Brain plasticity research has changed nothing socially or politically

Evidence

We must acknowledge an enormous discrepancy between the descriptive and the prescriptive scope of neuroscientific discourses. We must acknowledge an enormous discrepancy between, on the one hand, all the promises for the future and desires for another history and another life, desires aroused by this wholly new vision of the brain, by this continent known as cerebral plasticity, and, on the other hand, the tiny political, philosophical, and cultural space in which these promises can at once be theoretically deployed and realized. Once again, it seems that the neuronal revolution has revolutionized nothing for us, if it is true that our new brains serve only to displace ourselves better, work better, feel better, or obey better. The synthesis of the neuronal and the psychical thus fails to live up to its task: we are neither freer, nor smarter, nor happier. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 223

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s stated purpose — the worry that plasticity gets absorbed into ‘work better, obey better’ flexibility discourse, exactly the substitution the reader wants to learn to catch.

Related

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• Recent neuroscience findings refute persistent but erroneous images of the brain (similarity 0.82)
• Plasticity is the organizing paradigm of contemporary neuroscience (similarity 0.82)
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• Plasticity is useless without grasping its political and economic implications. (similarity 0.82)
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