Neuromania and Darwinitis

Raymond Tallis

Chapter 11 of the book The Naturalist Worldview of Moisés Pérez Marcos, which I discussed in the previous post, is dedicated entirely to the philosopher and neuroscientist Raymond Tallis, who despite his atheistic religious stance opposes some of the modern exaggerations of reductionist naturalism. Tallis published a book in 2011 titled, significantly, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the misrepresentation of humanity. This book describes two very widespread philosophical pathologies, which emerge from professional journals and educated colloquiums to discussions in the pub or TV screens. (Pérez Marcos, paraphrasing Tallis). They are the following:

• Neuromania: The thesis according to which you are your brain. It means explaining all the characteristics of human behavior through neuroscience. Tallis is not opposed to neuroscience, which he considers one of humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements. He attacks the ideological deviation of science that tries to apply scientific discoveries where they are not applicable.
• Darwinitis: The assertion that our brain and all its features can be fully explained by evolutionism; in other words, their sole objective is the reproduction imperative: If we are our brains, ultimately everything we do, think and feel must be subordinated to this imperative, whether we know it or not. Tallis does not attack Darwinism, which provides an impressive explanation of our origin. He attacks an inflammation of Darwinian thought that extends it into areas that do not belong to it.

Tallis has been accused of espousing a hidden religious agenda. He, however, declares himself an atheist, and although he does not like religion, he suggests that those who believe in God and humanist atheists like him should unite to fight a common adversary:

To naturalize religion is to naturalize even those parts of humanity that are most distant from the natural world. It is the supreme expression of a devastating reductionism that repels even an atheist like me. In defending the humanities, arts, law, ethics, economics, politics and even religious belief against neuro-evolutionary reductionism, humanist atheists and theists have a common cause and, in reductionist naturalism, a common adversary: scientism.

Alvin Plantinga

The reason why Tallis opposes Darwinitis is similar to Alvin Plantinga’s EAAN argument (see this post). Truth and adaptability do not have to coincide. If Darwinitis were true, the theory of evolution would not have to be true, it would only be useful for our survival. Then Darwinitis would not be true either, therefore it refutes itself. As Thomas Nagel also points out, evolutionism does not explain, nor seems able to explain, consciousness; and if it could explain consciousness, it would not explain reasoning, which requires consciousness, but surpasses it; and if it could explain reasoning, it would not explain value (what is true and what is false, what is good and what is bad), which requires consciousness and knowledge, but surpasses them. Then Tallis adds: if evolutionism cannot explain truth, it would not have been possible to reach the knowledge contained in The Origin of Species.

Tallis’s argument against neuromania is summarized by Pérez Marcos:

The existence of a theory that equates the mind with the brain proves that the mind transcends, and therefore is not identical to the brain. If consciousness were identical to the brain, it would be impossible to imagine that consciousness is identical to those processes. If I am my brain, I couldn’t discover that I am my brain. If the mind is reduced to neurological processes, how could scientists be aware that consciousness is nothing more than a sum of neurological processes? There exists, says Tallis, a community of minds that transcends the brain and allows us to see it at work and make statements about it.

Tallis criticizes how neuroscience methods are sometimes applied and suggests that they cannot achieve the objectives they are supposed to obtain, because they are based on the confusion between three very different concepts: correlation, causality and identity. Neuromaniacs often assume that the correlation between two phenomena (A, neural activity, and B, psychological experience) means either that A is the cause of B, or that A and B are identical. This is, as I explained in another post, the typical confusion between a necessary condition and a sufficient condition. As Tallis says, it is absurd to move, from the observation that neural activity is correlated with our experiences, to the conclusion that neural activity is not only a necessary condition for our experiences but is also a sufficient condition and can be identical to our experiences. And he adds: A neural explanation of consciousness is a contradiction in terms.

In short: For Tallis the problem with neurological explanations is not that they are currently unable to account for consciousness. The problem is rather that they will never be able to do it. We cannot give more details, but Tallis in his book, and Pérez Marcos in his book, do it.

The same post in Spanish

Thematic Thread on Philosophy and Logic: Previous Next

Manuel Alfonseca