NEURO-JOB CREATION
Part
of something bigger
Some
weeks ago Norman Perrin blogged that he did not understand 'the math'
in a recent account by the organisation Cerebra of why it funds its
neuro-coreligionists in Barcelona:
I
am often puzzled by those adverts in which somebody in a white coat
and a big smile presents statistics, flashes up histograms, to
persuade me to buy this or that product. Like most other sensible
people, it never occurs to me to take a word of such things
seriously. I have long since ceased to be concerned about the
substance of what is being said. I am just amazed that the
advertising industry finds it worthwhile pumping out such tosh year
after year. I fall back on a couple of connected explanations:
- there are enough daft, desperate and/or ill-informed people out there for these expensive productions to maintaining or even increase sales
- The whole business is a part of wider conspiracy, maintaining a common front that some Emperor (especially advertising itself) does indeed have clothes
Everybody
wins? Well, the people involved in selling me something may
experience short-term commercial gains. But do the punters benefit
beyond any glow, excitement or some other satisfaction from taking
part in the commercial process?
The
site that Norman refers to, raising money to pay for some of that
further research that we hear is always needed, is another advert for
somebody's product. It promises long-term effects upon
'neurodevelopment' and 'neurobehaviour' – though it does not say
what such phenomena are.
And
not very subliminally it is promoting an ideology, one with its own
model of the relationship of mind and brain and the essence of human
psychic (mental) development, what Jan Macvarrish has called –
...an ideological attempt to discover the essence of humanity in the brain
This
is concretised heres in the immediate economic effect of justifying
jobs for a particular kind of researchers, whose work is part of a
wider whole, in
Ben Wilbrink's words –
...work that in essence is not scientific whatsoever, yet parades as scientific in almost all relevant aspects: professorates, promotions, academic institutions, academic journals.
Good
luck to them all, one might say. After all it's all work for the
working man, and woman. Except that it gets in the way of society's
attention to often serious matters, and the serious
consideration and changes that they merit.
Conductive
Education
Conductive
Education deals with serious problems, that certainly merit serious
consideration and some serious changes. I have nothing against
job-creation, or against intellectual enquiry ('research'), or the
two in combination. Conductive Education has offered a door that
could have opened a door potentially enormous human advancement. If
only they were treated seriously.
I
am strongly suspicious of almost any word with the suffix 'neuro-'
for so often, as the Melancholy Jacques put it –
It is but an invocation to call fools into the ring
Not
every such word. Neuropsychology for example can signify real
hard science. Indeed, neuropsychology as originally construed by A.
R. Luriya offered Conductive Education firm connection with the
workings of the brain in its wider human context, with higher mental
functions founded in social-historical experience and based upon
extracerebral connections.
Chance
missed. So it goes...
I
suppose that there is still time to take up that baton. No longer my
problem to fret about.
PS
To be fair, there's nothing special about the neuro-jobs in
this respect. Think of all the pseudo-scientific psychobabblers, the
worlds of therapy, education, 'management' etc... a huge, heavy slab
of our economy tottering upon marshmallow theoretical foundations.
I no longer feel inclined to fret about these either...
I no longer feel inclined to fret about these either...
Labels: Brain/mind, Neuropsychology, Philosophy, Research
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