Fernando Vidal

Ortega, Francisco

Making the Cerebral Subject

Being Brains

Francisco Ortega

This “interesting, informative, and provocative book” explores the pervasive influence of neuroscience and “the view that we are essentially our brains” (History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences). Being Brains offers a critical exploration of neurocentrism, the belief that “we are our brains,” which came to prominence in the 1990s. Encouraged by advances in neuroimaging, the humanities and social sciences have gravitated toward the brain as well, developing neuro-subspecialties in fields such as anthropology, aesthetics, education, history, law, sociology, and theology. Even in the business world, dubious enterprises such as “neuromarketing” and “neurobics” have emerged to take advantage of the heightened sensitivity to all things neuro. While neither hegemonic nor monolithic, the neurocentric view embodies a powerful ideology that is at the heart of some of today’s most important philosophical, ethical, scientific, and political debates. Being Brains examines the internal logic of this new ideology, as well as its genealogy and its main contemporary incarnations. Being Brains was chosen as the 2018 Outstanding Book in the History of the Neurosciences by the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences.

Nélia Dias

The notion of Endangerment stands at the heart of a network of concepts, values and practices dealing with objects and beings considered threatened by extinction, and with the procedures aimed at preserving them. Usually animated by a sense of urgency and citizenship, identifying endangered entities involves evaluating an impending threat and opens the way for preservation strategies. Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture looks at some of the fundamental ways in which this process involves science, but also more than science: not only data and knowledge and institutions, but also affects and values. Focusing on an "endangerment sensibility," it encapsulates tensions between the normative and the utilitarian, the natural and the cultural. The chapters situate that specifically modern sensibility in historical perspective, and examine central aspects of its recent and present forms. This timely volume offers the most cutting-edge insights into the Environmental Humanities for researchers working in Environmental Studies, History, Anthropology, Sociology and Science and Technology Studies.

Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture

Lorraine Daston

Professor Lorraine Daston

For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated debates over genetically modified organisms and human cloning testify. The Moral Authority of Nature offers a wide-ranging account of how people have used nature to think about what counts as good, beautiful, just, or valuable. The eighteen essays cover a diverse array of topics, including the connection of cosmic and human orders in ancient Greece, medieval notions of sexual disorder, early modern contexts for categorizing individuals and judging acts as "against nature," race and the origin of humans, ecological economics, and radical feminism. The essays also range widely in time and place, from archaic Greece to early twentieth-century China, medieval Europe to contemporary America. Scholars from a wide variety of fields will welcome The Moral Authority of Nature, which provides the first sustained historical survey of its topic. Contributors: Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Lorraine Daston, Fa-ti Fan, Eckhardt Fuchs, Valentin Groebner, Abigail J. Lustig, Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Robert N. Proctor, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Londa Schiebinger, Laura Slatkin, Julia Adeney Thomas, Fernando Vidal

The Moral Authority of Nature

Neurocultures offers -glimpses- into an expanding universe of knowledge, beliefs and practices characterized by the conviction that human activity is governed by the structure and functioning of the brain. The 1990s were the Decade of the Brain, and the first hundred years of the new millennium have been proclaimed its Century. Described as the most complex of all organs, the brain has become a major icon of contemporary culture. Brain imaging technologies are used in a large number of disciplines, and are increasingly applied in settings of potential social and legal relevance. It is often proclaimed that the neurosciences will bring about major transformations in notions and practices of the human in areas as diverse as spirituality and self-help, marketing, the law, education, or the classification and treatment of mental disease. Neurocultures explores these expectations, their history, their contexts, and the debates they raise, in a broad range of fields, including enhancement, meditation, neuroethics, the -social brain-, psychedelic research, psychoanalysis, psychiatric and neurological conditions, and cinema and literature."

Fernando Vidal

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