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- Gesa Lindemann (2009). From Experimental Interaction to the Brain as the Epistemic Object of Neurobiology. Human Studies 32 (2).This article argues that understanding everyday practices in neurobiological labs requires us to take into account a variety of different action positions: self-conscious social actors, technical artifacts, conscious organisms, and organisms being merely alive. In order to understand the interactions among such diverse entities, highly differentiated conceptual tools are required. Drawing on the theory of the German philosopher and sociologist Helmuth Plessner, the paper analyzes experimenters as self-conscious social persons who recognize monkeys as conscious organisms. Integrating Plessner’s ideas into the stock of concepts used in science and technology studies provides richer descriptions of laboratory life. In particular, this theory allows an understanding of a crucial feature of neurobiological brain research: the construction of the brain as the epistemic object of brain research. As such, the brain must be isolated from the acting and interacting organism in a complicated process.In my reading list | Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov journals.cambridge.org | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov journals.cambridge.org | Scholar | More.. In everyday life we take it for granted that we have conscious control of some of our actions and that the part of us that exercises control is the conscious mind. Psychosomatic medicine also assumes that the conscious mind can affect body states, and this is supported by evidence that the use of imagery, hypnosis, biofeedback and other ‘mental interventions’ can be therapeutic in a variety of medical conditions. However, there is no accepted theory of mind/body interaction and this has (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: imprint.co.uk cogprints.org pages.pomona.edu citebase.eprints.org books.google.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: imprint.co.uk cogprints.org pages.pomona.edu citebase.eprints.org books.google.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. Wegner’s analysis of the illusion of conscious will is close to my own account of how conscious experiences relate to brain processes. But our analyses differ somewhat on how conscious will is not an illusion. Wegner argues that once conscious will arises it enters causally into subsequent mental processing. I argue that while his causal story is accurate, it remains a first-person story. Conscious free will is not an illusion in the sense that this first-person story is compatible with and (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk cogprints.org citebase.eprints.org journals.cambridge.org | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk cogprints.org citebase.eprints.org journals.cambridge.org | Scholar | More.. Recent investigations have explored how large-scale systems in the brain operate in the processes of retrieving knowledge for words and concepts. Much of the crucial evidence derives from lesion studies, because word retrieval and concept retrieval can be clearly dissociated in brain-damaged individuals. We discuss these findings from the perspective of our neurobiological framework, which is cited in Pulvermüller's target article.
