A few years ago – in 1999, to be precise - Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s book Imposture intellettuali [Intellectual Impostures] (Garzanti) was translated into Italian. The authors, two scientists (professors of physics) meant this book to be evidence of the incompetence and want of precision of certain philosophers who take an interest in science. It hit the mark especially concerning some French thinkers, from Lacan to Deleuze, who were accused of using concepts, terms and formulas that were meaningless outside their special context. We are aware that the book, which caused a stir, was written after one of the authors had played a practical joke. He had in fact published an article in the American review Social Text – it was purposely built on a series of nonsensical quotations on mathematics and physics taken from various philosophical works. This article can be found in the Appendix to the Italian edition of Intellectual Impostures. But if certain philosophers are guilty of superficiality and rashness when they discuss scientific concepts without having a good grasp of their meaning, we can say the same about some scientists, especially when they handle anthropological problems and use neurobiological tools to attempt an answer to issues on man’s personal identity. The fact that certain biologists take an interest in philosophy is not in itself a scandal - it is neither a problem nor a novelty. But they must be aware that shifting from one plain to another also involves the effort of taking philosophy seriously, with its history and specialized “language”, the result of long and complex analyses. Hence it is puzzling to notice the ease with which often wrongly built theories of a philosophical nature that merge languages, topics and problems are presented to the press as the result of empirically indisputable scientific data, thus contributing to back questionable and often “nonsensical” statements, to say the least, with the authority of science. Let us consider, for example, the great importance given by the press, both Italian and foreign, to statements made by F. Crick, the Nobel Prize for medicine. He seems to have at last established that, in practice, what we usually call soul is nothing but a biochemical reaction. This ‘discovery’ is supposed to ‘enlighten’ the philosophical notion of conscience and open new horizons to the study of human behaviour and personality. eally, the Crick's studio works in the Neuronal correlate of visual coscience's sector, and the passage from the sensitive coscience to the solul, is the results of journalistic interpretations. It is a fact that newspaper reports are often inaccurate, but frequently experts of the brain (an organ) tend to easily use philosophical notions such as soul, conscience, mind and spirit, making mistakes that would not be forgiven even a high school student. We know that everyone is free to use language as he wishes (don’t poets do the same?), but before making statements that claim they confute philosophical theories, it is best to take the trouble to know what philosophy says or to specify the philosophical theory in question. In fact the concept of soul does not coincide with conscience, mind and brain. Those who defend the human soul’s spirituality believe that the so-called conscience is a sign of man’s spirituality, but not that the soul coincides with the spirit itself. As a matter of fact the term soul expresses (and this applies to all living creatures, plants and animals) the unifying principle behind activities typical of a living being, with the difference that in man the organism’s unifying principle is not only material (in fact the notion of spirit springs from denial, it is the non-material). And the human soul’s spirituality is declared under the conviction that this alone can explain certain functions typical of man that are expressed in that complex phenomenon we generally call conscience. Considering these reasons we can state that man as a whole has a spiritual soul from the moment he first comes into being, when he still has no brain. We can also say that conscience is the effect of man’s spiritual nature but, if conscience is one of the effects of man’s spiritual nature, it cannot also be its cause. Now, even those who are convinced of the soul’s spirituality know that we need the brain to be consciously active and that the brain, just as any other organ, influences the performance of human activities, but not for this reason do they mistake the soul for the brain or the mind (a term that usually designates the thinking process). It is true that we need the brain to think and it is also true that the brain is formed by parts that can be studied from a biochemical viewpoint. But it is wrong to identify the brain with thought (a sign of man’s spirituality). We need a brain to think just as we need legs to walk, but it is neither the brain that thinks nor the legs that walk but man as a whole. If one wishes to deny the human soul’s spirituality, he must do so with philosophical arguments and certainly not by studying cerebral matter that, by definition, is precisely matter. Those who look for neurones will find neurones and certainly not fragments of the spirit. Only if one has a childish conception of the spirit (as “something” mysterious located in some part of the brain or the body) can he think of denying spirituality by dissecting a body. It is like denying the existence of God because he did not meet him on a trip to outer space. In practice the philosophical issues are as serious and complex as those faced by neurosciences. Neuroscience studies are important because they also help us understand the relations between cerebral lesions and changes in personality. But this does not prove that man’s personality is in the brain but rather that man, as a whole, is always also body. On the other hand, bodily lesions too affect man’s personality, just like leg and arm mutilations, and nobody ventures to place the ego in a limb. Studies conducted in the field of neurosciences are important, reliable and extremely informative; unfortunately they are at times contaminated by undue amateurish incursions into the field of philosophy. Probably much confusion and deception could be avoided if philosophers and scientists resumed talking to understand each other and hence better grasp their studies.
Adriano Pessina
Cattedra di Bioetica Università Cattolica di MilanoTranslated by Interpres sas
...Adriano Pessinaf. cr