Neuroscience without a theory of transformation exposes itself to ideological co-option

Evidence

We have shown that, by proposing no theory or interpretation of this transformation or this transition—which cannot simply be the result of observation or of objective description— neuroscientific discourse in general exposes itself to ideological risk and offers nothing new to mankind, while plasticity, far from producing a mirror image of the world, is the form of another possible world. To produce a consciousness of the brain thus demands that we defend a biological alter-globalism. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 260

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• SEED: Angles for an essay: when a scientific concept lacks its own theory of transition (plasticity→flexibility), the corporate/management world fills that gap — a memo-drafting cautionary tale.

Related

• Neuroscience that skips the nature-to-culture transition is ideological, not descriptive. (similarity 0.89)
• Brain plasticity research has changed nothing socially or politically (similarity 0.85)
• Neurology cannot explain what makes mental transitions possible (similarity 0.84)
• The brain’s demonstrated plasticity coexists with a felt lack of real transformation (similarity 0.83)
• Brain plasticity descriptions may either serve or resist neoliberal command. (similarity 0.83)
• Thought is nature negated, not an appendix of the neuronal. (similarity 0.82)
• Brain science disguises ideological presuppositions that philosophers must expose (similarity 0.82)
• Freedom depends on theorizing the plasticity of transition (similarity 0.82)
• Flexibility is an ideological norm that naturalizes neuronal processes to justify social functioning (similarity 0.82)
• Examining neuronal-mental continuity within neuroscience can expose political assumptions and disrupt flexibility (similarity 0.82)
• Plasticity is the organizing paradigm of contemporary neuroscience (similarity 0.82)
• Neuroscientific findings remain inert without a new understanding of self (similarity 0.81)
• The neuroscience of plasticity has not made people freer or happier (similarity 0.81)
• Thinking brain plasticity correctly is required to think freedom (similarity 0.81)
• The brain is an organic tension, not a model for economic organization (similarity 0.81)