Philosophical implications of neuroscience: the space for a critique

In an intellectual atmosphere still marked by the ideological failures of the twentieth century, the expectations for neuroscience are extremely high, even in fields traditionally sheltered from the seductions of neurobiological explanations, such as political theory, sociology and philosophy. In an attempt to problematize the reception that this neuroscientific vocabulary has received, I provide in this article a cartography of three major lines of philosophical criticism of neuroscience – ‘conceptual’, ‘societal’ and ‘embodied-enactive’ – put forward recently by philosophers of different intellectual traditions. Although these criticisms are important in shedding light on some epistemological inconsistencies of the neuroscientific programme, the need remains to supplement this philosophical work with a different kind of critique, one that could address more directly the social and political relevance of neuroscience as well understand our epoch's urge to ‘turn neurobiological’ previously cultural or sociological phenomena.