers of subjects studied would not be sufficient to validate a clinical test. (p. 309)
The moral and legal assessment of our behaviour is, therefore, best conducted by the less glamorous process of history-taking than by brain scans that simply give snapshots of a small part of brain activity in response to very simple stimuli. (p. 312)
Raymond Tallis (2011) – Aping Mankind – Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
Additionally and curiously, when discussing the application of neuroscience in law, Tallis develops a similar argument to B.F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity regarding the praise and blame of behavior:
The philosophy behind this plea is, of course, applied patchily. “My brain made me do it” is usually invoked to excuse actions that will attract moral disapproval or legal sanction. People don’t normally deny responsibility for good actions or for neutral actions such as pouring out a cup of tea at a tea party or just getting a breath of fresh air after a long time at the computer. I am more likely to say “My brain made me do it” when I drink fourteen pints of beer in a pub and then reduce the establishment to rubble because I have been denied a fifteenth than when I have one pint of beer and talk to my friends about epistemology. In other words, there tends to be a bit of pick and mix: strong grounds, I would say, for treating this particular plea of mitigation with some suspicion – suspicion we need to keep in play when we consider recent developments in “neuro-law”.
Raymond Tallis (2011, p. 307) – Aping Mankind – Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
Although people object when a scientific analysis traces their behaviour to external conditions and thus deprives them of credit and the chance to be admired, they seldom object when the same analysis absolves them of blame. (p. 78)
A concern for exoneration is indicated by the fact that we are more likely to appeal to genetic endowment to explain undesirable results than positive accomplishments. (p. 80)
B.F. Skinner (1971) – Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Dismissal of behaviorism
A staple in many mainstream psychological works is to comment how the field has outgrown behaviorism in the middle of the 20th century. Both books are no exception as they dismiss behaviorism out of hand as if it was a failure:
In fact, some experts talk of neuroscience as if it is the new genetics, that is, just the latest overarching narrative commandeered to explain and predict virtually all human behavior. And before genetic determinism there was the radical behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, who sought to explain human behavior in terms of rewards and punishments.
Satel & Lilienfeld (2013, p. xviii) – Brainwashed
The word “reward” betrays a lack of basic knowledge of Skinner’s philosophy and science – anyone sufficiently familiar with radical behaviorism in a scientific discussion will opt for the term “reinforcement”.
The computational theory is particularly associated with cognitive psychology, which arose initially as a reaction against behaviourism. Behaviourism had tried to eliminate the mind, in a bid for psychology to be taken seriously as fully fledged science. Psychology, the behaviourists argued, should confine itself to the objective and the measurable; to quantifiable inputs or stimuli and quantifiable outputs, responses or behaviour. Anything between inputs and outputs was inaccessible to proper scientific study. This methodological decision gradually drifted into the assumption that there was nothing important between inputs and outputs. (p. 40)
To be fair, cognitive psychology was a welcome corrective to the lunacy of behaviourism. Behaviourism denied that there was anything of much interest to scientific psychology in human beings between their perceptual input and their behavioural output, between stimulus and response. (p. 191)
Raymond Tallis (2011) – Aping Mankind – Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
Tallis also demonstrates that he is not acquainted with proper behavioral science. His criticism only applies to the methodological behaviorism of Watson. A lack of training in Skinner’s science allows the author to arrive at a comical conclusion:
Libet’s experiment illustrates how the (neuro-)determinist case against freedom is based on a very distorted conception of what constitutes an action in everyday life. If you want to make voluntary actions seem involuntary, the first thing to do is to strip away their context – the relevant portions of the self-world that make sense of, and motivate, them – and then effectively break them down into their physical elements.
Raymond Tallis (2011, p. 249) – Aping Mankind – Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
The opposite is in fact true – stripping away context actually results in the impression that behavior originates from the actor:
The conspicuousness of the causes is at issue when reflex behavior is called involuntary—one is not free to sneeze or not to sneeze; the initiating cause is the pepper. Operant behavior is called voluntary, but it is not really uncaused; the cause is simply harder to spot. The critical condition for the apparent exercise of free will is positive reinforcement, as the result of which a person feels free and calls himself free and says he does as he likes or what he wants or is pleased to do.
B.F. Skinner (1974, p. 52) – About Behaviorism
The distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior bears upon our changing concept of personal responsibility. We do not hold people responsible for their reflexes—for example, for coughing in church. We hold them responsible for their operant behavior— for example, for whispering in church or remaining in church while coughing. But there are variables which are responsible for whispering as well as for coughing, and these may be just as inexorable. When we recognize this, we are likely to drop the notion of responsibility altogether and with it the doctrine of free will as an inner causal agent.
B.F. Skinner (1953, p. 115-116) – Science and Human Behavior
Liberalism
Interesting criticisms of neuroscience notwithstanding, the authors suffer from a lifetime of idealistic conditioning. No wonder that politically liberal views based on “individual choice” and “free will” are espoused:
As long as human beings possess conscious mental states that can bring about behavior and self- control, then the law in particular and our moral sense in general need not be radically revised.
Satel & Lilienfeld (2013, p. 137) – Brainwashed
He [John Stuart Mill] agreed that, yes, we have to obey the laws of nature; indeed, there is no choice. But we should appreciate that, at any given juncture, there is more than one law of nature operating. By aligning ourselves with one law, we can use nature to achieve ends not envisaged in nature. (p. 259)
In other words, even in the case of clear-cut brain causes of abnormal behaviour, there is sometimes the possibility of controlling that behaviour or its consequences. This is equally true in cases of addiction. By the time you have reached the fifteenth pint, your sozzled brain may be calling the shots. But it was you who handed yourself over to your brain, either on that occasion, or on the many occasions before you became an alcoholic, when you chose to drink unwisely. (p. 311)
Raymond Tallis (2011) – Aping Mankind – Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
How is one to see one’s own biases?
Let’s visit a couple more exemplary problems found in psychological literature. One is regarding “untheoretical” definitions:
In the end, the most useful definition of addiction is a descriptive one, such as this: Addiction is a behavior marked by repeated use despite destructive consequences and by difficulty quitting notwithstanding the user’s resolution to do so. This “definition” isn’t theoretical; it explains nothing about why one “gets” addiction—and how could it offer a satisfying causal account when there are multiple levels at which the pro cess can be understood? Our proposed definition merely states an observable fact about the behavior generally recognized as addiction. That’s a good thing because a blank explanatory slate (unbiased by biological orientation or any other theoretical model) inspires broad- minded thinking about research, treatment, and policy.
Satel & Lilienfeld (2013, p. 70) – Brainwashed
The claim of providing an unbiased definition of addiction can be deemed as naive. First of all, it includes ambiguous concepts such as destructive and repeated. Secondly, the reified construct resolution is employed. How does one even define this word? Finally, addiction would be more usefully understood not as a behavior, but as a collection of specific environmental conditions, contingencies and behavior.
Another issue is overwhelming idealism. Tallis neatly demonstrates the inability to effectively tackle questions regarding private behavior. This results in the mystification and glorification of some concepts such as consciousness, intentionality, qualia, aboutness etc:
The complex consciousness of self-aware human beings brings tenses into the world and makes the happenings of the material world the contents of the present tense. Only by overlooking this human basis of tensed time can memory as we experience it be assimilated to learning, learning assimilated to behavioural changes and behavioural changes reduced to altered properties of a piece of matter such as a brain.
Raymond Tallis (2011, p. 132) – Aping Mankind – Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
I can only comment here that woe is Tallis for not knowing that a reinforced organism is a changed organism. He claims that consciousness explains behavioral changes. But does this also apply for genetic variation?
The king stays naked
I have to admit that the two books are a part of a useful trend of skepticism and resistance to the new orthodoxy of neuro-brain biological science. The criticisms though valid, don’t seem to guide the authors into more fruitful endeavors, i.e. towards a pragmatic philosophy of behavior. It just goes to show how little of a reach radical behavioristic philosophy has.
Radical behaviorist leftist 