Continuing with one of the theme sessions of the IACS-5 conference, Dr. Alice Orrú will present a historical perspective on the phenomenon of "neuromania", from the phrenology of the 19th century to these days. As the abstract below makes clear, the problem is not neuroscience itself, which is a welcome contribution to the pallet of different sciences studying cognition, human and non-human, but when this becomes blind to its limits and takes a reductionist stance, and imperialist proportions. As these are controversial topics, we hope that many will attend, in the seminar room or online, and take part of the discussion. As usual the talk will be from 15:15 and last about an hour.

The trend of Neuromania (roughly, the brain explains and tells us who we are), which has recently received special attention (e.g., Tallis 2011, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity), actually has its roots in the pseudoscientific approach called phrenology developed by F.J. Gall in the nineteenth century, and whose initial intentions were embraced, a century and a half later, by a part of first-generation cognitive science (among them, Fodor 1983). Regarding the localization of different functions of the brain, the modular theory of mind reflects Gall’s founding idea of a close “brain-mind(-body)” correlation, determining moral sentiments and intellectual faculties.

Albeit in different ways, such a perspective inevitably leads, then as now, to a number of problems and risks: 1) an extreme scientificalization of domains outside scientific calculations (e.g., that of feelings and perceptions); 2) the hierarchization between more or less functional faculties, and, consequently, between more or less capable and gifted individuals in the use of these (deviating, e.g., into the legal sphere); 3) the possibility of detecting all this by studying the brain alone (cf. Renneville 2021).

I aim to show how the nineteenth-century debate between the two main phrenological and antiphrenological tendencies can be seen as both anticipating and clarifying today’s debate. In particular, for the antiphrenological side, both the approach of G.F.W. Hegel (The Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807) based on corporeality (i.e., embodied), and that of C. Cattaneo (Psychology of the Associated Minds, 1859-66) based on intersubjectivity and the association of ideas derived from perception (i.e., cognitive semiotic ante litteram), provide a key to addressing the above issues, as well as a possible remedy to neuromaniac deviations in their various forms.