Peter Emmerson

I would like to see a more measured approach to neuroscience: neuroscientists make outrageous claims in their over-confidence and are in danger of trivializing their own findings.  We are discovering some wonderful new evidence by way of the new scanning technology.  However, I don’t believe we are justified in thinking that morality can be boiled down to neural processes?  Without experience neural processes are useless: it’s the chicken and egg dilemma.  To my way of thacting there is no point searching for an origin or an end, i.e. causality beyond very limited examples in physics and chemistry is very difficult to establish.  As you move along the scientific continuum from simple matter (physics) to lifeforms (biology) and then into social science it becomes more and more complex and difficult to find causal explanations.  Thus, I use interdependencies.  As we are only now beginning to realise, experiences mould our genetics just as our genetics mould our experiences: yes they are right there cannot be experience without genetics – there must be a genetic component in my love for my mother.  However, my love for my mother is what triggers certain processes to switch on and be structured accordingly, which would otherwise remain dormant and probably atrophy – I’m thinking here of deprivation studies such as Genie.  Neural processes are useless without social processes, neither explains the other, they co-exist interdependently and change together and should be researched as such.  Thus, it may be that we need to go beyond notions such as nature-nurture  that owe their existence to ancient unscientific philosophical dichotomous conventions which break things up rather than bring them together.  Specialism is both a virtue and curse.