Most of the following points were revealed long ago by the logoi of the mythos, the tympanum of a “spacious portal into the Platonic edifice” (Plato’s World, 3, by Joe Cropsey), the Platonic dialogue, Protagoras.
The “book weaves together neuroscience and politics and philosophy to challenge our understandings of what it means to exist as human beings….” (5)
In Part II – Of Minds and Myths, Chapter 4 – The Birth of Ideology, the book explores “Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, Comte de Tracy, (1754 – 1836) a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher who coined the term ideology.” (wikipedia)
de Tracy’s “aim was to introduce a new discipline, a new science” which “would become a branch of zoology, the study of animals and animate life,” and “Tracy christened it the logos–the study, the logic, the rationale–of ideas.” (35-36).
“Tracy’s first axiom implies that rationality and observation are the routes to knowledge and hence to the truth that resides behind reality.” (38)
In effect, rationality and observation are the two aspects of the atomic brain.
Chapter 6 of the book begins with this: “One should be skeptical of any story that crudely divides an idea into two: light and dark, heaven and hell good and evil, love and hate,” and “the human brain seems to be largely characterized by two fundamental principles.”
“The first principle of the human brain is that it is a predictive organ.” (55)
“The second principle is that the brain is fundamentally communicative.” (60)
As to “political neuroscience,” the “amygdala . . . is a paired structure of two parts, . . . one in each hemisphere of the brain.” (186) “In our concepts and in our anatomy, the traditional division between cool intellect and heated emotion is a mirage that ought to be dissolved. The neural mechanisms of affective and rational processes overlap and share anatomical spaces.” (188)
But the “prefrontal cortex is a vast, dense, and convoluted area with many subdivisions that are recruited into different neural circuits, webs, loops, and projections, which are governed by different neurotransmitters, hormones, and enzymes.” (192)
“Thinking of the prefrontal cortex in terms of the transfer, flow, and manipulation of information across global brain dynamics is more informative than envisioning it as an isolated cognitive overlord that alone dictates our sophisticated behavior.” (193)
“So a political neuroscientist hoping to learn how the prefrontal cortex’s myriad operations facilitate ideological thinking may need . . . to conduct a deep dive into each person. Rather than investigating interpersonal differences, study intrapersonal phenomena.” (193) [which reflects the Protagorean measure: each man is the measure of all things that are and all things that are not]
But then the author concludes Chapter 16 with the following point which is dreamy:
“Biological accounts of ideologies do not imply that individuals’ views are fixed and unchangeable. On the contrary, decoding the neural representations of our dogmas can help us see [rather than the few wise teach others to see] the ways in which our brains and our values are malleable and ready for transformation [no, the way in which each human animal sees the ways in which his or her brain and his or her values are malleable and ready for transformation – extremely unlikely as to most human animals].” (195)
Part V of the book – “Freedom” – of each human animal, the reality of the Protagorean measure, supra.
“We all lie on a spectrum of suggestibility” which “reflects the interaction of all the traits that make people susceptible to ideological thinking: their biological or cognitive dispositions, their personalities and social experiences, their traumas and perceived resources, abundances, realities, and absences.” (199-200)
In fact, “the spectrum curls inward and inward to make a sinister spiral” or “cultish behavior” but “de-spiraling is so difficult.” (200, 201)
“New lines of research indicate that the effect of stress on decision-making is not the same for everyone.” (204) [hence, the problem of equality/inequality]
What to do?
“A full solution . . . requires turning to the nest, . . . the home, the neighborhood, the city, the country, the climate, the pressures that are exerted on the person.” “Nests are calming, protective cocoons meant to comfort.” (210) [political philosophy?]
“Some nests offer refuge,” but “other nests are places not of rest but of battle and survival.” (210) [atomic nature]
“Social exclusion is one of the most powerful predictors of justification of . . . extreme political actions.” (212; italics added)
“Threats to our existence can affect the spiral into extremism.” (215)
“The political question is how we can design societies in which ideological solutions are not only–or, at least, not the most salient–solutions for the brain’s needs. . . . Can we offer citizens the tools to know when an ideology merits critique and when a philosophy can be a source of creativity and resistance to injustices?” (223-24; italics added)
Chapter 19 – Otherwise:
“It is … a mistake to think that democratic rights or secular societies alone can protect us from dangers of dogmatism. Although political emancipation and plurality are fundamental to flexible thinking, they are not sufficient.” (225)
[Again], “not all ideological brains are identical. Each person is a cocktail of particular combinations of personality and biological attributes.” [the Protagorean measure] (226)
“How we think can matter more than what we think….” (227; italics in original) [but how we think must eventually deliver what we think]
“The new science of the ideological brain should vitalize any philosophy that tries to define itself as malleable and oppositional to dogma.” “To be free and to break from an ideology is to engage with multiple voices, to play, and to reject the overly serious. To dare to go off-script.” (230)
Epilogue – Going Off-Script
[political neuroscience] “can study unconscious processes that are inconspicuous to the observer’s naked eye or the believer’s story-telling tongue.” (236)
“society has the responsibility … to nurture [brain] plasticity and treat its citizens as free agents.” That is, “ways of existing that resist rigid doctrines and rigid identities at every turn.” (238-39)
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