The Myth of Neuroscience Research

Undoubtedly, the works of neuroscientists have significant contributions towards the understanding of the development of the human brain. These contributions have unveiled some unanswerable questions about the human brain such as:  what is unique in the human brain compared to its closest primate’s grey matter, the chimpanzees?; what are some similar fixtures between the two? Their researches have revealed the development and the limits of the two with their special characteristics.  However, these are not the final words of their research as they continue to do intense research to prove their assumptions about the capacity of the human brain. In this short paper, I want to comment on their conclusions after having done previous researches especially about the existence of human freedom and their physical-deterministic view of human existence.

First of all, Neurobiologist researches have gained prominent acknowledgments like other disciplinary sciences for their particular achievements in their field. This is proof that their methodology can answer some particular problems of a human being. These acknowledgments are based on the fact that every science has their own contributions to human beings by their methodologies and means. The new discovery of one disciplinary science is not the sign that a particular methodology is more superior to other disciplinary sciences. Rather, it is a sign that their particular methodology works on certain issues or problems of a human being. Every disciplinary science is a master of its own methodologies.

What is wrong in the claims of the neuroscientists is that they have the premature conclusion of their own work, which is to prove that there is no such thing as freedom and free will. In their ongoing research, they deemed human freedom and free will as only delusions because the findings in the human brain show us that those are merely the chemical processes of the body. They deny altogether what is called commitment and responsibility. These conclusions have significant impacts on our understanding of human existence. In this case, they do not only deny God but also humans’ relationality and integrity. So, humans are predetermined by the chemical processes of their body.

Second, such claims cited above undermine the existence of other disciplinary sciences which in history have contributed a lot to human development even for their own scientific research; such as sociology, philosophy, and theology. For sociology, for example, they deny practically that humans are also determined by their social environment through the learning process. For philosophy and theology, I already mentioned them above but I would like to reiterate it here: they deny both human freedom and God’s intervention in creation.

            French existentialism of the twentieth century opposed the materialistic-mechanistic view and asserted that man is free, there is no such determinism, and indeed man has freedom. One of its prominent philosophers was Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre emphasizes that the freedom of the individual is always realized only in a particular “situation” and therefore always comes up against the limit. These limits now have become very much clearer from the results of behavioral research: human beings are preformed in two ways-by influences from the environment and by the hereditary dispositions-and yet within limits, they are free. The existentialist philosophers see individual freedom both as an opportunity and at the same time as a compulsion to shape his or her life. What are called here are not arbitrariness and randomness but commitment and responsibility. Human beings are either completely free or they are not: even those who are in prison and under torture are and do remain free. (P.172)

            Human beings are relational. We are not predetermined or predefined. We are not pre-programmed. The central point of creation is our relationality between God and humans, nature and of other living beings. Humans are not only confined to their physicality but also as social beings that are living with other living beings. His personhood is determined both by his physical features and his social environment through the learning process. Humans also have values and ethical principles, which transcend his being and not merely a physical being who is carried away by his/her chemical processes.