Ethics

Neuroaesthetics in the TLS

By Adam Kolber

Raymond Tallis, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, discusses the use of neuroscience in literary interpretation.  Here's a sample paragraph from the middle:

At first sight, the displacement of Theory, with its social constructivism and linguistic idealism, by talk of something as solid as ?the brain? of the writer and ?the brain? of the reader may seem like progress. In fact, it is a case of plus ça change, plus c?est la même chose. The switch from Theory to ?biologism? leaves something essential unchanged: the habit of the uncritical application of very general ideas to works of literature, whose distinctive features, deliberate intentions and calculated virtues are consequently lost. Overstanding is still on the menu. In many of the critical approaches that reached their apogee in the 1980s, there was a denial of the centrality of the individual consciousness of the writer; in approaches that purport to be neuroscience-based, the consciousness of the writer (and of the reader, as we shall see) is reduced to neurophysiology. Indeed, the reductionism of neuro-lit-crit is more profound. While aficionados of Theory regarded individual works and their authors as, say, manifestations of the properties of texts, of their interaction with other texts and with the structures of power, neuroscience groupies reduce the reading and writing of literature to brain events that are common to every action in ordinary human life, and, in some cases, in ordinary non-human animal life. For this reason ? and also because it is wrong about literature, overstates the understanding that comes from neuroscience and represents a grotesquely reductionist attitude to humanity ? neuroaesthetics must be challenged.

(Hat tip: Patrick S. O'Donnell)

Full post as published by Neuroethics and Law on April 11, 2008 (boomark / email).