Neurosciences, neuroeconomics, and metaphysics
pp. 39-48
in: Psychiatry and neuroscience update, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
The recognition of the influence of theory on data selection and interpretation has led to the widely accepted notion that the content, formulation, and methodology of scientific theories largely depends on a metaphysical worldview. This chapter draws from Craig Dilworth's thesis (The metaphysics of science. 2nd ed. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006) on the physicalist (and consequently materialist) metaphysical commitments of contemporary science to show how this link is present in the neurosciences, economics, and neuroeconomics. However, these sciences are still somewhat lodged between an acceptance of an absolutely physicalist view of reality and the defense of the existence of realities beyond matter. The physicalist worldview translates in the sciences into a predominant scientific positivism shyly resisted by neurosciences and economics. In fact, neuroeconomics' parent theory—behavioral economics—seeks to explain the empirical anomalies of positivist standard economic theories by exploring beyond openly manifested data. However, the fledgling science of neuroeconomics claims to have found the root of these anomalies in an even more materialistic internal place: neural interactions. As a result, the materialistic explanation is all but reinforced. In neuroeconomics, the physicalist worldview has prevailed over the openness to other realities, but, even so, some opposing voices can still be heard.