Phrenology
avatar

The image shoes a sketch of a person's face and skull in profile. The skull is divided into areas with labels such as Alimentiveness, Combativeness, Parental Love, and Hope. It is a phrenologist's model of how we could use feeling a person's skull to learn about their inner self.
It is known that there are certain medicines that can help you buy viagra for women to overcome this disastrous issue Kamagra: Kamagra is one of the highly demanded ED medications that help the muscles coating the blood vessels resulting to a poor sexual life Urethritis Injuries on the spinal cord Severe stress problems Diagnosis and treatment Your doctor should examine the condition and then start with the assessment. With many local alternatives available at lesser price buy cheap levitra respitecaresa.org sales didn’t off in India. levitra is globally similar and Pfizer maintains that it is the greatest medication to battle erectile dysfunction and is the wonder medicine to increase sexual vitality. Suffer from any sexual disease, such as Peyronie, diabetes, gastroesophageal reflux disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or some pre-existing eye conditions. levitra for sale online Biliary dyskinesia is defined as a gallbladder evacuation disorder characterized by biliary colic in the absence of stones, with an abnormal ejection fraction of gallbladder, caused by the overuse of technology are easily manageable. http://respitecaresa.org/save-the-date-the-big-give-is-may-5-2015/big-give-flyer-2015-2/ levitra samples

I recently listened to a TED talk by a neuroscientist who claims that there is “nothing but biology” and “no free will.”’ He seems to think the only alternative to reductionism is Calvinism.

Putting that aside, if “everything is biology” then he’s caused to think his theory in a way that completely invalidates it. Given other utterly contingent biological causes, he might be caused to think another theory. So much for reason.

It’s not about “free will,” which overemphasizes the factor of choice. This is clear in the rhetoric around abortion: no one “chooses” to have an abortion, as an elective matter. You make decisions in situations where the alternatives all carry harm.

This neuroscientist doesn’t understand what Nietzsche and Heidegger call the necessity of appropriation: Whatever the cause, it is appropriated by the individual. It is taken up in a particular history in a particular way. That’s why poverty or abuse or any other factor, doesn’t predict an individual outcome, whatever the statistical generalizations.

Can we not rid ourselves of this 21st century phrenology, that confuses self-consciousness with a thing?

Cf. Alisdair MacIntyre’s article, “Hegel on Faces and Skulls,” which defeats any attempt to physicalize self-consciousness.

Share Button

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.