Neuroscience; agency-structure complex.
Not another sciences post.
There has been a thought lingering, after far too many hours familiarizing myself with IR theories. Staring into space in the tube, I think about whether rationality has to be upheld at a certain level, like one professor said. Or whether there is one objective social scientific truth somewhere out there, where a theory can transcend space and time. For the sake of analysis?
Then comes the thought of social construct, intersubjectivity somewhere in between objective and subjective. What kind of science is this if it is out there and how do we grasp it?
The more important thing is, how do we tie this back to the material world?
One random night in Berlin, talking to a few PhD students at the place I was crashing at, I realized they were trying out some very experimental things. From my understanding they were trying to link a bunch of social scientific disciplines together to see what they share in common.
And neuroscience the temporary winner. Just did a quick search and saw that it is considered an area separate from biology now, the interdisciplinary scientific study of the nervous system.
Interdisciplinary for a reason; any major breakthroughs in neuroscience just has so much impact in every part of our lives.
I'm thinking: if you an entire mapping or clear understanding of how a brain functions when carrying out certain types of thoughts, then recreating the entire process, given that you have the technology and the material necessary, some frozen brain cells perhaps, you can actually clone a person that will have the exact same thought processes as whatever nervous system that was copied. You can create a computer that actually thinks like a human being and not require complex algorithms to run, since it can potentially emulate whatever neuroprocesses the human brain has.
I tend to think that, if we can do MRI, and if we can map the human genome, why can't we map all neuroprocesses?
This brought me further towards some other literature I came across at a time recent enough; Anthony Giddens's Theory of Structuration. Briefly explained, in a text I wrote a while back, explaining it through Vivienne Jabri who quoted Ira Cohen. Sometimes I question myself how much of this I actually get, but here goes:
"Structural properties of a social system do not themselves reproduce the system itself, but they contain practices and relations that agents require to reproduce the system. The practices and relations within an institutionalized system are structured processes that are reproducible by vast amounts of knowledgeable agents. Knowledgeable agents conducting human activity, while being influenced by the structural properties, sustain and modify them through the process of reproduction. This explains why structures exist with generations of agents come and go, while properties of a structure gradually change over the reproduction process."
There are also diagrams that attempt to explain this, but basically it is a constant cycle, where agency and structure are mutually constitutive, neither party taking precedent over other. How a society generally runs.
If this theory is correct, is it then possible to reveal such patterns of social practices through a map of neuroprocesses? It always got me thinking since those days I had conversations about neuroscience with Chow. If agency is not to be taken priority over structure, then what runs this social structure or society?
Answer to this might be insignificant, or irrelevant, depending on the mode of thought you choose to interpret the world with, and of course taking into account the other modes you reject along the way. On this, I think it is worthy of discussion in another time and space.
Merger as such is not out of the blue. Social neuroscience is a similar type of research, which could potentially be tied into further cognitive neuroscience, and hence explains why the German PhD project above has neuroscience as a common denominator.
Agency-Structure complex is quite center to constructivist explanations to the world, which indeed is one mode studied in Foreign Policy Analysis. Not positivist enough, some would say. But the thought of a socially constructed world is actually quite a pertinent one.
If neuroscience can indeed be tied into agency-structure complex, then it has bare potential in tying in with social scientific theories. Rationality understood in such context, bounded or not, has quite different implications. It is no longer upheld as the objective thing out there, but subject to changes in time and space.
Ultimately, is there really a need to tie social scientific theories with neurological processes? I don't know. And I can't quite figure out the exact linkage just yet.
A more important opening question for a sequel of this post:
If we explain all these abstract social scientific theories as purely neurons shooting at high speeds through the brain, then do we place the material world as more important than the abstract world?
That our thoughts are merely based on the material structures of our brains.
What is the implication of that, for example, on the world of religion? And take into account that, by asking this previous question, we are categorically defining what religion is, defining its borders and boundaries, when religion might be a much murkier concept.
Better get back to doing more "useful" things.
There has been a thought lingering, after far too many hours familiarizing myself with IR theories. Staring into space in the tube, I think about whether rationality has to be upheld at a certain level, like one professor said. Or whether there is one objective social scientific truth somewhere out there, where a theory can transcend space and time. For the sake of analysis?
Then comes the thought of social construct, intersubjectivity somewhere in between objective and subjective. What kind of science is this if it is out there and how do we grasp it?
The more important thing is, how do we tie this back to the material world?
One random night in Berlin, talking to a few PhD students at the place I was crashing at, I realized they were trying out some very experimental things. From my understanding they were trying to link a bunch of social scientific disciplines together to see what they share in common.
And neuroscience the temporary winner. Just did a quick search and saw that it is considered an area separate from biology now, the interdisciplinary scientific study of the nervous system.
Interdisciplinary for a reason; any major breakthroughs in neuroscience just has so much impact in every part of our lives.
I'm thinking: if you an entire mapping or clear understanding of how a brain functions when carrying out certain types of thoughts, then recreating the entire process, given that you have the technology and the material necessary, some frozen brain cells perhaps, you can actually clone a person that will have the exact same thought processes as whatever nervous system that was copied. You can create a computer that actually thinks like a human being and not require complex algorithms to run, since it can potentially emulate whatever neuroprocesses the human brain has.
I tend to think that, if we can do MRI, and if we can map the human genome, why can't we map all neuroprocesses?
This brought me further towards some other literature I came across at a time recent enough; Anthony Giddens's Theory of Structuration. Briefly explained, in a text I wrote a while back, explaining it through Vivienne Jabri who quoted Ira Cohen. Sometimes I question myself how much of this I actually get, but here goes:
"Structural properties of a social system do not themselves reproduce the system itself, but they contain practices and relations that agents require to reproduce the system. The practices and relations within an institutionalized system are structured processes that are reproducible by vast amounts of knowledgeable agents. Knowledgeable agents conducting human activity, while being influenced by the structural properties, sustain and modify them through the process of reproduction. This explains why structures exist with generations of agents come and go, while properties of a structure gradually change over the reproduction process."
There are also diagrams that attempt to explain this, but basically it is a constant cycle, where agency and structure are mutually constitutive, neither party taking precedent over other. How a society generally runs.
If this theory is correct, is it then possible to reveal such patterns of social practices through a map of neuroprocesses? It always got me thinking since those days I had conversations about neuroscience with Chow. If agency is not to be taken priority over structure, then what runs this social structure or society?
Answer to this might be insignificant, or irrelevant, depending on the mode of thought you choose to interpret the world with, and of course taking into account the other modes you reject along the way. On this, I think it is worthy of discussion in another time and space.
Merger as such is not out of the blue. Social neuroscience is a similar type of research, which could potentially be tied into further cognitive neuroscience, and hence explains why the German PhD project above has neuroscience as a common denominator.
Agency-Structure complex is quite center to constructivist explanations to the world, which indeed is one mode studied in Foreign Policy Analysis. Not positivist enough, some would say. But the thought of a socially constructed world is actually quite a pertinent one.
If neuroscience can indeed be tied into agency-structure complex, then it has bare potential in tying in with social scientific theories. Rationality understood in such context, bounded or not, has quite different implications. It is no longer upheld as the objective thing out there, but subject to changes in time and space.
Ultimately, is there really a need to tie social scientific theories with neurological processes? I don't know. And I can't quite figure out the exact linkage just yet.
A more important opening question for a sequel of this post:
If we explain all these abstract social scientific theories as purely neurons shooting at high speeds through the brain, then do we place the material world as more important than the abstract world?
That our thoughts are merely based on the material structures of our brains.
What is the implication of that, for example, on the world of religion? And take into account that, by asking this previous question, we are categorically defining what religion is, defining its borders and boundaries, when religion might be a much murkier concept.
Better get back to doing more "useful" things.
diu man you are so deep.
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