Neurobiology and the Social Sciences: Some Technical and Political Issues

In: International social science journal: ISSJ, Band 26, Heft 4, S. 637-650

Abstract

If one considers that the reorientation of biology towards the neurosciences was steered by a small group of first-rank scientists who seemed to have independently selected their aims, & if one observes the applications to which their findings have been put, one must conclude that neuroscientists, despite their relatively independent (from military agencies eg) status, must assume responsibility for the use of the knowledge generated by them. The industrial-military complex, in the service of the dominant classes, has the infrastructure, the expertise, & the necessary amount of financial, political, & technical power to make use of that knowledge, made freely accessible to all interested in the subject through the many international journals. Leaders of the scientific community, in fact, offer opinions on the conduct of public affairs & predict the future in their capacity as scientists & in a manner supportive of the repressive status quo. Inventing & propagating among fellow scientists & laymen doctrinal explanations of the intrinsic nature of human violence, they reinforce the pessimism & hopelessness which the majority of the world population already feels about their deteriorating conditions & justify their 'solutions' to poverty, hunger, violence, overpopulation & pollution, which are consistent with the interests of powerful groups fighting to maintain the status quo. Those solutions include interrogation techniques based on the findings about sensory deprivation; psychodrugs, & electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) to suppress violence which is really caused by objective conditions (the class antagonism eg), but which is viewed as a mere reflection of precultural 'instinctive' or 'innate' aggressiveness by the leaders of ESB research; the mystification of the powers of artificial intelligence. When intelligence is viewed in terms of 'genetic endowment' or 'the secondary instructions derived from fetal life' (John C. Eccles, THE FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN, New York, NY, 1972), ie, apart from any consideration of the environment (the fact eg, that 2,000 million people are hungry) as determinant in the creation of intelligence, this underscores how much science shares the values of the system in which it develops. K. Schmitt.