Neuroscientific findings remain inert without a new understanding of self

Evidence

The brain is our work and we do not know it. The brain is constituted by modifi- cations of modifications, of ”re-representations,” and we do not know it. The brain owes its vitality to a perpetual change in plasticity (which is also to say a plasticity of change itself) and we do not know it. In setting these points aside in order to discuss only the results, neurobiologists and cognitive scientists contribute to confirming the diffuse and highly paradoxical feeling that the brain is the locus of an absence of change and that we cannot in reality do anything about it, do anything with it, other than letting selection have its way. But really, what’s the point of having an all-new brain if we don’t have an all-new identity, if synaptic change changes nothing? And what do we get from all these discourses, from all these descriptions of neuronal man, from all these scientific revolutions, if not the absence of revolution in our lives, the absence of revolution in our selves? — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 219

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the brain ‘owes its vitality to a perpetual change in plasticity’ — plasticity of change itself — is a dense, multi-layered idea that resists summary and would reward re-reading.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what would it concretely mean for synaptic change to ‘change something’ in identity? Malabou gestures but doesn’t operationalize here.
• XREF: connects to: Joining psychoanalysis and neurology remains an unfinished project — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 443; The cerebral self constitutes mortality internally without achieving self-knowledge — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 1038; Neurology observes identity change from lesions without theorizing it — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 3440 (+1 more)