Scarecrow’s Brain and Homunculi: Neurobiological Reductionism as Ensoulment-Objectification Process Seen Through Anthropological Lenses

Marko Zivkovic (Alberta) gives a talk at the MCMP conference "Reduction and Emergence in the Sciences" (14-16 November, 2013) titled "Scarecrow’s Brain and Homunculi: Neurobiological Reductionism as Ensoulment-Objectification Process Seen Through Anthropological Lenses". Abstract: Using Scarecrow’s brain to think through folk psychology’s encounter with neurobiological reductionism, I will try to reframe the debates among Dennett, Bennet & Hacker, Searle and the Churchlands in terms of anthropological understandings of “folk psychology” developed by Alfred Gell, Gregory Schrempp’s mythological analysis of homunculism, and Michael Polanyi’s conceptualization of from-to nature of all knowing. My premise is that all the positions taken on the issue of neurobiological reduction are variants of ensoulment-objectification processes systematically examined in Gell’s distributed personality theory.