Neuroscience and Critique ─ Exploring the Limits of the Neurological Turn

Recent years have seen a rapid growth in neuroscientific research, and an expansion beyond basic research to incorporate elements of the arts, humanities and social sciences. It has been suggested that the neurosciences will bring about major transformations in the understanding of ourselves, our culture and our society. In academia one finds debates within psychology, philosophy and literature about the implications of developments within the neurosciences, and the emerging fields of educational neuroscience, neuro-economics, and neuro-aesthetics also bear witness to a ‘neurological turn’ which is currently taking place.

Neuroscience and Critique is a ground-breaking edited collection which reflects on the impact of neuroscience in contemporary social science and the humanities. It is the first book to consider possibilities for a critique of the theories, practices, and implications of contemporary neuroscience. Bringing together leading scholars from several disciplines, the contributors draw upon a range of perspectives, including cognitive neuroscience, critical philosophy, psychoanalysis, and feminism, and also critically examine several key ideas in contemporary neuroscience, including:

• The idea of "neural personhood"

• Theories of emotion in affective neuroscience

• Empathy, intersubjectivity and the notion of "embodied simulation"

• The concept of an "emo-rational" actor within neuro-economics.

The volume will stimulate further debate in the emerging field of interdisciplinary studies in neuroscience, and will appeal to researchers and advanced students in a range of disciplines including critical psychology, philosophy, and critical studies.

Jan De Vos is a post-doctoral FWO Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical Philosophy of Ghent University, Belgium and his main research area is that of the neurological turn and its implications for ideology critique. He is the author of Psychologisation in Times of Globalisation (Routledge, 2012) and Psychologization and the Subject of Late Modernity (Palgrave, 2013).

Ed Pluth is professor and chair of the philosophy department at California State University, Chico, USA. He works on issues and figures in contemporary continental philosophy, with special attention to how language and the extra-linguistic are put into relation to each other, and what this relation implies generally about the status of thinking and conscious life.