The Exteriority of Mind: Some Critical remarks about Neuro-Reductionism from a Psychoanalytic Perspective

Abstract

Any thesis about human nature that wants to call itself scientific today pretend to verify itself by neurosciences. These perspectives propose a pure organism that is far from unitary but with a common denominator: the reduction of the subject to its neural substrate, sometimes ignoring socio-symbolical dimension. This article develops the topics from the neuro-reductionist perspective showing its limits, both theoretical and clinical. The articulation of Lacanian conception of subject with Wittgenstein’s critical approach to philosophy demonstrates the vacuity of neuro-reductionism discourse face to the “real”, which resides at the bottom of human nature.