A Pier into the Brain

Vladimir Lipovetsky M.D. from Los Angeles writes in about Robert Jensen’s “The Struggle for the (Possible) Soul of David Eagleman“:

The trouble with many articles that explore applications and limitations of neuroscience through the prism of the neuroscientist is that they come up against the same limitations over and over again for dozens of years. Neuroscientists by virtue of their focus overlook minute details that the flow of internal experience is actually composed of. In a sense they are building the pier on the beach and can’t even see the ocean. The very impressive sophistication of imaging the brain, knowing various circuits, and consequences of their failures, belies a simple fact that they have no way of even hypothesizing why I am writing this or how the writer of the piece came up with it, or what is meaning, and what is imagination. The field cannot study the phenomena that would begin to answer the question of what may or may not be mind, or soul, or consciousness, or personhood. And yet, the public is endlessly fascinated by the opinions of neuroscientists on these matters with the naivete that is similar to that of a talib inquiring about the will of God from a mullah. I am writing this not as an opponent of neuroscience, but rather as a physician and a student of it, who recognizes the enormous value of this undertaking and its inordinate present day shortsightedness.