THE CEREBRAL SUBJECT. 2-4/08 Rio/Brasil

THE CEREBRAL SUBJECT.
PRACTICES AND REPRESENTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE.

2-4 AUGUST 2006

STATE UNIVERSITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Organizers: Francisco Ortega (Institute for Social Medicine, State University
of Rio de Janeiro) and Fernando Vidal (Max Planck Institute for the History of
Science, Berlin)

To the extent that personhood is the quality or condition of being an
individual person, we might call brainhood the quality or condition of being a
brain. This property defines the cerebral subject that emerged in the second
half of the 20th century. The notion of the cerebral subject presupposes the
transformation of the seat of the soul into the organ of the self, and
underlines the material foundations of personal identity. Nevertheless, we use
the expression cerebral subject designate less a "scientific object" than an
anthropological figure - the human being as brain - with a great diversity of
social inscriptions, embodiments and crystallisations both inside and outside
philosophy and the neuroscientific and psychological fields.

In the course of the 18th century, at the crossroads of philosophy, psychology,
medicine and theology, the brain became not only the seat of personal identity,
but, more radically, the only bodily part essential to the self - the only
organ that we need to have, and that has to be intrinsically our own in order
for us to be ourselves. The development of neurology and the neurosciences in
the 19th and 20th century crucially reinforced this early view. In the second
edition of his Essay concerning human understanding (1694), John Locke proposed
puzzle-cases (e.g. the soul of a prince in the body of a cobbler, consciousness
located in a little finger cut away from the rest of the body) as springboards
to discuss personal identity, and to support his definition of identity as a
continuity of consciousness and memory. Starting in the 1960s, philosophers,
especially of the analytic anglo-american tradition, revived Locke's approach.
They too used puzzle-cases as an analytical and argumentative strategy. Now,
however, the cases concerned mainly the brain (experiments, transplants,
extra-bodily conservation...). This usage, which science fiction in writing and
film had already "anticipated," became so widespread that it seemed virtually
impossible to discuss personal identity without having recourse to cerebral
surgical fictions.

The rise of philosophical brain-fictions corresponds to the increasing
importance of brain research. After World War II, the mind and brain sciences
intervened in everyday life in many ways. The project of Artificial
Intelligence proposed that the brain is merely a problem-solving machine that
can be technically simulated. Psychosurgery removed the purported seats of
obsessive thoughts and maladjusted behavior. Psychoactive drugs played various
roles both inside and outside of publicly accepted culture; antipsychotic drugs
shaped a new phenomenology of the psychiatric patient. The chiefly medical
hopes raised by neuroscientific advances were accompanied by the realization
that the neurosciences can also be considered as dystopic political actors, and
that the manipulation of the human mind, from LSD and Prozac to brainwashing,
Clockwork Orange and cyberspace, have become integral parts of contemporary
technoculture.

The 1990s were the Decade of the Brain, and the first hundred years of the new
millennium have been proclaimed its Century. Neuroscientists see these as
symbolic gestures that will support their drive to solve the puzzle of human
consciousness, and unravel the secrets of an organ described as the most
complex of the universe. But proclaiming a Decade or a Century of the Brain
also signals the omnipresence of the brain as a major icon of contemporary
culture - from literature and the plastic arts, to medical ethics, to theology
and religion, to emerging research areas such as neuroeconomics or
neuroeducation, and to an expanding galaxy of more or less extravagant
neurobeliefs and neuropractices.

The conference intends to explore various aspects of the history, sociology,
anthropology, and presence and consequences of the cerebral subject as a major
figure of contemporary culture.

The conference takes place in the framework of a cooperation agreement between
UERJ and MPIWG, and in connection with the project "The Cerebral Subject.
Impact of the Neurosciences in Contemporary Society," funded by a grant from
the PROBRAL program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the
Brazilian CAPES.

An already accessible website for the project and the conference is under
construction:

www.brainhood.net

For further information, contact Dr. Fernando Vidal, vidal@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de