In “Neuroscience: The Mind Inside Our Skull,” (Science 20 July 2012), Ricardo Basso Garcia reviews Paolo Legrenzi and Carlo Umiltà’s Neuromania: On the Limits of Brain Science , and seems surprisingly sympathetic:
In the authors’ reading, the brain has become the system of reference in explanations of human mind and behavior, relegating to the background an alternative approach that emphasized the social and cultural aspects of the human mind. A word of caution: The important issue is not a matter of which perspective should prevail but that many decisions regarding human life depend on how society defines the mind-body relationship. If only one aspect appears in the foreground, there may be drastic differences when dealing with thorny topics such as abortion and euthanasia. Answers to the complex questions raised by technological and scientific progress toward controlling life and death depend on ethical and ideological choices. To think about such issues from a strictly biological point of view may be misleading—after all, inside our skull there is more than just a brain.
Astonishing that such words would appear in a regular issue schmience journal – but maybe it isn’t that any more. Wait and see.