The War on Reason
Scientists and philosophers argue that human beings are little more than puppets of their biochemistry. Here's why they're wrong.
The New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests we should reject the notion that we are in control of our decisions and instead think of the conscious self as a lawyer who, when called upon to defend the actions of a client, mainly provides after-the-fact justifications for decisions that have already been made.
Such statements have produced a powerful backlash. What they represent, many people feel, are efforts at a hostile takeover of the soul: an assault on religious belief, on traditional morality, and on common sense. Derisory terms like neurotrash, brain porn, and (for the British) neurobollocks are often thrown around. Some people, such as the novelist Marilynne Robinson and the writer and critic Leon Wieseltier, argue that science has inappropriately ventured outside its scope and has still failed to capture the rich and transcendent nature of human experience. The author and clinical neuroscientist Raymond Tallis worries that such theories suggest no meaningful gap separates man and beast, a position that he argues, in Aping Mankind, is “not merely intellectually derelict but dangerous.”
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