The Guardian brought us a really exciting article about the book 'Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience' dealing with the role of neurobiology in the modern era. The authors try to raise our attention to our overconfidence in neuroscience. Although the appearance of functional MRI and brain imaging was a fascinating breakthrough, the public tends to give them too much credit. Brains undergoing emotions like love and attachment are shown on colorful screens and we instantly think that the mystery of these long studied feelings was finally solved in one fell swoop. However, our central nervous system is way more complex than that.The authors also discuss the question of free will. If we agree with the concepts of biological and materialistic determinism we can always find an excuse by saying that we are the victims of the circumstances and blame our actions on causal processes going on in our head. Based on this, nobody should be sentenced for crimes for example. That does not seem to make much sense. However, if we accept the existence of free will we should see novel brain imaging results only as useful tools, not as ultimate achievements.
Read the whole article here.
