Pinky and the brain take over the world again: Genealogy and adventures of the cerebral subject

Abstract

The article provides a review of the problems handled by historian of science Fernando Vidal and sociologist Francisco Ortega in their book Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject (Fordham University Press, 2017). They delve into the anthropological figure of the cerebral subject, a figure which depends upon on the thesis of a connection between the brain and the self (personality): the brain generates personality and defines its behavior. This thesis in a naturalized form is promoted by neuroscience as the cutting edge of research into human nature. At the same time, it has spread far beyond the precincts of science and is generating diverse practices and discourses that have a direct impact on the lives of individuals. Thus, scientific knowledge as the truth about human nature becomes the core of the technologies governing the self. Vidal and Ortega place the thesis about the connection between the brain and the personality in historical context and show that it appeared in the 17th century long before the birth of modern neuroscience and that it has its own history. Neuroscience has inherited it and adopted it as its own premise. The figure of the cerebral subject thus motivates the research into the brain, although it is not a result of it; but this does not negate the fact that its dissemination and entrenchment is due to the stream of scientific facts. On the basis of various materials and recent social research data, Vidal and Ortega trace the ideology of the cerebral subject, analyse the disciplines supporting it that were formed as a result the introduction of neuroscience into the human sciences, and discuss the theoretical and practical consequences of a neuro-essentialism that reduces the nature of a person to the brain. Although this idea has become part of common sense, Vidal and Ortega show that the cerebral subject coexists with other types of self and that individuals pragmatically resort to discourse about the brain only in particular situations.