Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 69

Protecting the Mind : Challenges in

Law, Neuroprotection, and Neurorights


49th Edition Pablo López-Silva
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/protecting-the-mind-challenges-in-law-neuroprotection
-and-neurorights-49th-edition-pablo-lopez-silva/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Cambridge IGCSE and O Level History Workbook 2C - Depth


Study: the United States, 1919-41 2nd Edition Benjamin
Harrison

https://ebookmeta.com/product/cambridge-igcse-and-o-level-
history-workbook-2c-depth-study-the-united-states-1919-41-2nd-
edition-benjamin-harrison/

Protecting the Religious Freedom of New Minorities in


International Law ICLARS Series on Law and Religion 1st
Edition Fabienne Bretscher

https://ebookmeta.com/product/protecting-the-religious-freedom-
of-new-minorities-in-international-law-iclars-series-on-law-and-
religion-1st-edition-fabienne-bretscher/

Primary Mathematics 3A Hoerst

https://ebookmeta.com/product/primary-mathematics-3a-hoerst/

The Shaping of EU Competition Law Pablo Ibáñez Colomo

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-shaping-of-eu-competition-law-
pablo-ibanez-colomo/
International law and armed conflict fundamental
principles and contemporary challenges in the law of
war 2nd Edition Blank

https://ebookmeta.com/product/international-law-and-armed-
conflict-fundamental-principles-and-contemporary-challenges-in-
the-law-of-war-2nd-edition-blank/

Introduction to Air Law 11th Edition Pablo Mendes De


Leon

https://ebookmeta.com/product/introduction-to-air-law-11th-
edition-pablo-mendes-de-leon/

Chess Explained The c3 Sicilian 1st Edition Sam Collins

https://ebookmeta.com/product/chess-explained-
the-c3-sicilian-1st-edition-sam-collins/

Starting Out The c3 Sicilian 1st Edition John Emms

https://ebookmeta.com/product/starting-out-the-c3-sicilian-1st-
edition-john-emms/

International Law in the Transition to Peace:


Protecting Civilians under jus post bellum 1st Edition
Carina Lamont

https://ebookmeta.com/product/international-law-in-the-
transition-to-peace-protecting-civilians-under-jus-post-
bellum-1st-edition-carina-lamont/
Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment 49

Pablo López-Silva
Luca Valera Editors

Protecting
the Mind
Challenges in Law, Neuroprotection,
and Neurorights
Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment

Volume 49

Series Editors
Carl Friedrich Gethmann, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Nordrhein-Westfalen,
Germany
Michael Quante, Philosophisches Seminar, Westfälische Wilhelms Universität,
Münster, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Bjoern Niehaves, Universitaet Siegen, Siegen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Holger Schönherr, Department of Chemistry and Biology, Universität Siegen,
Siegen, Germany
The series Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment focuses on the impact that
scientific and technological advances have on individuals, their social lives, and on
the natural environment. Its goal is to cover the field of Science and Technologies
Studies (STS), without being limited to it. The series welcomes scientific and philo-
sophical reviews on questions, consequences and challenges entailed by the nature
and practices of science and technology, as well as original essays on the impact
and role of scientific advances, technological research and research ethics. Volumes
published in the series include monographs and edited books based on the results of
interdisciplinary research projects. Books that are devoted to supporting education
at the graduate and post-graduate levels are especially welcome.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/4094


Pablo López-Silva · Luca Valera
Editors

Protecting the Mind


Challenges in Law, Neuroprotection,
and Neurorights
Editors
Pablo López-Silva Luca Valera
Universidad de Valparaíso Universidad de Valladolid
Valparaiso, Chile Valladolid, Spain
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Santiago de Chile, Chile

ISSN 1860-4803 ISSN 1860-4811 (electronic)


Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment
ISBN 978-3-030-94031-7 ISBN 978-3-030-94032-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94032-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents

1 Towards an Ethical Discussion of Neurotechnological Progress . . . . 1


Pablo López-Silva and Luca Valera

Part I Human Nature, Neurotechnologies, and Philosophy: Main


Concepts
2 The Concept of Mind in the Neuroprotection Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Pablo López-Silva
3 The Unitary Sense of Human Being. A Husserlian Approach
Against Reductionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
José Manuel Chillón
4 Ethics and Neuroscience: Protecting Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Arran Gare
5 Free Will and Autonomy in the Age of Neurotechnologies . . . . . . . . . 41
Andrea Lavazza
6 Responsibility: A Theory of Action Between Care
for the World, Ethology, and Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Gianluca Cuozzo
7 Neuroscience, Neurolaw, and Neurorights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Paolo Sommaggio

Part II Neurotechnologies and Ethics: Main Problems


8 A Conceptual Approach to the Right to Mental Integrity . . . . . . . . . . 87
Elisabeth Hildt
9 Mental Integrity, Vulnerability, and Brain Manipulations:
A Bioethical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Luca Valera

v
vi Contents

10 Neurotechnology, Consent, Place, and the Ethics of Data


Science Genomics in the Precision Medicine Clinic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Andrew Crowden and Matthew Gildersleeve
11 Neuro-Rights and Ethical Ecosystem: The Chilean Legislation
Attempt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Enrique Siqueiros Fernández and Héctor Velázquez Fernández

Part III Neuroprotection and Human Rights: New Challenges


12 Mental Privacy and Neuroprotection: An Open Debate . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Abel Wajnerman and Pablo López-Silva
13 Neuro Rights: A Human Rights Solution to Ethical Issues
of Neurotechnologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Clara Baselga-Garriga, Paloma Rodriguez, and Rafael Yuste
14 A Technocratic Oath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
María Florencia Álamos, Leonie Kausel, Clara Baselga-Garriga,
Paulina Ramos, Francisco Aboitiz, Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria,
and Rafael Yuste
15 Neurotechnologies and the Human Image: Open Questions
on Neuroprotection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Pablo López-Silva and Luca Valera
Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Pablo López-Silva is Adjunct Professor at the School of Psychology and Research


Professor at the Institute of Philosophy of the Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile. He
is Young Research Fellow at the Millenium Institute for Research in Depression and
Personality (MIDAP-Chile). Pablo López-Silva is MRes and Ph.D. in Philosophy at
the University of Manchester, UK. His areas of research are Philosophy of Mind,
Philosophy of Psychology, Psychopathology, and Neuroethics.

Luca Valera is Associate Professor at the Center for Bioethics (School of Medicine),
Pontificia Universidad Católica de, Chile. Moreover, he is Visiting Professor at
the Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain. He is Ph.D. in
Bioethics at Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Italy. His areas of research
are Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Technology, Bioethics, and Applied Ethics.

Contributors

Francisco Aboitiz Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencias and Departamento


de Psiquiatría, Escuela de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,
Santiago de Chile, Chile
María Florencia Álamos Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencias and Departa-
mento de Psiquiatría, Escuela de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,
Santiago de Chile, Chile
Clara Baselga-Garriga Neurorights Initiative, Columbia University, New York
City, USA
José Manuel Chillón Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Valladolid,
Valladolid, Spain

vii
viii Editors and Contributors

Andrew Crowden School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of


Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Gianluca Cuozzo Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, Università
Di Torino, Turin, Italy
Enrique Siqueiros Fernández Facultad de Filosofía, Universidad Panamericana,
Mexico City, México
Héctor Velázquez Fernández Centro Sociedad Tecnológica y Futuro Humano,
Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad Mayor, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Arran Gare Department of Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, Australia
Matthew Gildersleeve School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University
of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Elisabeth Hildt Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute
of Technology, Chicago, USA
Leonie Kausel Centro de Investigación en Complejidad Social, Universidad del
Desarrollo, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Andrea Lavazza Centro Universitario Internazionale, Arezzo, Italy;
University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Pablo López-Silva School of Psychology, Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaiso,
Chile
Paulina Ramos Center for Bioethics, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,
Santiago de Chile, Chile
Paloma Rodriguez Neurorights Initiative, Columbia University, New York City,
USA
Paolo Sommaggio Department of Law, Università di Trento, Trento, Italy
Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria Bizkaia, Erandio, Spain
Luca Valera Centre for Bioethics, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,
Santiago de Chile, Chile;
Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain
Abel Wajnerman Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, Universidad Alberto
Hurtado, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Rafael Yuste Neurorights Initiative, Columbia University, New York City, USA;
Donostia International Physics Center, San Sebastián, Spain
List of Tables

Table 14.1 Hippocratic oath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170


Table 14.2 Proposed technocratic oath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

ix
Chapter 1
Towards an Ethical Discussion
of Neurotechnological Progress

Pablo López-Silva and Luca Valera

Abstract Over the last years, neurotechnological progress has motivated a number
of theoretical and practical worries. For example, the potential misuses of neurode-
vices with direct access to our neural data in real time might pose a number of
threats to our autonomy, free-will, agency, privacy, and liberty. In light of this—
not so distant—scenario, cooperative interdisciplinary reflection is needed in order
to inform conceptual, legal, and ethical challenges that arise from the way in which
neurotechnological progress impacts our understanding of issues such as technology,
society, the human mind, and finally, the very concept of the human person.

Keywords Neurotechnologies · Neuroprotection · Human · Mind

Motivated by a quest for medical neurotechnological applications, in 2013, the U.S.


BRAIN Initiative is created to develop novel methods to record and manipulate neural
activity of human brains with unprecedented specificity (Alivisatos et al. 2013). In
2017, similar enterprises from China, Korea, the European Union, Japan, Canada, and
Australia joined the so-called International Brain Initiative aiming at cooperatively
exploring new treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders (Adams et al.
2020). Over the last years, neurotechnologies such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS),
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs)
are starting to offer promising ways to deal with the burden of specific neurolog-
ical conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, Brain Strokes, Paralysis, among many
others (Chaudhary et al. 2016; Espay et al. 2016; Garnaat et al. 2018; Roelfsema
et al. 2018; Cagnan et al. 2019; Cinel et al. 2019; Chase et al. 2020; McFarland
2020). Worryingly, this neurotechnological revolution seems to be also leading to
the creation of commercial and military applications (Fernández et al. 2015). This

P. López-Silva (B)
School of Psychology, Universidad de Valparaíso, Hontaneda 2653, Valparaiso, Chile
L. Valera
Centre for Bioethics, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. L. Bernardo O’Higgins 340,
Santiago de Chile, Chile
Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Valladolid, Plaza Campus Universitario, Valladolid,
Spain

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1


P. López-Silva and L. Valera (eds.), Protecting the Mind, Ethics of Science and Technology
Assessment 49, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94032-4_1
2 P. López-Silva and L. Valera

issue becomes highly problematic in light of the current lack of explicit international
regulatory laws for the potential production of such neurotechnological applica-
tions (Ienca and Haselager 2016; Ienca and Andorno 2017; López-Silva and Madrid
2021). This scenario becomes even more complicated if we think that this type of
neurotechnologies might allow the development of the unprecedented ability to read
minds by decoding, analyzing, and interpreting data about neural activity patterns of
human brains, exposing what once was thought to be private, namely, our thoughts,
beliefs, desires, and (cognitive and behavioural) predispositions. More importantly,
the very possibility of recording with such a precision the neural activity that produce
specific mental states might offer scientists and governments the possibility of not
only reading, but also controlling the production of mental states in the minds of
regular citizens, process that has been called “brain-hacking” (Yuste 2019, 2020a,
b).
In this context, a number of researchers all over the world have claimed that
current ethical and legislative frameworks are not ready to deal with some of the
potential situations imposed by these neurotechnological advances and that, there-
fore, the development of neuroprotective legal frameworks should become a global
urgent priority (Yuste et al. 2021). Certainly, the contexts in which all these prac-
tical and philosophical concerns arise are complex and invite us to reconsider—
from an interdisciplinary point of view—fundamental questions about the ethics of
neurotechnologies, the concept of science and its relationship with the notion of the
mental, and issues about the anthropological model that guides current neuroethical
debates. More specifically, the potential misuses of neurotechnologies with access
to neural data also invites a re-evaluation of several traditional ethical, political,
and philosophical categories. Here, there is a pushing need for developing clear and
well-informed ideas from an interdisciplinary view. Without this approach, we will be
unable to evaluate and inform the best actions to be taken for both current and future
generations. Only by developing conceptually consistent tools, we will be able to
responsibly inform decision and policy-making within these more practical contexts.
Consequently, the progress in the neuroethical field may also contribute to building a
framework to develop a better and safer neurotechnological (and neuro-engineering)
practice.
Taking this need into consideration, Protecting the Mind: Challenges in law,
neuroprotection, and neurorights aims at exploring some of the most fundamental
debates emerging from the analysis of the philosophical, social, ethical, and legal
consequences of current advances in neurosciences and neurotechnology. The afore-
mentioned scenarios make necessary the construction of an academic forum aiming
at defining and re-defining some of the most fundamental concepts in the field
to deal in an informed manner with the challenges of the growing influence of
neurotechnologies, not only in medicine, but also, in our everyday life.
The compilation has been divided into three main parts, each one of them dealing
with three different problems concerning emerging neurotechnologies. Part I focuses
on the question regarding human nature and the importance of developing a shared
vocabulary on these issues. Part II deals with possible responses to the main ethical
problems generated by the current neurotechnologies and, finally, Part III focuses on
1 Towards an Ethical Discussion … 3

some proposals regarding neurorights and possible policies to protect our privacy,
neural data, and intimacy, with reference to emerging neurodevices. Given the wide
range of topics, this book is necessary interdisciplinary: the different authors deal with
problems and concerns generated by the emerging neurotechnologies starting from
philosophical, ethical, clinical, legal, anthropological, and bioethical perspectives.
In this sense, the aim of the book is to offer different approaches and standpoints
on a current hot topic. Furthermore, given the diverse geographic distribution of the
authors, the different problems will be addressed from very different cultural points
of view, emerging from South America, Australia, Europe, and the United States.
The different parts of the compilation have been structured hierarchically, from the
most abstract—and fundamental—to the most practical and applied. Part I offers the
philosophical and anthropological basis concerning the emerging neurotechnologies.
In this sense, in Part I, a conceptual clarification is offered: in order to avoid funda-
mental problems, it is useful to better characterize the concept of “mind” (Chap. 2)
and its theoretical implication for our target debate. This field, which has been
reserved almost exclusively to philosophical investigations in the past, has begun to be
explored by cognitive sciences and manipulated by neurotechnologies, with evident
consequences in our “anthropological timage.” In this regard, the concept of mind is
strongly connected to the idea of the human being we may have, for this reason, in the
following contributions it is claimed that a non-reductionist approach to human mind,
consciousness, and experience is necessary for developing comprehensive frame-
works within the debate. In Chaps. 3 and 4 this comprehensive approach is explored
by facing the complexity of our experiences and the permanent emergence of human
freedom and autonomy within the human condition. Obviously, the most important
anthropological concerns and risks concerning neurotechnologies refer to the impact
they could have on our autonomy. Indeed, interventions in brain functioning might
have major (bad or good) implications for our free will and our autonomy (Chap. 5).
Such consequences on our autonomy might also imply new forms of interpreting
our responsibility towards our nature and other humans and living beings. For this
reason, a more “ecological” concept of responsibility is needed (Chap. 6) in order
to interpret the different feedback effects that emerging technologies are generating
on our nature. These new forms of responsibility and autonomy also require original
conceptual tools to protect personal human rights against possible reductionisms.
Here, the concept of cognitive liberty (Chap. 7) may represent an interesting ethical
and legal paradigm to face any possible threat to human intimacy and integrity when
pondering the potential effects of neurotechnological advances in our lives.
Part II deals precisely with the emerging ethical concerns with reference to human
integrity. This concept is particularly relevant in the current neurotechnological
debate that stresses a person’s right to control their brain states and to protect the
person against unauthorized brain interventions (Chap. 8). In this regard, both bioeth-
ical and ethical approaches are needed. On the one side, in order to protect personal
autonomy and free will it is useful to consider the issue of human vulnerability as an
anthropological and ethical starting point (Chap. 9). On the other, it is useful to find
practical tools—like a new informed consent—that may prevent improper interven-
tion in personal intimacy and allow for meaningful decision-making and implement
4 P. López-Silva and L. Valera

practical person-centered outcomes (Chap. 10). In this regard, it should be useful to


reframe our ethical ecosystem (Chap. 11) starting from a non-reductionist person-
centered approach, which allows for non-discriminatory access to neurotechnologies
and the equal consideration of every human being.
This last consideration is essential to take the last step in our theoretical path
addressed in Part III of the compilation, namely, the legal issues regarding neuropro-
tection and fundamental human rights. The recent progress concerning neurotech-
nologies may indeed not only help many patients with mental and neurological
diseases, but also, raise major concerns regarding mental privacy, identity, and
agency. At the same time, it may change our ideas of the human mind and integrity
(Chap. 12). In this regard, the issue of protecting mental (or neural) data is partic-
ularly problematic and challenging and needs further discussion. To address these
concerns, the aforementioned Morningside Group firstly proposed five new human
rights devised to protect individuals in the face of new neurotechnologies. These
new human rights may be included in proposed legislations and soft laws in different
countries, including Chile and Spain. Chapter 13 is a reframing of that proposal,
which is constantly generating stimulating debates all over the world. Neverthe-
less, protecting our neural data, intimacy, mental integrity, and agency is not suffi-
cient. To ethically orient the activity of neurotechnology developers and the industry,
to ensure responsible innovation, and to protect the fundamental human rights of
patients and consumers, new forms of public commitments are necessary. In this
sense, Chap. 14 proposes a new “Technocratic Oath” (which is modelled on the
basis of the Hippocratic Oath) based on seven ethical principles.

1.1 Final Remarks

In John Milton’s Comus, the British poet writes “Thou canst not touch the freedom
of my mind”, depicting the human mind as the last bastion of privacy, freedom, and
agency. Such an idea remained unchallenged for a very long time. However, over
the last years, the development of neurotechnologies with direct access to neural
data is inviting us to critically reconsider the very notion of the mind as a secret and
inaccessible place. This scenario has not only motivated discussions about the ways
in which the access and control over our own neural data (mental privacy) could be
protected, but also, discussion about our very notions of the human mind and the
most fundamental anthropological model of ourselves. In this context, Protecting
the Mind: Challenges in Law, Neuroprotection, and Neurorights is an attempt to
meditate on a number of issues of current and future concern. We deeply hope that
this compilation motivates new developments in our target debate as there is much
to be discussed. Legal, Ethical, and Philosophical concerns about the way in which
neurotechnological advances might affect every-day life and our understanding of the
human condition certainly develop together and, for this reason, interdisciplinarity is
not merely desirable but a fundamental need. Let’s hope current and future researchers
1 Towards an Ethical Discussion … 5

embrace such a need in a cooperative way to develop well-informed frameworks for


decision-making in legal and political contexts that might affect us all.

References

Adams A et al (2020) International brain initiative: an innovative framework for coordinated global
brain research efforts. Neuron 105(2):212–216
Alivisatos AP, Chun M, Church GM, Deisseroth K, Greenspan MPRJ, Roukes ML, Sejnowski TS,
Weiss P, Yuste R (2013) The brain activity map. Science 339:1284–1285
Cagnan H, Denison T, McIntyre C, Brown P (2019) Emerging technologies for improved deep brain
stimulation. Nat Biotechnol 37(9):1024–1033
Chase HW, Boudewyn MA, Carter CS, Phillips ML (2020) Transcranial direct current stimulation:
a roadmap for research, from mechanism of action to clinical implementation. Mol Psychiatry
25(2):397–407
Chaudhary U, Birbaumer N, Ramos-Murguialday A (2016) Brain-computer interfaces for commu-
nication and rehabilitation. Nat Rev Neurol 12(9):513–525
Cinel C, Valeriani D, Poli R (2019) Neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation: current
state of the art and future prospects. Front Hum Neurosci 13:13
Espay AJ, Bonato P, Nahab F, Maetzler W, Dean JM, Klucken J, Eskofier BM et al (2016) Technology
in Parkinson disease: challenges and opportunities. Mov Disord 31(9):1272–1282
Fernández A, Nikhil S, Gurevitz B, Olivier O (2015) Pervasive neurotechnology: a groundbreaking
analysis of 10,000+ patent filings transforming medicine, health, entertainment and business.
Sharp Brains, San Francisco
Garnaat SL, Yuan S, Wang H, Philip NS, Carpenter LL (2018) Updates on transcranial magnetic
stimulation therapy for major depressive disorder. Psychiatr Clin North Am 41(3):419–431
Ienca M, Haselager P (2016) Hacking the brain: brain–computer interfacing technology and the
ethics of neurosecurity. Ethics Inf Technol 18(2):117–129
Ienca M, Andorno R (2017) Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and
neurotechnology. Life Sci Soc Policy 13(1):1–27
López-Silva P, Madrid R (2021) Sobre la conveniencia de incorporar los neuroderechos en la
constitución o en la ley. Revista Chil De Derecho y Tecnol 10(1):53–76
McFarland DJ (2020) Brain-computer interfaces for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Muscle Nerve
61(6):702–707
Roelfsema PR, Denys D, Klink PC (2018) Mind reading and writing: the future of neurotechnology.
Trends Cogn Sci 22(7):598–610
Yuste R (2019) Everyone has the right to neuroprotection. Columbia Neuroright Initia-
tive. https://nri.ntc.columbia.edu/news/rafael-yuste-and-brain-hacking-everyone-has-right-neu
roprotection-originally-spanish
Yuste R (2020a) Si puedes leer y escribir la actividad neuronal, puedes leer y escribir las mentes de
la gente. El País, Dicember 4th, 2020. https://elpais.com/retina/2020/12/03/tendencias/160702
4987_022417.html
Yuste R (2020b) Can you see a thought? neuronal ensembles as emergent units of cortical function.
IBM Distinguished speaker series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRr_2PuzTZU
Yuste R, Genser J, Herrmann S (2021) It’s time for neuro-rights. Horiz: J Int Relat Sustain Dev
18:154–165
Part I
Human Nature, Neurotechnologies,
and Philosophy: Main Concepts
Chapter 2
The Concept of Mind
in the Neuroprotection Debate

Pablo López-Silva

Abstract The rapid development of neurotechnologies with unprecedented access


to neural data has motivated the creation of legal frameworks aiming at protecting
the general public from their possible misuses. In a pioneering action, the Senate of
Chile has recently published the first ever Bill for the Creation of Neurorights. This
bill promises to protect “the human mind.” Here, I argue that there are good reasons
to demand a clarification of the way in which the notion of “mind” is conceptual-
ized within the bill in order to avoid fundamental problems. After that, I explore
an alternative way in which the concept of mind can be integrated into the legal
debate including anthropological, biological and subjective (phenomenal) elements
that might respect the different pre-theoretical intuitions and dimensions that motivate
the neuroprotection crusade.

Keywords Mind · Neuroprotection · Neurorights · Person

2.1 Protecting the Mind: The Context of Neurorights

Projects such as the Brain Activity Map (BAM) are large-scale initiatives aiming at
providing ways to record and manipulate the activity of circuits, networks, and—
eventually—whole brains with single-neuron specificity (Alivisatos et al. 2013;
Andrews and Weiss 2012; Koch and Reid 2012). Going beyond current achieve-
ments in neurosciences, the BAM in specific is not only clarifying specific brain areas
underlying the production of conscious mental states, but it promises to describe with
unprecedented precision the specific neural paths that electric impulses in the brain
take in order to produce those mental states allowing the understanding of “how
brain processes produces perception, action, memories, thoughts, and conscious-
ness” (Alivisatos et al. 2013, 1). This type of ambitious research program comes
with a number of empirical, conceptual, and ethical worries, and for this reason, they
have been compared with the impact that the Human Genome Project have had in
sciences, ethics, and in the general understanding of the human condition.

P. López-Silva (B)
School of Psychology, Universidad de Valparaíso, Hontaneda 2653, Valparaiso, Chile

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 9


P. López-Silva and L. Valera (eds.), Protecting the Mind, Ethics of Science and Technology
Assessment 49, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94032-4_2
10 P. López-Silva

In a very recent interview, Rafael Yuste (2020, 1)—leading researcher of the Brain
Initiative—warns that “if we can read and transcript neural activity, we might be
able to read and transcript minds.” This means that, worryingly, the very possibility
of recording with such a precision the neural activity that produce specific mental
states might offer scientists the possibility of not only reading, but also controlling
the production of certain mental states in the minds of others in what has been called
“brain-hacking” (Yuste 2019). Over the last years, the impact that new neurotech-
nologies will have on important issues such as agency, liberty, control, and autonomy
have been the focus of a number of debates in neuroethics. Such discussions have
motivated the development of legal regulations aiming at protecting the general public
from possible misuses and abuses of invasive and non-invasive neurotechnologies
(López-Silva and Madrid 2021).
Following the opening of the BAM, in 2013 former US President Barack Obama
called attention upon the potential impact of neuroethological developments on
human rights, emphasizing the need to address questions about: “privacy, personal
agency, and moral responsibility for one’s actions,” along with important issues
regarding “stigmatization and discrimination based on neurological measures of
intelligence or other traits; and questions about the appropriate use of neuroscience
in the criminal-justice system” (Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioeth-
ical Issues 2014). Taking this into consideration, in a pioneering action, the Chilean
Senate dispatched in October of 2020 the first ever bill for the creation of a law in
neuroprotection. In its Article 4 (Bulletin N°13.828-19), the bill states that “The use
of any system or device, be it neurotechnology, BCI, or other, the purpose of which is
to access neuronal activity, invasively or non-invasively, with the potential to damage
the psychological and psychic continuity of the person, that is, their individual iden-
tity, or with the potential to diminish or damage the autonomy of their free will or
decision-making capacity, is prohibited.”
This bill will certainly set an important example of jurisprudence for any future
discussion of different governments around the world aiming at establishing specific
policies and laws to regulate the use of intrusive and non-intrusive neurotechnologies
in medical and non-medical contexts. However, with novelty comes a number of
questions. As I have recently suggested, one of the central weaknesses underlying
the current discussion about the establishment of specific neuroprotection laws in
Chile is the lack of definition of what is actually meant by these laws when referring
to the concept of mind or the mental (López-Silva 2019). This becomes a fundamental
issue when we realize that ‘the mind’ is exactly what the law is meant to protect (at
least from the way it has been written). The Chilean bill on neurorights makes use of
the concept of mind in a number of sentences without really specifying what is meant
by it. The problem with this is that, without a definition of such a central notion, a
number of interpretive, conceptual, and practical problems might arise when creating
specific legal frameworks; but more importantly, different problems might arise when
dealing with crimes against those very laws in trial contexts.
The aim of the remainder of this chapter is very modest. I argue that the issue
at hand is not a simple conceptual irrelevant matter, but rather, that we have good
reasons to demand an explicitly declared working-concept of how neuroprotection
2 The Concept of Mind in the Neuroprotection Debate 11

laws understand the concept of mind in order to avoid fundamental problems. After
that, I explore an alternative way in which the concept of mind can be integrated into
the legal debate including anthropological, biological and subjective (phenomenal)
elements that might respect the different pre-theoretical intuitions and dimensions
that motivate the neuroprotection crusade.

2.2 What Are Neurorights? Understanding the Threat

It is not controversial to claim that the field of neurotechnology seems to be living


its most flourishing period. Projects such as the BAM are starting to grant access to
critical brain data, capturing important aspects of a person’s private mental life that
never appeared to be in danger before. The potential impact of neurotechnologies
in common everyday life is critical. In the eventual case of a massification of such
methods in society, and the potential misuses of neurodata, we might not only find the
so-called cookies trying to push our behavior towards a certain specific purchasing
decision (most of the time, purchasing a specific product or service), but also, it
might be possible to think about the existence of neurocookies influencing—or even
re programming—our neural activity to guide purchasing decisions if neurodata are
misused (just in the case it seems to be happening with facebook algorithms). The
problem here is that, while the former might be an accepted form of marketing
(even with a number of ethical problems), the latter cannot be accepted under any
circumstances for being a clear example of mental intromission, namely, a violation of
human agency and free-will though the reprogramming of a subject’s neural activity
without consent.
Some might suggest that this type of threat is more likely to be found in a science-
fiction movie, however, the recording of specific neural activity producing specific
mental state might make this scenario very much possible in the short time. An
example of this is Elon Musk’s Neuralink that has recently developed successful inva-
sive and non-invasive brain-computer interfaces that allow monkeys to control video
games with their minds. In the same vein, the so-called “Kernel-Flow” uses infrared
light to provide real-time brain data to consumers wearing the device (Johnson 2021).
Among many others, these exploratory neurotechnologies seem to raise a number of
ethical worries if misused.
Importantly, although medical applications are the top priority for projects such as
the BAM, it would be naïve to think that companies that have invested considerable
amounts of money on these projects might not want to find specific ways to secure
the return on that investment by creating commercial uses of those technologies
(Fernandez et al. 2015). In this context, the MorningSide Group—a group of scien-
tists associated to the Brain Initiative—has recently claimed that (i) “such advances
could revolutionize the treatment of many conditions […]. But the technology could
also exacerbate social inequalities and offer corporations, hackers, governments or
anyone else new ways to exploit and manipulate people” (Yuste et al. 2017, 160), and
(ii) that existing ethical guidelines are insufficient for this realm (Goering and Yuste
12 P. López-Silva

2016). Accordingly, the Morningside Group has proposed that any neurotechnolog-
ical development derived from the BRAIN initiative—or other projects alike—must
be accompanied by the development of a legal scaffolding aiming at protecting
“people’s privacy, identity, agency, and equality” (Yuste et al. 2017, 159). This legal
resource has been named as neurorights.
Yuste et al. (2017) proposes the creation of fundamental neurorights based on
four worries. (i) The right to privacy & consent refers to the right for a person to
keep her neural data private, ensuring that the ability to opt out of sharing is the
default mode of ownership of such data. (ii) The right to agency & identity is the
right for a person to preserve her sense of agency and human identity in light of
potential changes produced by the use of neurotechnologies. (iii) The third worry
has not been crystalized in the creation of a specific right yet. Such a worry refers to
the possibility of unequal augmentation of cognitive and physical functions through
the use of neurotechnologies and how this augmentation would reproduce different
and new types of inequalities. (iv) The last worry refers to the way in which certain
bias could become embedded into neurotechnological devices and how this might
be avoided.
Trying to operationalize these worries, a number of authors have stressed the
need for the creation of new rights such as the right for cognitive liberty, the right for
psychological continuity, and the right for mental privacy, among many others (Ienca
and Andorno 2017; Sommaggio et al. 2017; Ienca 2017). Such rights might consti-
tute the legal support for the defense against potential misuses of neurotechnologies
capable of accessing neurodata and controlling people’s cognitive and motor activ-
ities. However, while some authors suggest that current legal frameworks already
secure those “new” rights, others claim that such frameworks cannot deal with the
unique nature of the potential violations of privacy—and the like—posited by current
neurotechnological developments (Ienca and Andorno 2017). In fact, when schol-
arly reviewing current legal frameworks on the matter, the need for the creation of
specific neurorights is not undisputed (Shein 2013; López-Silva and Madrid 2021).
The idea here is that new threats to a certain right do not make necessary the creation
of new rights in the same way in which the creation of new ways of killing do not
make necessary the reformulation of the right to life. Perhaps, already existing laws
should broaden their scope by clearly integrating these potential violations, however,
if legal frameworks are too unspecific, it might be recommendable to create such new
rights. Either way, it is not my intention to solve this problem here, rather, to make
clear that the creation of new rights associated with possible misuses of neurodata-
recording neurotechnologies is an open debate. Instead, in the following section I
take the Chilean Bill for the creation of neurorights as a case study to point out
specific problems that emerge in the process of creation of actual neuroprotection
laws.
2 The Concept of Mind in the Neuroprotection Debate 13

2.3 Why Do We Need to Clarify the Concept of Mind


in the Neuroprotection Debate?

Actively working with the members of the MorningSide Group and researchers from
different universities in Chile, in October of 2020 the Chilean Senate presented
the first ever bill for the creation of a law in neuroprotection (Senate of Chile,
2020, Bulletin N°13.828-19). After establishing its general aim—the protection of
the privacy and indemnity of the mental—the bill establishes a number of specific
rights and technical specificities associated with them. Prima facie, the project brings
genuine attention to the potential consequences of misuses of neurotechnologies,
however, the initiative seems to lack a clear and unified conceptual framework about
the mental, exactly what it promises to protect.
In the first paragraph of the Bill on neurorights the concept of “privacy of the
mental” is treated as a synonym of the term “privacy of neural data” as if they were
one and the same thing. This statement is very far from uncontroversial. In addition
to this, the bill uses the term “psychic” (in its “psychological” sense) to refer to
something, apparently, similar to the term “mental.” On the one hand, if these terms
mean exactly the same for the authors of the bill, it is not clear why they use different
concepts. On the other hand, if those terms try to capture different dimensions of
human life threatened by the misuses of neurotechnologies, it is not clear what the
differences between the terms are, and how the bill integrates them into a clear legal
regulation. This lack of conceptual clarity might posit a number of interpretative
problems in legal contexts. In fact, in its second part, the bill proposes to treat the
privacy of neural data in the same way human organs are treated by current legal
international laws, but it does not specify anything about the epistemically private
life of conscious human beings. Some might suggest that this distinction is simply
irrelevant, however, I disagree. Think about the term “physical pain.” Even if physical
pain is produced by C-type neurons firing, what is legally punishable is the pain
provoked to a person, and pain is not C-type neurons firing, but rather, a conscious
experience of a subject. Persons are not conscious of c-type neurons firing, they are
conscious of their pain. Focusing only on the neuronal side neglects the rich personal
structure of psychological meaning that accompanies experience of pain (and that
might lead to suffering). From this, the problem seems to be that the current treatment
of the terms associated to the mental dimension of human beings in the bill rests in
an identity relation between the worries about the mental and the worries about the
neural, a very debatable position for ethical and legal considerations.
In its current form, the Chilean bill collapses very different uses of the term
“mental” (all of them present in the expert philosophical literature) into an unclear
and problematic unity. This issue becomes more pressing when we look at what
the Chilean Civil Code establishes (Ministerio de Justicia 2021). In its 21st Article,
the code indicates that “technical terms from sciences and art will be taken in the
use that is given to them for those who profess such sciences and art; unless it is
clearly stated that they will be taken in a broad sense” (author’s translation). The
problem here is that, if the reach of the terms is not well defined in the bill, the
14 P. López-Silva

diversity of interpretations about what the mind is might affect legal processes and
policy-making.
Imagine that your neurodata is available in a neurodata bank under your consent.
Perhaps, you became a member of a—hypothetical—neuro-social network called
“NeuroBook” that allows you to connect with people with similar neural patterns;
perhaps, you were part of an experimental study that required you to give that consent.
In any case, somehow an evil-genius neuro-hacker accesses the neurodata bank,
becoming capable of reprogramming people’s minds by using the electric activity of
their smartphones. Using complex technological devices, the hacker recodifies such
electric activity controlling people’s behavior at his own will. The hacker is found
guilty of mental intromission. However, for the hacker’s defense, there is no issue
about the mind since the mind is a bunch of observed behaviors and nothing else.
Since no harm was reported by the victims, and no apparent harm can be deduced
from their observed behavior (because the victims did not experience any conscious
experience of being controlled), the concept of mind vanishes in the discussion.
The aim of this example is neither to defend a behaviorist view of the mind nor
ruling out the relevance of subjective conscious experience in legal debates. Rather,
this example aims at showing that the lack of conceptual clarity within our target
debate might influence the way in which the harm done to people can be evaluated.
Certainly, if neuroprotection laws only aim at protecting neural data, this should
be stated clearly. However, the problem with this alternative is that it might leave
outside of the reach of legal protection important dimensions of common everyday
mental life. In addition, the alternative seems not to be consistent with some of the
motivations underlying the whole neuroprotection debate (see Yuste et al. 2017). Let
me offer some philosophical background to understand this point.
The relationship between what we call the mind and the brain has attracted
the attention of neuroscientists and philosophers in light of a number of ground-
breaking neuroscientific developments during the last decades. The so-called brain-
mind problem (or body-mind problem) in analytic philosophy refers to the way in
which we should formulate the relationship between our private subjective experi-
ence of the world and the brain, two of the most fundamental dimensions of human
life at stake in the neuroprotection debate. In this context, the idea that the brain is
a necessary condition for the emergence of the type of mind that humans enjoy is
trivial. Indeed, it is difficult to think about the emergence of the type of mind humans
have without establishing some type of relationship with the type of brain we have.
However, it is not clear how the brain is causally connected to the existence of
the subjective dimension of the human mind, and more specifically, with conscious
mental states. In other words, it is not clear how conscious mental states emerge
from purely physical non-conscious matter (Nagel 2013). For this reason, caution
should be requested when neuroscientists claim to be able to “decode,” “transcript,”
or “read” the mind. In those cases, we only know that current neurotechnologies
might be able to capture the biological activity underlying the occurrence of certain
conscious mental states such as thoughts, beliefs, motor actions, etc. We simply
cannot claim that mental states can be completely reduced to brain activity, or that
neural activity really captures the richness of what we call the human mind.
2 The Concept of Mind in the Neuroprotection Debate 15

Considering this, an influential view within philosophy of mind claims that human
mental states are characterized for having a certain phenomenal character that is
irreducible and belongs to the conscious experience of the world and ourselves (Nagel
1974). Conscious mental states, then, are those where there is something that is like
to be in those states for a subject; a private way of living experiences that cannot be
accessed from 3rd person methods. In the same line, Jackson (1986) claims that such
a phenomenal character might not be reducible to the mere physical activity of the
brain, establishing an epistemic gap between this observable and measurable activity,
and the conscious state that—allegedly—emerges from that activity. Furthermore,
it is claimed that, once these properties emerge from the activity of the brain, they
cannot be reduced to the latter as they have new and specific features that belong
to the experiencing subject and not to the brain (Chalmers 1996). What this type of
philosophical position seems to capture is the idea that the mind is not the same as
the brain, a fundamental issue within our target discussion.
It is important to consider this issue within a legal context. The reduction of the
mental to the neural might imply a common error within cognitive sciences called
mereological fallacy. This error can be defined as the tendency to ascribe to the brain
properties that only make sense when ascribed to whole organisms (Bennett and
Hacker 2003). Brains are not conscious, brains do not enjoy agency or free will, and
certainly, brains do not experience pain or suffering. Such properties can only be
ascribed to persons, and persons enjoy a rich mental life that includes biological and
phenomenal dimensions. Importantly, a great number of the ethical worries regarding
the misuses of neurotechnologies comes from the phenomenal use of the concept of
mind (Yuste et al. 2017).
For example, the specific worry about the alteration of a sense of agency through
mental hacking locates the phenomenal use of the concept of the mental at the very
heart of the neuroprotection discussion, and more importantly, at heart of the specific
Chilean Bill. However, if the mental is the same as the neural, conscious features
such as the sense of agency are simply not considered in any way within the specific
regulation derived from the bill. Here it is relevant to clarify that I do not think
that phenomenal considerations should be taken as the most fundamental indicator
of autonomy violations. Multiple studies in clinical psychiatry and psychopathology
have shown that the sense of agency is a very volatile and fragile feature of our mental
conscious life (Haggard and Eitam 2015). The sense of agency might even be altered
by making a subject to believe that I have been brain-hacking him, without actually
doing it. More important here is the fact that a technically well performed brain-
hacking trick could actually produce actions in others that might include a sense of
agency, this, if the recodification of the specific motor actions is well specified—as
it is promised by the BAM. Here, perhaps in the same way in which physical pain
can be an aggravating element in a trail for violent robbery, alterations in conscious
experience of brain-hacked people might be included in this context as an aggravating
element in cases of mental intromission. However, the way in which neuroprotection
laws include different uses of the concept of the mental should be clearly stated in
order to avoid problems in law-making and legal decisions.
16 P. López-Silva

2.4 Conclusion: From Minds of Brains to Minds of Persons

The use of the concept of mind in the current Chilean Bill on Neurorights seems to be
underlain by very reductionists ways of understanding this key dimension of human
life. Perhaps, this issue has been inherited from a non-openly declared physicalist
reductionism at the foundations of projects such as the BAM. In this chapter, I have
tried to make clear how this lack of precision creates a number of problems that
might affect legal decisions in the future. If neural activity is a necessary condition
for the emergence of the mind, then it is not clear that the bill really protects the
mind. Rather, it would protect one of the conditions for its existence. Now, if neural
activity is taken to be the same as the mind, we can either use the already existing
laws on personal data or deny the existence of a phenomenal privacy that can be
affected by neurotechnologies. However, the latter option seems very implausible as
the conscious suffering associated with these potential misuses of neurotechnology
seems to be one of the main motivating worries underlying the project (p. 4–5), and,
for there are good reasons to claim that the mind is not the same as the brain.
Here, it is important to consider that the human mind is more than these two
apparently distinct dimensions. In fact, this way of setting up the discussion might
be contentious. As Lowe (2003) rightly points out, there might not be such a thing
as “the mind.” Rather, there are minded beings, you and I as subjects of conscious
experiences such as feeling, perceiving, thinking, and so on. Properly understood, the
mind-body problem that we have been referring to in the last section is the problem
of how subjects of experience are related to their physical bodies. At the same time,
it is fundamental to clarify that we cannot expect the authors of the bill to solve
the mind-body problem in order to continue the process of construction of specific
laws on neuroprotection. What we can actually demand is that, when considering the
concept of mind, they should take a broader anthropological point of view.
A way of solving the apparent conundrum within the neurorights bill is to endorse
the view that persons have minds, and those minds are different from their bodies;
but at the same time, all of those dimensions exist in a unified psycho-physical whole.
Minded persons are neither their bodies nor their neural activity. More importantly,
the brain and the mind of a person are unlike one another in respect of the types
of properties that each can possess. From this point of view, it is not the case that
human beings have neural activity and that such activity is the mind of those persons.
Rather, persons are subjects of experience and, as such, possess both mental and
physical features. Persons are things that feel and think, but also have shape, mass,
and spatial-temporal location.
As aforementioned, mental properties cannot be attributed to brains without facing
mereological problems. Mental properties cannot even be attributable to parts of a
certain person, but rather, to the personal as a whole. As Lowe (2003, 16) suggests:
“It is I who think and feel, not my brain or body, even if I need to have a brain and
Body in order to be able to think and feel.” Furthermore, persons and brains have
different persistence-conditions, that is the conditions under that object continues
to survive as an object of its kind. While a brain will continue to survive as long
2 The Concept of Mind in the Neuroprotection Debate 17

as its functional biological conditions are satisfied, it is not obvious that a person
could survive the demise of her body and brain, and this is exactly what I mean by
such different dimensions living in a unity (see Jonas 2001). It is fundamental for the
neuroprotection debate to take into consideration the fact that mental properties are
significantly different from physical properties of the brain (Craig 2016), and that
the type of being that enjoys mental properties are more complex that neurons firing.
In order to avoid mereological and reductionist problems, and in order to make real
progress in the task of protecting the human mind, legal frameworks should move
from a concept of minds of brains, to a concept of minds of persons.

References

Alivisatos AP, Chun M, Church GM, Deisseroth K, Greenspan R, McEuen PRJ, Roukes ML,
Sejnowski TS, Weiss P, Yuste R (2013) The brain activity map. Science 339:1284–1285
Andrews A, Weiss P (2012) Nano in the brain: nano-neuroscience. ACS Nano 23(10):8463–8464
Bennett MR, Hacker PMS (2003) Philosophical foundations of neuroscience. Blackwell, London
Chalmers D (1996) The conscious mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Craig JN (2016) Incarceration, direct brain intervention, and the right to mental integrity—A reply
to Thomas Douglas. Neuroethics 9:107–118
Fernandez A, Sriraman N, Gurevitz B, Ouiller O (2015) Pervasive neurotechnology: a ground-
breaking analysis of 10,000+ patent filings transforming medicine, health, entertainment and
business. SharpBrains, San Francisco
Goering S, Yuste R (2016) On the necessity of ethical guidelines for novel neurotechnologies. Cell
167(4):882–885
Haggard P, Eitam B (2015) The sense of agency. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Ienca M, Andorno R (2017) Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and
neurotechnology. Life Sci Soc Policy 13(5). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40504-017-0050-1
Ienca M (2017) Preserving the right to cognitive liberty. Sci Am 317(2):10
Jackson F (1986) What Mary didn’t know. J Philos 83(5):291–295
Johnson B (2021) Kernel flow 50 sneak peak. https://www.bryanjohnson.co/articles/kernel-flow-
50-sneak-peek-ep-2
Jonas H (2001) The phenomenon of life: toward a philosophical biology. Northwestern University
Press, Evanston
Koch C, Reid RC (2012) Neuroscience: observatories of the mind. Nature 483:397–398
López-Silva P, Madrid R (2021) Sobre la Conveniencia de incluir los Neuroderechos en la
Constitución o en la Ley. Rev Chil De Derecho y Tecnol 10(1):49–72
López-Silva P (2019) Neuroethical concerns about neuroprotection law-making. In: Conference:
“Es hora de los neuroderechos?,” Centro de Innovación, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,
Santiago de Chile (Chile)
Lowe EJ (2003) An introduction to the philosophy of mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ministerio de Justicia de la República de Chile (2021) Código civil. Editorial Jurídica de Chile,
Santiago de Chile
Nagel T (2013) Mind & cosmos. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Nagel T (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philos Rev 83:435–456
Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (2014) Gray matters. In: Integrative
approaches for neuroscience, ethics and society, vol 1, Bioethics Commission, Washington, DC
Senate of Chile (2020) Bulletin N°13.828-19. https://www.diarioconstitucional.cl/wp-content/upl
oads/2020/12/boletin-13828-19-nuroderechos.pdf
Shein F (2013) Neuroscience, mental privacy, and the law. Harv J Law Public Policy 36(2):653–713
18 P. López-Silva

Sommaggio P, Mazzocca M, Gerola A, Ferro F (2017) Cognitive liberty: a first step towards a
human neuro-right declaration. BioLaw J 3:27–45
Yuste R (2019) Everyone has the right to neuroprotection. Columbia Neuroright Initia-
tive. https://nri.ntc.columbia.edu/news/rafael-yuste-and-brain-hacking-everyone-has-right-neu
roprotection-originally-spanish
Yuste R (2020a) Si puedes leer y escribir la actividad neuronal, puedes leer y escribir las mentes
de la gente. El País, 4 Dice 2020. https://elpais.com/retina/2020/12/03/tendencias/1607024987_0
22417.html
Yuste R et al (2017) Four ethical priorities for neurotechnologies and AI. Nature 551(7679):159–163
Chapter 3
The Unitary Sense of Human Being.
A Husserlian Approach Against
Reductionism

José Manuel Chillón

Abstract We are a whole: body and mind, nature and spirit, in short, we are people.
And this fact, so endorsed by the most common experiences of our existence, cannot
be ruined by insistent scientist glances in naturalizing consciousness, qualifying as
philosophical illusionism any margin of exceptionality granted to what makes us
human beings. The thesis that sustains this chapter is that, independently of the
novelty of the neuroscientific tendencies that Husserl could not even glimpse, both
in the analysis of his presuppositions, as in that of his consequences, the research
of the Moravian philosopher can still serve us. For this to be so, we must first show
that neurosciences fall within the positivist paradigm whose criticism motivated the
emergence of phenomenology. It is a question, then, of analyzing how narrow and
reduced is the concept of experience handled by positivism, in the light of the analyzes
of genetic phenomenology and of passive syntheses that, in our opinion, continue to
serve as an explanatory framework that makes possible the fruitful dialogue between
neuroscience and philosophy.

Keywords Husserl · Neurophenomenology · Experience · Positivism · Crisis ·


Horizons of reason

3.1 Introduction. The Integral Experience of the Human


Being

Human experience is an expression of the integrity of the human being. We have


a body and we think. We have wounds and we suffer. We are witnesses of blissful
events, and we rejoice. On the other hand, we feel anguish and that state of mind
affects important organic functions. We are excited and nervous, and we hardly feel
like eating. A strong hormonal imbalance in the thyroid can cause intense periods of
emotional lability. Certain neurotic processes of anxiety alter some parameters that
have nothing to do with the psychic order, as can be seen in a routine analysis. These

J. M. Chillón (B)
Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain
e-mail: josemanuel@fyl.uva.es

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 19


P. López-Silva and L. Valera (eds.), Protecting the Mind, Ethics of Science and Technology
Assessment 49, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94032-4_3
20 J. M. Chillón

are some of the examples that give us a clue that we are actually a systemic, organic
and unitary whole. Regardless of the mode of connection, and however the pineal
gland of the body-spirit interaction is resolved, we are a whole.1
The spiritualist and materialistic tendencies, in their various historical nomen-
clatures, seem to bend the common sense of our self with permanent reductive
approaches. By taking the very act of thinking as the only indubitable bastion in
the face of everything contingent—following the ingenuity of Descartes-, the former
offer an unshakeable certainty at the cost of an irrecoverable truth in their solipsistic
versions. Having as their objective to make explicit the traceability of theoretical,
estimative or practical mental events, the latter end up naturalizing consciousness in
a de-ontologization of itself, hence disregarding the specificity of the human person.
Husserl calls into question this second tendency, since it threatens the unity of
person. Why? Because in the twentieth century, the greatest danger to the possi-
bility of philosophy was commencing: to consider that its scientific status was called
into question from the very moment in which, what had to be known and how it
had to be known, was already perfectly designed by the natural sciences and their
overwhelming success. Thus, if consciousness can be explained as another fact of
the realm of Tatsachen, with its same methods and rudiments, with the principle of
causality as a model of scientific explanation, then there will be no place to justify the
singularity and genuineness of the human (Husserl 1941).2 Subjects cannot dissolve
into being nature—the founder of phenomenology had argued—since then what gives
meaning to nature would be lacking (Husserl 1989). The omni-explanatory tendency
of scientism is decidedly repellent to any attempt at a unitary understanding of human
being, and therefore to any possibility of restoring the idea of philosophy as scientia
omnium rerum. This is precisely because it refuses to understand the transcendental
relevance of any way of overcoming the perspective of pure facts. The thesis that
this chapter holds is that, regardless of the novelty of the neuroscientific tendencies
that Husserl could not even glimpse, in the analysis of both their presuppositions and
their consequences, the analysis of the Moravian philosopher can still help us. Are
not still latent naturalistic assumptions behind certain neuroscientific approaches?
To naturalize consciousness is to reduce its immense horizontic capacity, its
constitutive mysterious dimension, and its determining constitutive faculty that gives
meaning to the world. Behind any naturalistic tendency, there is a reductionist attempt
that does not pay attention to the need of reflecting, for example, on the limits of
technological interventions, on the unity of the person as the foundation and, in short,
on the meaning of human existence and on fully human experience.3 Therefore, this

1 Human being is, then, a real unity of body and soul (Husserl 1989).
2 Schaefer (2009, 13) has explained in this regard that Husserl is the last great representative of
the idea of human exception, which consists in the fact that the human has the specificity of being
able to transcend his own naturalness. This in turn seems to be a hindrance to the cartesian duality
between “nature” and “spirit.” In short, it is an anti-naturalism that is held as a common thesis
in his works from Logical Investigations, Philosophy as Strict Science or The Crisis of European
Sciences.
3 Husserl’s famous conference of 1931, Phenomenologie und Antropologie (Husserl 1941) holds

as a general thesis this same idea of rejecting any philosophical perspective that tends to naturalize
3 The Unitary Sense of Human Being … 21

is a decided attack on the headquarters of truth whose phenomenological relevance


does not consist only in knowing what this thing is we call truth, but how it can be
lived.4
In addition, naturalism, trying to resort to a type of original and founding expe-
rience, ends up not assuming that science (natural science as well, and neuroscien-
tific disciplines in the broad sense too) emerge in a sphere constituted of meaning,
in a horizon of sediments exceeding the unilaterally empirical type of approxima-
tion. Thus, it is not accurate to claim that every theory has a material foundation,
an empirical basis which one must be referred to in order to find its justification,
but rather to discover that both theories and their collections of verifiable data, as
well as their protocols of investigative work, are in turn founded. They are always
anchored in formations of meaning; in historically constituted genesis that, at the
very least, warns that the original is not exactly what is considered as purely empir-
ical. In fact, a variety of experimentation protocols are grounded on concepts taken
from popular psychology, the natural attitude, or from other philosophical traditions,
which causes that the experimental design cannot be as exact and empirically tested
as the researchers themselves think (Gallagher 2012, 81).
Consequently, the concept of experience is to be discussed, and that is the key.
Due to this, in our view, a reductionism of the empirical takes place here in the
two possible senses (objective and subjective) of the genitive. On one hand, there
is a reductionism that goes hand in hand with the strict empirical point of view
tending towards the accumulation of observations and to the collection of data that
strengthen a certain notion of objectivity consisting of opening to the pure facts. On
the other hand, a reduction of what the empirical means is implicitly assumed when
noting how the constitutive complexity of human experience becomes clear as soon
as the neural mechanisms to which it goes back are revealed. “Consciousness is a
physical, biological phenomenon, such as metabolism, reproduction or self-repair,
of an exquisite ingenuity in its operation, but not miraculous, not even mysterious”
(Dennet 2006, 75).
Nonetheless, phenomenology warns us that the capital philosophical experience
is the lived experience, that is, the experience in which consciousness finds itself
giving meaning to the world where it is already installed through its body. Human
being is a body and thinks as the body that it is. The body is the one that lives the
world, and it is that through which all worldly experiences are constituted. It is the
perspective of human experience as in-embodied experience that demands a much
broader approach than any scientific reductionism. In addition to the body being
one more object of nature insofar as Körper, as content of intentional acts, the body
as a living body (Leib), has constituent functions: through it, we access the world,
the things and others. The human experience relevant to phenomenology is then a

human experience. This program of radical naturalization of consciousness, as brain’s operations


and specifically as a result of the combination of the computational skills of the higher regions
of the brain that deal with the last stages of information processing, is also maintained by Dennet
(Kandel 2007, 436).
4 The problem with naturalism, then, lies in being shipwrecked in the skeptical deluge, allowing

our own truth to disappear (Husserl 1970).


22 J. M. Chillón

profound experience of integrity between consciousness and the body, between me


and others, between the subject and the world. Moreover, the question here is to see
if a global experience, that transcendental vitality, is assumed and respected by the
current anthropotechnical drifts, or if some of its claims assume a partial ontology
that summarizes the complexity of the human being in a mere set of facts,5 with
the consequent bias of any resulting theory, hence neither the concept of human
experience nor the notion of person are saved.
Searle and Nagel had attributed the characteristics of unity and subjectivity to
consciousness. Consciousness is determined by a discrete set of biological processes
that can be accessed through scientific analysis. However, these philosophers came to
assume that the totality of consciousness is more than the sum of its parts. Therefore,
consciousness is of a much higher complexity than the purported simplification
of some neuroscientific perspectives (Kandel 2007, 439). Ultimately, it is about
accepting the progress of the sciences in the traceability of experience to cognitive
and mental events, and at the same time the inexplicability of human experience
in the sole possibility of remission, as any naturalism pretends. Then, should it not
suffice the irreducibility of subjective experience to the data of neuroscience without
this implying ignoring the promising advances of these sciences?6

3.2 Naturalism and Reductionism

It is not an affront to philosophy that neurosciences and other cognitive sciences have
as their objective the description of processes of knowledge and the explanation of the
functioning of the mind. To be able to make explicit the internal processes of thinking
from empirical parameters linked to research on the functioning of neuronal synapses
turns out to be an obvious manifestation of the progress of science. Likewise, it is
also the explanation of how certain brain areas are activated depending on the nature
of the concrete conscious operations or different experiences. Where does the critical
problem for phenomenology lie? In the same statute of scientificity of these sciences
and in how the methodological approach to consciousness is biased when having as
its objective the dissolution of the great existential problems. For instance, the risk
of freedom, the experience of emotion, the overflow of love, or anguishing suffering

5 That statement from Crisis (Husserl 1970) is memorable: “Merely fact-minded sciences make
merely fact-minded people.”.
6 “Genetic and developmental processes determine the connections between neurons, that is, which

neurons make synaptic connections with which others, and when they do so. But they do not
determine the tenacity of those connections. Tenacity—long-term effectiveness of synaptic connec-
tions—is regulated by experience. This conception implies that the potential for many organisms’
behaviours is something intrinsic to the brain. To that extent, it is subject to the control of genes and
development. Nonetheless, the environment and the learning of a creature alter the effectiveness
of the pre-existing pathways and thus enable the expression of new behavioural profiles” (Kandel
2007, 237).
3 The Unitary Sense of Human Being … 23

could all have a neurological path that can be described. Thus, for certain neuro-
scientific assumptions, the great abysses of human experience, when approached
with the rigor of the empirical method of the natural sciences, will be definitively
clarified and diminished in their mystery claims.7 Does then describing and, in the
event of a condition, being able to intervene surgically or pharmacologically, mean
dissolving? Is there not a metaphysical error here about what the personal being of
subject means? Husserl, in fact, had already clarified that the essence of naturalism
was the consideration of nature as a unit of space-time being according to exact
natural laws. Naturalism—maintains the philosopher—tends to treat everything as
nature, falsifying the meaning of every domain that resists this type of approach
(Husserl 2002).
Accordingly, there are two reductive strategies: the first one has to do with content,
considering consciousness explained exactly when the complex neural networks of
the brain are shown. So, the brain is considered as the organ responsible for all
cognitive experience. The second, on the other hand, is the one that refers to the
methodological strategy of approaching the problem of consciousness considered as
one of many facts to be explained through the scientific arsenal. If the first strategy
reduces the field of experience of consciousness to pure conscious acts, fundamen-
tally of a gnoseological type, then, the second annuls the specificity of the human
precisely because of the professed ontological monism. So, the problem of naturalism
is an epistemological problem (about how it should be known and in relation to what
knowledge is) and a metaphysical problem (relative to how reality is composed only
of that type of entities accessible to scientific methods).
From this scientism, the integrity of the human experience is lost from sight. This
is because a certain observation by neuroimaging is extrapolated as data or also as
the result of a certain test. Are we going to deny, for example, that the production
of language has to do with the activation of the brain’s place where the Broca and
Wernicke areas are located? In any case, it will be necessary to insist that language
determines and constitutes a whole linguistic experience whose truth is not entirely
explained by this naturalizing tendency.
In the experience of language itself, not only the conscious activities of the indi-
vidual such as speaking, naming or expressing themselves are amalgamated and
structurally interrelated, but also a whole complex network of lived experiences,
acquired habits and social conventions. These latter examples fall within what Husserl
calls the passive syntheses determined by the genesis of consciousness. Aristotle, in
some way, had already advanced similar thoughts: the experience of production of
meanings had to attend not only to a purely internal process of the subject, but also to
a whole hermeneutical experience that had to integrate individual faculties, conven-
tional aspects, as well as an evident guarantee of intersubjectivity. This is so in order
for all legein to be semainein.

7 These are some of the theses of Wheatley (2015) in which it is stated that thought and action
are physically produced in neural activity. He further asserts, as an uncontroversial fact, that these
neurons cannot individually or collectively choose whether or not to send electrical signals, with
the obvious problems of free will whose assertion—Wheatley sustains—does not seem to respect
physical laws.
24 J. M. Chillón

The idea that the faculty to use meaningful language in order to express and
communicate is located and specified in only one area of our organism, only speaks
in favour of the integrity of the human being. Hence, language, which is a profoundly
human experience, responsible for our openness to the world and to others, that is
also what shapes our deepest convictions and values, and furthermore, intertwines
our coexistence and social agreements, has its material and bodily basis in the brain
section that originates the possibility of language. This is its necessary condition, or
in other words, its condition of organic possibility. Nevertheless, the lived experience
of language is not actually explained despite of improved neuroimaging techniques
or by a real-time computerization of the speech process. Any analysis of the human
experience, such as this one of language, needs to be understood from an integral
idea of the human being. The experience of language is just one example of how
decisive the neurological and neuropsychological approach to the problem is. This is
evidenced, for instance, by being an essential part in a more effective rehabilitation
for cases of cerebrovascular accidents that compromise the faculty of language. Yet,
it is worth noting that the experience of language is not the only thing that can be
said about the being that each one is and her horizontic experience of the word.
For the field of philosophy, it seems necessary to let neuroscientists know that
with which they are dealing is more than an organ and its multiplicity of operations
or an instrument and its functions, but the realm in which the truth is lived, the depth
of the existence is experienced and the freedom is wanted. This is something that
no empirical methodology can try to exhaust in a single formula, in an image or
in a diagnosis. Even more, it is in this manner that the so-called “hard problem” of
consciousness was raised, as Varela seems to point out, consisting of the impossibility
of explaining phenomenological performances from neural data. In sum, science has
the first word, but not the last.
To clarify these points, other examples could help. In the psychic sphere, drugs
with active principles such as fluoxetine, paroxetine, escitalopram or sertraline,
to name a few, have long been established to intervene in the reuptake processes
of serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, assuming the psychiatric relevance of
the monoaminergic hypothesis. Accordingly, maintaining adequate levels of these
neurotransmitters by inhibiting an excessively absorbent tendency seemed to have an
obvious cause-effect relationship on emotional stability. This shows that the chem-
istry behind these drugs works but not only by themselves, which is the reason
why professionals urge for psychological-behavioural therapies that can comple-
ment pharmacological treatment. These psychological-behavioural therapies should
help re-semantizing those vital areas that seem to have become meaningless. Addi-
tionally, new research on the intervention of these drugs in the neuroplasticity of the
brain suggests that there is a definite importance of the environment in increasing
the effectiveness of such drugs on personal well being, thus going beyond the pure
chemical approach.8

8 We have referred to pharmacological use in psychiatry precisely because of the relevance it has in
the context of this book on technological interventions in the brain. However, it is evident that all
medicine measures the quality of its praxis precisely in the need to care for the person as a whole.
3 The Unitary Sense of Human Being … 25

Ultimately, any example is sufficient to sustain the integrity of the person from
the unity of human experience since every conscious act is a way of “being aware
of .” Any purportedly objective treatment from the scientist perspective leaves out the
significance, the intentional opening of consciousness to the world, and ultimately,
everything that human experience has of personal fulfillment. Not only this, but it also
leaves out both the surrounding world of things, as well as the entire conglomeration
of meanings constituted by life in common with others. “What we do not understand is
the inescapable problem posed by consciousness: the mystery of how neural activity
originates subjective experience” (Kandel 2007, 440).
A few paragraphs above, we mentioned reductionism in terms of content, as if
the mind were nothing more than a kind of bundle of especially representational
conscious processes, that is, fundamentally linked by their relationship with what is
outside of consciousness. If only so, we would have the unique mission of perfecting
quantitative, measurable and objective introspection techniques. Nevertheless, even
if this first reduction of the mind to its epistemic power were to be accepted, then it
would be also easy to realize the partial competence of the empirical approach.
Let us think of acts of a perceptual type, the simplest. Perception not only confronts
the subject with the world from the most basic sensible immediacy, but it is also
already incorporating time in some way and, in this sense, the lived experience.
One may say, for example, that I perceive the computer on which I write and I can
anticipate what the perception of this object will be if I close it, if I put it on its
side, or if I myself turn around to look at it from another angle. Perceptions occur in
the subjective experience that gives them meaning until they contextualize each one
of them in a long series of observations that make the world meaningful, not only
because of the retained experience (past experience) but also because of the future
experience, the expectation.
Certainly, conscious acts do not occur in a pure now, i.e., in a totally new present.
Each conscious now, each experience, welcomes the prehistory of other “now” that
have already happened and the perspective of the “now” yet to come. In short
Damasio’s (1996, 255) words “the present is never here. We are always late to
consciousness.” It can be said that investigating through high techniques the simple
mental fact of perception will offer multiple interesting data for the neurosciences,
for the diagnosis of certain conditions. However, these techniques could not interfere
with the idea that the punctual perceptual act constitutes and, at the same time, is
constituted by perceptual experience, understood as historical experience that also
gives meaning to the world.9 This experience constituted in history is not only indi-
vidual, but also intersubjective since that perceptual act is integrated into a formation
of collective and cultural meaning.10 The key point that phenomenology does in this

9 In addition to this, as Husserl explained in the IV Meditation, the self develops a constant style
in the performance of her acts with an uninterrupted unity of identity, a personal character. So, in
this way, each punctual act can neither be studied nor understood in its pure individual and present
occurrence.
10 Even though we cannot enter particularly in this field, it is necessary to point out how the neuro-

scientific finding of mirror neurons was a unique challenge to the phenomenological understanding
of intersubjectivity. “Mirror neurons are cells in the premotor cortex of humans and monkeys,
26 J. M. Chillón

regard, consists in showing that all human experience, being subjective, is not subjec-
tivist. In other words, all experience carries within itself its transcendental relevance
precisely because reason is not a mere factual faculty but “an essential and universal
structure of transcendental subjectivity” (Husserl 1982, § 53).
Regarding our conscious experience, whatever it may be, has a lot of constituted
experience, and not just a constituent one. Human life is an experience installed in
subsoil, in a horizon of sediments of meaning. It could be said it is in a Lebenswelt,
in a wide pre-reflective field to which we are referred from what Husserl explains in
Ideas II (Husserl 1989) calls operative intentionality (fungierende Intentionalität).
It is no longer only a matter of the inherent tendency of our conscious acts to give
themselves to the world, to that intentionality of which the empiricist assumptions
of naturalism cannot account. It is actually an entire structural, unconscious, passive
framework that operates within us as an infrastructure of meaning in our ways of
being intentionally referred to the contents of our noetic acts. Hence, the meaning
does not only occur in the noema, as an intentional performance of noetic acts. It also
does so even in the way in which the noetic noematic intentionality operates, being
already constituted by presuppositions of meaning that go beyond any reductionist
attempt.11
Furthermore, all of this becomes much more complicated if we continue to analyse
the representational capacity of consciousness. Of course, this happens if we achieve
to deepen into other extra-epistemic missions of consciousness such as the vast
field of emotions, of feelings or of fantasy. This was what Varela actually wanted
to warn when he put into circulation the concept of enaction: it refers precisely to
a non-representational cognitive mode, which is supported simply by a manner of
information processing. This notion was understood as the genuine way in which
consciousness makes it emerge both the identity of the subject and the configuration
of his world in an evolutionarily forged structural coupling. Consequently, authors
such like Varela, Vermensch, and Depraz, among others, have ended up talking
about neurophenomenology as a promising complementary line of research between
cognitive sciences and phenomenology. “Neurophenomenology is the field that tries
to marry modern cognitive science and a disciplined approach to human experience,
thus placing itself in the lineage of the continental tradition of phenomenology”
(Varela 1996, 330).12

which discharge when one performs certain actions and are also active when one observes the
same or similar actions being performed by others. Since their discovery in 1996, mirror neurons
have attracted considerable philosophical and scientific attention, due largely to their possible
implications for theories of intersubjectivity” (Ratcliffe 2006, 329).
11 For this reason, the description of an activity, of a concrete praxis, requires investigating the

conscious activity insofar as it perceives itself unfolding in an operative and immanent mode, both
habitual and pre-reflective. It is the idea collected in Depraz et al. (2003, 42) about how cognitive
reflection starts from pre-reflective conscience, pre-discursive, pre-noetic, ante-predicative, tacit,
pre-verbal, pre-logical, or non-conceptual. An initial approach to these questions that is highly
suggestive, can be seen in Ordóñez (2015).
12 This is an example of an integrative and interdisciplinary trend that led this phenomenological

perspective to turn to other traditions about human experience, such as the oriental one (cf. Tenzen
2006). Varela and Shear (1999) assumed the need to integrate the introspection issues of psychology
3 The Unitary Sense of Human Being … 27

3.3 The Approach to the Experience of Consciousness


as a Lived Experience

The fact that the complexity and the extensiveness of human experience are not
explained from the rigid scheme of the theory of knowledge, as if our entire expe-
rience of the world were a way of making explicit the unidirectional connection
between what is immanent and what transcendent, is what forces phenomenology
to access exactly the moment prior to this epistemic dissection: the realm of lived
experience. We should remember the philosophical fertility of this find within the
work of Franz Brentano. The peculiarity of psychic acts was given by their apod-
icticity, accordingly, making philosophy to focus on the access to the evidence of
immanence and in the discovery of the bilaterality of all experience. This is what
Brentano called the wonder of wonders: the intimate correlation between the psychic
act and the physical phenomenon to which it tends.
We could assume, in a very initial and simple way, that the maturing of
phenomenology commences it advances from a first Platonism. This Platonism
assumes the existence of areas of objectivity and absolute ideality and considers that
the important thing in philosophy is the analysis of the nature of the conscious acts
to which these ideas are given, in other words, to which these essences come to open.
This finding is what allows the discovery of the constituent function of conscious-
ness in the noematic direction of all experience, which, in turn, as consciousness
situated in the world, is always constituted. In any case, what is decisive in this
phenomenological understanding of a lived experience is how the apodicticity of
immanence ends up moving from the psychic act (as empirical psychology would
have arranged) to the content of the act itself, to the world correlatively given and
constituted as sense in the determination of what subjective experience means, not as
concrete experience, but as transcendental experience, as transcendental vitality.13
How to access this realm of the immanent? Husserl’s phenomenology condensed
into the notion of reduction the adequate method to achieve this access. This is a
question of redirecting oneself to the sphere from which the sense of the world for
consciousness emanates. To reduce oneself was nothing more than to remain only
with the transcendental performance of the world in what the world means for my
life, in what it is supposed to be for every subject to have experience of the world.
And for this, phenomenology had to be willing to change course to a new attitude
that, precisely, would allow that access to an original state where it is discovered how

with the contributions of phenomenology, mainly around reduction, and the Buddhist and Vedic
traditions. “Phenomenological accounts of the structure of experience and their counterparts in
cognitive science relate to each other through reciprocal constraints” (Varela 1996, 343). These
efforts were about assuming the scientific relevance of the insubstantiality of the self, the end of the
idea of the solid, centralized and unitary self, as it has been directly assumed by Buddhist practices.
13 With regards to the question of personal identity and the non-impersonal meaning of existence,

particularly views that try to establish the difference between the notion of person and the identity
of the self, this needs a second-person phenomenology approach. In order to read this kind of view,
please refer to Crowell (2021). One can say that all Sein is reduced to a Bewusstsein, that is, all
being ends up being a sense of being (San Martín 1994, 259).
28 J. M. Chillón

the world is there for me “not only as a world of mere things, but also with the same
immediacy as a world of objects with values, a world of goods, a practical world”
(Husserl 1983, 53). This thing that is first and original is no longer the obvious fact
of how consciousness is open to the world, but the prior awareness of conscious acts
that is accessed by an alternative attitude to positivism.
Phenomenology advances by investigating from an understanding of the self,
considered a mere bundle of experiences, or even a pure monadological empty
container, to a notion of the self as a complex of lived experiences. These lived
experiences, whose ingredient immanence refers to a transcendent immanence,
broadens the field of evidence from cogito to cogitatum, to the world that is
for consciousness, independently of its verifiable transcendent existence. Natu-
ralism precisely denied any transcendental perspective with the evident consequence
of the dogmatic reduction of consciousness to the description of conscious acts
mechanically considered.
Somehow, the motivation that Husserl had already in 1898 is becoming clear: the
intimate correlation between consciousness and the world. If we follow this same
reflective line, then perhaps we can see that phenomenology, from the beginning,
demands a complete conception of the human, which an empirical approach cannot
give. Accordingly, having an experience is, in a way, having the world, living the
world, knowing that you exist in the world. Neurophenomenology, in its laboratory
practice, assumes the fertility of the phenomenological method both of epojé (to
the extent that beliefs or theories about experience are suspended), and of reduction
(Gallagher 2012, 80).
As explained by Husserl (2002) all way of living means a position take. Taking a
position is to know that oneself is linked to ideas that claim to be rules of absolute
validity. This mainly according to the demands of reason that determines what a life
lived in the responsibility of the truth means. Yet, this can only happen if the value of
ideas, of the deep convictions that have moved people to open up to them, to surrender
to them, is assumed. So, can the idea be ontologically distorted into fact? Isn’t the
understanding that reality is an amalgam of facts part of a meagre metaphysical
position? Are not ideas a part of reality? Are not real those convictions that make men
advance towards the potential assuming the phenomenological primacy of possibility
over reality?
All these questions point to what philosophy cannot deny: the transcendental
work that offers the possibility of investigating what is valid for every human being
and for all understanding of subjective experience. Every individual experience of a
concrete person, which is situated in a specific moment and anchored in a concrete
history, lies within the transcendental order, which is to say, in the order of what it
can be worth for any other experience. From this point of view, the transcendental
abandons, so to speak, its absolute and residual monadological status that is typical
of the idealistic understanding of consciousness. From this, the transcendental moves
toward a conception of intersubjectivity, as a “we” whose structures for the produc-
tion of meaning (the entire scope of the spiritual) imply reciprocal and empathetic
recognition. Therefore, one may ask doesn’t neuroscientific naturalism actually end
3 The Unitary Sense of Human Being … 29

up undermining the very concept of experience? And moreover, without the pecu-
liarity of the experience, where will the human being find the meaning of his life as
a concrete being and of humanity as a collective project?

3.4 Conclusion

The phenomenological perspective contributes to assuming the guarantee of the


progress of the sciences without losing sight of the danger of scientism, which is
undoubtedly the danger of a bankrupt rationalism that has gone astray (Husserl 1970).
This is no longer a theory, since what can be evidence through Husserl’s writings
during the interwar period in Europe, in the midst of Nazism’s rise, is an epoch of
existential desolation caused by a way of understanding the world and oneself that had
renounced to the infinite task that lay ahead of reason. It is precisely this infinite task
that is more suited to the horizontality of reason than to the hardening of rationalism
of what, without a doubt, certain orientations of the neurosciences participate. This is
because positive sciences are founded on a relative, unilateral rationality that leaves
present its necessary reverse: a full irrationality (Husserl 1977).
However, there is an undeniable truth in naturalism that should motivate a recip-
rocal relationship with phenomenology that can constitute a double complementary
path that it is worth exploring (Gallagher 2012). This relationship, firstly, is about
knowing to what extent some aspects of subjective experience, as they have been
described by phenomenology, have an empirical and neuroscientific basis. Hence,
it is undeniable the value of scientific progress with impressive advances in what
it means early detection of neurological diseases, the therapeutic tracing of certain
conditions or pharmacological research. Undoubtedly, the transcendental experience,
insofar as it is founded on the real and concrete experience of consciousness, should
count on the contribution of neurosciences that, perhaps, in some cases can even
serve as a criterion for correcting possible phenomenological analyses (Churchland
2007).
Secondly, it is about insisting that there is a whole phenomenological tradition that,
in the words of Gallagher and Zahavi (2013, 2010), has probably already offered very
relevant contributions that neuroscientific research must consider. These can end up
being decisive for the necessary comprehensive approach to the human experience.
The field of consciousness, reserved almost exclusively to the field of philosophy,
has begun to be explored by the entire field of cognitive sciences with very decisive
and fundamental contributions. These contributions, we insist, must recognize that
they are not born in a vacuum, since there is a whole history of thought whose
centuries-old reflections must be assumed.
In short, phenomenology has reached consciousness through the exploration of
experiences whose phenodynamic treatment must be complemented, from neurody-
namic aspects, with complex neurophysiological data (Ordóñez 2015). Shared and
30 J. M. Chillón

interdisciplinary work (phenomenology, philosophy of mind, neurology, psycho-


analysis, psychotherapy, and so on) is, now more than ever, a demand for intellectual
honesty.

References

Crowell S (2021) On What Matters. Personal identity as a phenomenological problem. Phenomenol


Cogn Sci 20:261–279
Churchland P (2007) Neurophilosophy at Work. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Damasio A (1996) El error de Descartes. Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago
Dennett D (2006) Dulces sueños. Obstáculos filosóficos para una ciencia de la conciencia. Katz,
Madrid
Depraz N et al (2003) On becoming aware. A pragmatics of experiencing. John Benjamins
Publishing, Amsterdam
Gallagher S (2012) On the possibility of naturalizing phenomenology. In: Zahavi D (ed)
Contemporary phenomenology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 70–94
Gallagher S, Zahavi D (2013) La mente fenomenológica. Una introducción a la filosofía de la mente
y a la ciencia cognitiva. Alianza, Madrid
Husserl E (1970) The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. Northwestern
University Press, Evanston
Husserl E (1941) Phenomenologie und antropologie. Philos Phenomenol Res II(1):1–14
Husserl E (1977) Formal and transcendental logic. Martinus Nijhoff, London
Husserl E (1982) Cartesian meditations. Martinus Nijhoff, London
Husserl E (1983) Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy.
First Book. Martinus Nijhoff, London
Husserl E (1989) Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy.
Second Book. Kluwer, Dordrecht
Husserl E (2002) Philosophy as rigorous science. In: Hopkins J, Drummond J (eds) The New
yearbook for phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy II. Routledge, London, pp 249–
295
Kandel E (2007) En busca de la memoria. El nacimiento de una nueva ciencia de la mente. Katz,
Madrid
Ordóñez S (2015) La experiencia subjetiva en la investigación de la neurociencia cognitiva. El caso
de la neurofenomenología Open Insight VI(10):135–167
Ratcliffe M (2006) Phenomenology, neuroscience, and intersubjectivit. In: Dreyfus HL, Wrathall
MA (eds) A companion to phenomenology and existentialism. Blackwell, London, pp 329–346
San Martín J (1994) La estructura del método fenomenológico. UNED, Madrid
Schaeffer JM (2009) El fin de la excepción humana. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Buenos Aires
Tenzen G (2006) The Universe in a single atom: the convergence of science and spirituality. Morgan
Roads Books, New York
Varela FJ (1996) Neurophenomenology: a methodological remedy for the hard problem. J Conscious
Stud 3–4:330–349
Varela F, Shear J (1999) First person methodologies: what, why, how? J Conscious Stud 6(2–3):1–14
Wheatley T (2015) The moral brain: a multidisciplinary perspective. MIT Press, London
Zahavi D (2010) Phenomenology and the problem of naturalization. In: Gallagher S, Schmicking
D (eds) Handbook of phenomenology and cognitive science. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 2–19
Chapter 4
Ethics and Neuroscience: Protecting
Consciousness

Arran Gare

Abstract One way of developing an ethics for neuroscience is to extend the Hippo-
cratic Oath as an ethical code, taking the health of the patient as the first consid-
eration, and maintaining utmost respect for human life. In this paper I will defend
this approach but argue that respect for human life is far more problematic than
it seems. Respect for human life would appear to entail respect for the autonomy
of people as conscious agents, but mainstream reductionist science and those who
fund it enframe humans as standing reserves to be exploited efficiently. Utilizing the
perspective provided by philosophical anthropology against such science, I argue
that the Hippocratic Oath should be extended to embrace the Kantian imperative to
treat humanity always as an end in itself, never as a mere means, implying that neuro-
science and its associated medical practices should take as their end the maintenance
and augmentation of human autonomy.

Keywords Ethics · Neuroscience · Consciousness · Hippocratic oath ·


Philosophical anthropology · Kantian imperative · Autonomy

4.1 Introduction. Defining the Problem

The Hippocratic Oath is a code of ethics defining correct behaviour by physicians


they are required to commit themselves to before being accepted into the profes-
sion. It was the first code of ethics for any profession. While originating in Ancient
Greece, it subsequently evolved, but the current code still embodies many of the core
injunctions of the original code. The most widely accepted current form is the 2006
The Declaration of Geneva by the World Medical Association to be taken before
being admitted as a member of the medical profession. The most important of its
injunctions are: “The health of my patient will be my first consideration” and “I will
maintain the utmost respect for human life.” The first is a rewording of the injunction

A. Gare (B)
Department of Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: agare@swin.edu.au

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 31


P. López-Silva and L. Valera (eds.), Protecting the Mind, Ethics of Science and Technology
Assessment 49, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94032-4_4
32 A. Gare

from Epidemics, Book I, of the Hippocratic school: “Practice two things in your deal-
ings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient.” This was later simplified to
the most basic precept of the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.” It is one of the
principal precepts of bioethics that all students in healthcare that, given an existing
problem, it may be better not to do something, or even to do nothing, than to risk
causing more harm than good.
The development of neurotechnology could be subsumed with little modification
under the Geneva formulation of the Hippocratic Oath, extending this precept to a
commitment not to damage people’s psychological health. On this precept, it should
be very clear that the old practice of lobotomizing supposedly mentally ill patients,
severing connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex and leaving them emotionally
shallow, lethargic and unable to concentrate or take initiative, making it easier to
manage chronically agitated, delusional, self-destructive, or violent patients, should
have been ruled out when it was being practiced. Nowadays, there are far more inter-
ventions in the functioning of the brain available, and it is less clear what damage to
psychological health would mean. Furthermore, with the development of neurotech-
nology, interventions in the future could go well beyond treatment of patients with
neurological disorders. They could be used to “improve” ordinary people. This makes
it all the more important to characterize psychological health.

4.2 The Challenge of Mainstream Science to Ethics

The biggest problem is that as far as modern science is concerned, mind and
consciousness are problematic concepts, while “common sense” views are often
vague and contradictory. This makes the notion of psychological health problematic.
Many sciences, with the support of a good many philosophers, are committed to
explaining away the mind and consciousness, or only allowing that consciousness
is an epiphenomenon. A whole tradition of philosophy, originating with Thomas
Hobbes, has striven to understand humans as nothing but complex machines. This
has come to be identified with the scientific view of humans and has had a major influ-
ence on psychology. With the development of Neo-Darwinism, molecular biology
and information science, humans, as with other forms of life, have been charac-
terized as machines for reproducing genes, where genes are understood as strings
of DNA encoding information. The brain is then seen as an information processor,
that is, essentially a computer. Humans can then be characterized as information
processing cyborgs, with the brain being nothing but a carbon-based computer. This
is the conception of humans now being promoted by transhumanists, who argue that
the extensions of humans through technology should be welcomed as an extension
of what we are as humans, and in a more extreme form by the posthumanists who
argue that the whole idea of the human was a temporary aberration and should be
abandoned.
From this perspective, if there is a place for health it would amount to not hindering
the efficiency with which human organisms are able to process information and act
4 Ethics and Neuroscience: Protecting Consciousness 33

efficiently on the basis of this information, and if possible, augmenting this efficiency.
If parts of the body, including the brain, are seen as defective, there should be no
problem with replacing them with artificial parts. Just as it is possible to provide
amputees with artificial limbs, or people with defective hearts with artificial hearts,
if the brain is defective in some way and cannot be repaired, or was defective to begin
with, it should be possible to replace part of it with prosthetic parts. Some proponents
of this view of life argue that in future it will be possible to download minds onto
computers. If this is the case, it might be possible to replace the whole of people’s
brains with prosthetic brains, not only repairing defects, but greatly augmenting their
power to retain and process information. Ordinary people will be able to far surpass
the greatest chess masters of the present, and will be free of emotions which at present
interfere with their efficiency.
If these arguments are correct, then with this conception of humans there should
be no problem with traditional concerns about modifying the brain, such as concern
with the effects of lobotomising patients to address their mental disorders, electro-
convulsive and insulin shock therapy to cure their depression by destroying their
memories, cutting the corpus callosum to cure epilepsy, or modifying people’s moods
with chemicals so they will be content with their current life. With the conception of
the brain promoted by information scientists, neurotechnologists are entirely justified
in attempting to modify people’s brains, possibly by removing bits and adding artifi-
cial components in order to make them conform to social conventions and think and
act more efficiently. In fact, such procedures could be defended on the grounds that
this will make humans more competitive with the robots that will be manufactured
incorporating new advances in artificial intelligence.
The lesson that should be learnt from this is that the code of ethics that should
be adopted in neurotechnology depends almost entirely on how the mind and the
brain and their relationship are understood. At present, it is reductionist science
culminating in the mechanization of the mind by cybernetics and information science
that are taken to be the cutting edge of science and are being embraced not only by
scientists but also by philosophers.
However, this raises another issue. Is this triumph of cybernetics and information
science due to their having proved themselves to be the most promising research
program, or because science itself is being corrupted? Funding comes from govern-
ments and increasingly, big business, who overwhelmingly fund the kind of science
that will facilitate increased control over nature and people to advance military tech-
nology and/or generate more profits for corporations. The implicit goal is to replace
humans as much as possible to reduce war casualties and labour costs, and to control
or eliminate people who no longer have a place in this brave new world. There are now
a number of works showing this to be the case, with governments forcing academics
to obtain their funding from business corporations to ensure that it is only this kind of
science that is funded. If this is the case, what is required is not only a code of ethics
for neurotechnology, but a code of ethics for science itself to prevent its corruption.
But then the problem could be not just the corruption of science, but with science
as such. The commitment to explanation involves a commitment to reductionism,
since explanations imply showing that appearances are nothing but the effects of
34 A. Gare

something else. Following this logic, the ultimate explanations will be in terms
of the basic existents of the universe. These used to be thought of as elementary
particles or force fields, but information has now been added to these. This trajec-
tory and its consequences were foreseen by Martin Heidegger. As he wrote in The
Question Concerning Technology (Heidegger 1977, 21): “Modern science’s way of
representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces. Modern
physics is not experimental because it applies apparatus to the questioning of nature.
The reverse is true. Because physics, indeed already as pure theory, sets nature up to
exhibit itself as a coherence of forces calculable in advance, it orders its experiments
precisely for the purpose of asking whether and how nature reports itself when set
up in this way.” While initially, the subject was privileged as a non-objective being
in control of science, he ends up being dissolved by objective science. As Heidegger
(1977, 152f.) wrote in The Age of the World Picture: “In the planetary imperialism
of technologically organized man, the subjectivism of man attains its acme, from
which point it will descend to the level of organized uniformity and there firmly
establish itself. This uniformity becomes the surest instrument of total, i.e., techno-
logical, rule over the earth. The modern freedom of subjectivity vanishes totally in the
objectivity commensurate with it.” The rise of cybernetics and the triumph of infor-
mation science committed to total control of the world is the inevitable outcome. As
Heidegger (1978, 375f.) observed in The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking:
“No prophecy is necessary to recognize that the sciences now establishing themselves
will soon be determined and steered by the new fundamental science which is called
cybernetics. [...] For it is the theory of the steering of the possible planning and
arrangement of human labour. Cybernetics transforms language into an exchange of
news. The arts become regulated-regulating instruments of information.”
So long as we accept this conception of science, the idea of a code of ethics for
anything, let alone a code for neurotechnology, is problematic. If a code of ethics is
to be defended for anything at all, it is necessary to re-open the question, what are
humans? and What is science?

4.3 Philosophical Anthropology, the Humanities


and Post-Reductionist Science

These questions cannot be answered from within science by itself. They can only
be answered with reference to the humanities. Since Plato, the question what are
humans has always been at the centre of philosophy and the basis of the humanities.
It was central to Aristotle’s philosophy and it was central to Hobbes’ philosophy in
his effort to replace Aristotle’s conception of humans. While Hobbes’ philosophy
was entrenched in culture through the scientism that he had defended, implying that
only mechanistic science produces genuine knowledge, his work problematized the
subject and subjective experience. While empiricists, granting a place to sense expe-
rience, attempted to uphold scientism, their efforts to do so were undermined by
4 Ethics and Neuroscience: Protecting Consciousness 35

their assumptions. In the last paragraph of his book An Inquiry into Human Under-
standing, Hume (1953, 173) concluded: “When we run over libraries, persuaded by
these principles, what havoc must we make? […] [L]et us ask, does it contain any
abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experi-
mental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the
flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” This injunction would
require the reader to cast his own book into the flames.
It was in response to such work that Kant was inspired to make philosophical
anthropology the focus of his philosophy. In his Introduction to Logic (2005, 17),
published in its final form in 1800 and which guided his critical philosophy, Kant
proclaimed that philosophy in its cosmic sense “is the only science which has a
systematic connection, and gives systematic unity to all the other sciences.” It can be
reduced to four questions, “what can I know?” “What ought I to do?” “What may I
hope?” and “what is Man?” and Kant concluded “all these might be reckoned under
anthropology, since the first three questions refer to the last.”
It should be noted that while philosophical anthropology is made central to philos-
ophy, it is inseparable from other domains of philosophy. If the question “what can
I know?” can only be answered with reference to philosophical anthropology, the
claim of philosophical anthropology to supply knowledge presupposes an answer to
the question “what can I know?” Similarly, to engage in efforts to achieve such knowl-
edge in order to work out “what ought I to do?” already presupposes that we know
what we ought to do—engage in such efforts. The focus on philosophical anthro-
pology made these interconnections clear, and appreciation of this was central to all
Kantian, neo-Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy, including hermeneutic philos-
ophy and phenomenology. What Kant showed was that the conception of humans
put forward by Hobbes and the empiricists was too impoverished to account for the
possibility of science. To account for science, we have to recognize the creative role
of the subject in perception and in acquiring knowledge, requiring much more robust
notions of imagination, reasoning and agency than the mechanistic view and the
empiricism it engendered could countenance. It is also necessary to accord a place
to the human capacity for autonomy, without which, all apparent beliefs would have
to be viewed as epiphenomena of physical processes and no better or worse than any
other beliefs, except in so far as they provide an advantage in the struggle for survival
by what are now characterized as “gene machines,” machines for reproducing DNA.
Philosophical anthropology has been the thread running through what analytic
philosophers deride as “continental philosophy,” having been developed by Kant’s
students, Herder and Fichte, and then by the Early Romantics and Idealists such
as Hegel, then through to hermeneuticists such as Dilthey, neo-Kantians such as
Ernst Cassirer, by the pragmatists, and many of the phenomenologists. These neo-
Kantian and post-Kantian philosophers emphasised the essential social nature of
human consciousness, that humans only develop the capacity for freedom through
viewing themselves from the perspective of others and through being formed by their
cultures, and generally, they promoted an ethics based on the notion of mutual recog-
nition of each other’s freedom, self-realization as participants within communities,
and recognition of the intrinsic value of life.
36 A. Gare

Friedrich Schelling was exemplary in this regard, arguing that humans conceived
as such have to be understood as having evolved within nature. If there is a clash
between this conception of humans and Newtonian physics, then physics will have to
be transformed. Accepting Kant’s argument that we organize our experience through
imagination and concepts, but rejecting Kant’s claim that through transcendental
deductions it can be shown that we have to accept the concepts of prevailing physics,
he argued that we can criticise and replace defective concepts and thereby bring
nature, and humanity as part of nature, to a higher state of consciousness of itself
through us. To this end, he argued for a philosophical physics in which activity,
later characterized as energy, is fundamental, and characterized matter in terms
of forces, arguing that this new physics would make magnetism, electricity and
light and the relationship between them intelligible. He also argued for the devel-
opment of new mathematics adequate to this more dynamic view of nature. On the
basis of these concepts he argued for an evolutionary cosmology granting a place
to emergence through the limiting of activity. Emergent entities might appear as
objects, for instance crystals or chemicals of various kinds, but Schelling argued,
these should be seen to be products of the activity of opposing forces achieving a
balance. They are emergent, and to some extent immanent causes of themselves,
and this makes it impossible to explain them as merely the effects of their environ-
ments and constituents. In chemistry, these opposing forces are now referred to as
valances which generate molecules of various complexity and stability. Schelling
characterized the distinctive characteristics of living beings as processes that must
actively maintain their form while interacting with their environments, so these envi-
ronments are defined in relation to them as their worlds. With this characterization
of life, it was then possible to characterize and explain the distinctive characteristics
of humans as essentially social, self-conscious beings living in culturally constituted
worlds, capable of understanding their own history within the context of the history
of nature and reflection on and transforming their cultures. In all cases, living beings,
including humans, are inseparable from their environments, but are to some extent
the immanent causes of themselves.
These are the ideas which triumphed with the development of thermodynamics
and the field theories of electro-magnetism of Faraday and Maxwell, with the devel-
opment of chemistry and then relativity theory showing that matter is really a form of
energy. While mainstream biology is reductionist, reductionism has been shown to
be incoherent (matter can’t evolve) and is strongly challenged by holistic ideas asso-
ciated with systems theory, including the theory of complex adaptive systems and
anticipatory systems theory, process metaphysics, hierarchy theory, biosemiotics,
and efforts to account for consciousness using quantum field theory (Vitiello 2002;
Ho 2004, 228ff.). All these are part of the anti-reductionist tradition of thought and
research program inspired by Schelling and those he influenced (Gare 2013). These
are the forms of thinking being advanced in modern science that are consistent with
work in philosophical biology and philosophical anthropology. Advances in science
have produced what Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers (1984, xxixf.) called “the
new alliance” between science and the humanities.
4 Ethics and Neuroscience: Protecting Consciousness 37

4.4 The Clash Between Reductionist and Anti-Reductionist


Science

Most scientists do not accept this post-Newtonian research program, however. They
still promote particle physics or string theory rather than accept the advances in
quantum field theories, and claim that statistical mechanics as developed by Ludwig
Bolzmann has displaced thermodynamics. And they fail to appreciate the modern
chemistry and nuclear physics are triumphs of Schelling’s post-reductionist thinking.
On the basis of their acceptance of statistical mechanics, ignoring its limitations
(for instance, accounting for phase transitions, let alone the dissipative structures
examined by Prigogine) they embrace Boltzmann’s notion of entropy and equate
negative entropy with the notion of information developed by Shannon to analyse
the capacity of cables to transmit messages. As noted, combined with cybernetics,
this notion of information provides the foundation of information science, and it is
claimed to be able to account, along with molecular biology, for life and mind.
These views are not accepted by advanced theoretical biology, however. Jesper
Hoffmeyer (1997) in Signs of Meaning in the Universe, essentially a manifesto for
biosemiotics based on Peirce’s philosophy, pointed out that “form” for the Romans
was a mangled version of the Greek “morf ” (or “morph”), and “information” meant
being formed mentally. Atomistic thinking in the Twentieth Century led “informa-
tion” to be understood as isolated chunks of knowledge and this was taken over by
the physicists, who then characterized it as something in the world, independent of
anyone, and then tried to impose this inverted, desiccated concept of information
on all other disciplines. In his later book Biosemiotics, he wrote that “up-to-date
biology must acknowledge that the biochemical concept of information is just too
impoverished to be of any explanatory use” (Hoffmeyer 2008, 61). As far as the
computational notion of the mind is concerned, as Jeremy Fodor (2000) pointed out,
the mind does not work that way.
Is it just a matter of choice between rival research traditions? My contention is that
it is not. The tradition inspired by Schelling is far more coherent and has proved far
more fruitful than the rival reductionist tradition, even when this reductionist tradition
utilizes concepts such as fields (in bowdlerized form) inspired by the Schellingian
tradition and incorporates the notion of information. The post-Newtonian tradi-
tion can make intelligible whatever advances have been made through reductionist
approaches in the sciences, while reductionist approaches cannot make sense of
what is comprehensible from the anti-reductionist research tradition, including the
existence of ourselves as conscious beings. Reductionism is the dominant tradition
because science has been corrupted. Firstly, by those who fund science who are for
the most part only interested in knowledge that facilitates control over nature and
people. This is what reductionist science delivers. It is based on controlling situations
and modifying components to enable predictions to be made; that is, as Heidegger
observed, enframing the world to reveal it as standing reserve to be controlled and
exploited. Secondly, it is far easier to develop such science. Following the “scientific
method,” ultra-specialists add small increments to the bucket of scientific knowledge.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
wohl an genügendem Materiale weiter zu untersuchen (s.
B u r m e i s t e r Tarsius 1846, 17 u. 126 und W e b e r 265).

Eine jetzigen Anforderungen entsprechende Abbildung 3 von T.


fuscus giebt es nicht; ich hoffe eine, die sich der von T. philippensis
auf Tafel IV zur Seite stellt, bei anderer Gelegenheit bieten zu
können. (Vgl. F i s c h e r : Anat. Maki 1804 T. III, Skelet IV u. V;
B u r m e i s t e r : Tarsius 1846 T. 2 u. 7 f. 8–14, Skelet; S c h l e g e l :
Handleiding 1857 pl. I, 9; Cassels Nat. Hist. I, 249 s. a.)

Die Schwanzbeschuppung kommt, wie wir sehen werden, wohl bei


T. sangirensis, bemerkenswertherweise aber nicht bei T. spectrum
und philippensis vor. (S., ausser bei W e b e r l. c., d e M e i j e r e :
Haren der Zoogdieren, Diss. 1893, 46 u. 119 und R e h : Verh. Ntw.
Ver. Hamburg 3. F. I, 35 1893 u. Jena. Zeitschr. 29, 189 u. 190 1894,
wo sich eine interessante Zusammenstellung des Vorkommens von
Schuppen bei den Säugethierordnungen findet.)

W e b e r nannte die Art fuscomanus, da aber F i s c h e r (Maki 1804,


37) „fuscus s. fuscomanus“ sagt, so ist der erste Name der
berechtigtere. [9]

1 Te i j s m a n n (Natuurk. Tijdschr. Nederl. Ind. 38, 77 1879) glaubt, dass das


Thierchen hier podi heisse. ↑
2 Ob W a l l a c e (Geogr. Verbr. D. A. I, 496 1876) die Insel Manado tua meinte,
als er sagte: „Soll auch auf einer kleinen Insel an der Nordspitze von Celebes
vorkommen“? (S. auch Is. life 1880, 427.) In seinem Mal. Arch. (1869) hatte er das
in der Minahassa gar nicht seltene Thier nicht näher localisirt, im 2. Bde. der
Geogr. Verbr. (p. 201) dagegen hiess es, dass es „auf einigen Theilen von
Celebes“ gefunden werde. (Vgl. auch J e n t i n k in T. Aardr. Gen. 2. s. VI, 247
1889 und c. S c h u i l i n g 251.) ↑
3 Man findet bei B u r m e i s t e r : Tarsius 1846, 3 alle bis dahin vorhandenen
aufgezählt. ↑
[Inhalt]
7. Tarsius sangirensis n. sp.

Tarsius T. fusco Fisch.-Waldh. simillimus, sed cauda minus pilosa et


tarsis fere nudis.

Hab. In insulis Sangi.

Alle mir bekannten Exemplare 1 von den Sangi Inseln weichen durch
den weniger behaarten Schwanz und die wenig behaarten Tarsen
von dem gleich grossen T. fuscus ab, sie nähern sich also darin der
Philippinen-Form mit ihrem ganz spärlich und kurz behaarten (und
unbeschuppten) Schwanz und ihren so gut wie nackten Tarsen,
während fuscus gut behaarte Tarsen und einen sehr stark behaarten
Schwanz hat. Die langen und dunklen Haare des Schwanzes
reichen bei sangirensis proximal nicht so weit und die Haare sind
kürzer. Die Beschuppung ist dieselbe wie bei fuscus. Das Museum
besitzt ein Exemplar von Siao und eins von Gross Sangi, das
Berliner, Wiener und Braunschweiger je eins von Gross Sangi
(erstere 4 aus meinen Sammlungen, letzteres von Dr. P l a t e n ) mit
denselben Charakteren, 2 das Leidener (Cat. XI, 81 1892) eins von
„Sangi“, von dem Dr. J e n t i n k so freundlich war mir mitzutheilen,
dass der Schwanz und der Tarsus weniger behaart seien als bei
Celebes Exemplaren. Es liegt hierin also eine insulare Abweichung
und eine Hinneigung zur Philippinen Form. Ich hoffe später eine
Abbildung der Art geben zu können.

1 Vgl. Abh. Mus. Dresden 1894/5 Nr. 1 p. 1. ↑


2 Prof. W . B l a s i u s und Dr. v. L o r e n z hatten die Güte, sie mir zum Vergleich
einzusenden, das Berliner Exemplar sah ich an Ort und Stelle wieder. ↑
[Inhalt]
8. Tarsius philippensis A. B. Meyer

Tafel IV

Ich beschrieb diese Art Abh. Mus. Dresden 1894/5 Nr. 1 und habe
dem Gesagten wenig hinzuzufügen, da die Abbildung in n. Gr. zur
weiteren Erkennung der Merkmale genügen dürfte. Nur über die
Behaarung des Schwanzes möchte ich noch einige Worte sagen, da
diese, der Natur der Sache nach, in der Abbildung nicht deutlich
genug wiedergegeben werden konnte. Die proximalen ¾ des
Schwanzes sind fast nackt, nur mit spärlich und einzeln stehenden,
kaum 1 mm langen weissen Härchen besetzt; am distalen Viertel
werden sie allmählich bis 3 mm lang und an den distalen 4
Centimetern stehen sie eng aneinander und sind bräunlich gefärbt.
— Das Museum erhielt inzwischen 2 weitere Exemplare von den
Philippinen, und zwar noch eins von Samar durch Dr.
S c h a d e n b e r g und eins von Nord Mindanao durch Dr. R i z a l .
Das rothbraune Gesicht und überhaupt die braunere Farbe ist bei
allen auffallend, und sie sind hierdurch zusammen mit den fast
nackten Tarsen und dem wenig behaarten Schwanze leicht von
anderen Tarsiern zu unterscheiden.
[Inhalt]
9. Tarsius spectrum (Pall.)

B o r n e o -Exemplare zeigen vorwiegend braune Töne wie die von


den Philippinen, allein sie haben behaarte Tarsen und einen spärlich
behaarten Schwanz mit heller Quaste, wie T. spectrum von anderen
Inseln. Immerhin wäre es möglich, dass auch die Borneo Form als
locale abgetrennt werden könnte. Schon Te m m i n c k (Coup-d’oeil
III, 112 1849) sagt: „La même espèce se trouve aussi dans les
parties méridionales de Bornéo; toutefois elle paraît former une
variété locale propre à cette île. Le Tarsius spectrum de Célèbes a le
bout ou flocon terminal de la queue noir, celui de Bornéo a cette
partie d’un cendré-fauve.“ T. fuscus von Celebes unterscheidet sich
allerdings bedeutend von spectrum, wie wir besonders durch
W e b e r (Zool. Ergebn. III, 262 1893) wissen, ob aber die Borneo
Exemplare von denen der übrigen Inseln, wo Tarsius vorkommt,
hinlänglich und so constant differiren, um einen besonderen Namen
zu verdienen, kann ich wegen zu geringen Materiales von den
anderen Inseln nicht entscheiden. Das Museum besitzt 5 von
Borneo: vier vom Südosten und eins vom Westen. Auch die 3 von
Borneo im Berliner Museum zeichnen sich durch viel Braun aus, es
ist darunter eins vom Nordosten; H o s e führt welche (Mamm.
Borneo, Diss. 1893, 17, inl. Name ingkat) vom Nordwesten, W o l f f
(Natuurk. Tijdschr. Nederl. Ind. 16, 44 1858/9) welche von der
Ostküste auf, Tarsius ist also über ganz Borneo verbreitet. Auch auf
der [10]Insel K a r i m a t a , westlich von Borneo, kommt er vor
(Te i j s m a n n l. c. 36, 246 1876, inl. Name kebuku) und auf
S i r h a s s e n , einer der Natuna Inseln (T h o m a s & H a r t e r t
Nov. Zool. I, 655 1894). W e b e r (l. c. III, 263 1893) meinte, dass es
nicht ganz sicher gewesen wäre, ob T. spectrum auch auf
S u m a t r a lebe oder nicht, allein es lagen schon früher Exemplare
aus dem Lampongschen (Natuurk. Tijdschr. Nederl. Ind. 16, 87
1858/9 und 27, 383, 1864, inl. Name krabuku) in Batavia vor. (S.
noch mehrere inländische Bezeichnungen für Tarsius bei
H u b r e c h t l. c. 54, 39 1895.) Von B i l i t o n hat J e n t i n k (Notes
Leyden Mus. XII, 149 1890) die Art registrirt.

Ich hoffe auch von T. spectrum später eine Abbildung geben zu


können, da die vorhandenen den jetzigen Anforderungen nicht mehr
entsprechen. (Vgl. A u d e b e r t : Maki p. 29 Pl. I, an 8, col.;
H o r s f i e l d : Zool. Res. 1824 pl. 4, col. und Taf. zu Nr. 2, Figur G
Zähne; B u r m e i s t e r : Tarsius 1846 T. 1, col.; G. C u v i e r : Règne
animal Mamm. 1849 pl. 22, 1, col., 1 a–c Zähne; G e r v a i s : Mamm.
1854, 162, Skelet s. zu p. 178; B r e h m : Thierl. I, 307 3. Aufl. 1890,
mit nackten Tarsen! — seitens L y d e k k e r : Nat. Hist. I, 236 1893/4
copirt; F o r b e s : Prim. I pl. II 1894, col.)
[Inhalt]
10. Paradoxurus musschenbroeki Schl.

Tafel V und VI

1878 S c h l e g e l Prospectus von „Annals of the R. Zool. Mus. of


(?) the Netherlands at Leyden“ (mit Schädel-Tafel)
1879 S c h l e g e l Notes Leyden Mus. I, 43
1883 J e n t i n k Notes Leyden Mus. V, 178
1885 B l a n f o r d P. Z. S. 790, 806
1887 J e n t i n k Cat. (ost.) IX, 94 Pl. 1 u. 2 (Schädel)
1890 W e b e r Zool. Erg. I, 110
1894 W e b e r Zool. Erg. III, 469 fg.

Dieses grösste Raubthier von Celebes 1 blieb merkwürdig lange


unbekannt, es ist allen früheren Reisenden entgangen, oder wenn
sie davon gehört hatten, wie z. B. v. R o s e n b e r g (Mal. Arch.
1878, 268) und i c h , so war es ihnen nicht gelungen, es zu
erbeuten. Laut Tagebuchnotiz hörte ich am 20. Juni 1871 in Belang
in der Minahassa, dass ein „andjing utan“ (Waldhund) seit einiger
Zeit in der Nähe sei und Hühner weghole. Ich hatte schon früher
einen Preis auf das Thier, von dem Mancher in der Minahassa
sprach, gesetzt, aber erfolglos. Erst v a n M u s s c h e n b r o e k
verschaffte, als er 1875 Resident von Manado war, 5 Exemplare von
Kinilo und Tanawangko, und 1883 kamen durch v. F a b e r noch 7
nach Leiden, die von denselben Localitäten herrührten. 2 Das
Dresdener Museum erhielt seit Anfang 1894 6 Bälge mit den
Skeletten (2 m. u. 1 f. ad., 1 m. u. 1 f. jun., 1 f. juv.), beim Dorfe Kali
in der Nähe von Kakaskassen Februar, Mai und October in Fallen
gefangen, mit den Bezeichnungen andjing utan (mal.) und lonkoi.
Auch P. und F. S a r a s i n bekamen mehrere, wie sie mir unter dem
4. August 1894 mittheilten, und zwar aus den Wäldern, die die
verschiedenen Kraterberge in der Nähe von Rurukan bedecken. „Sie
nähren sich, wie uns die Untersuchung des Magens lehrte, sowohl
von Waldratten, als auch von den reifen Früchten der Papaya.“ Das
Thier ist daher keineswegs selten, wie man, da es so lange
unentdeckt geblieben ist, versucht sein könnte zu vermuthen. Der
Grund hiervon lag vielmehr darin, dass die Eingebornen den Fang
nicht übten, bis sie genügend dazu angespornt wurden, und dass die
Naturforscher früher die Art und Weise des Fanges nicht kannten,
sowie darin, dass das Thier überhaupt verborgen lebt und wohl nur
Nachts auf Raub ausgeht. Die bis jetzt bekannten Fundorte: Kinilo,
Rurukan und Kali liegen dicht bei einander, nicht fern von Manado;
Tanawangko etwas mehr westlich; allein die Art hat gewiss eine viel
weitere Verbreitung. Die R o s e n b e r g schen Angaben (s. bei
J e n t i n k Notes Leyden Mus. V, 179 1883) beziehen sich auf das
Gorontalosche, es ist jedoch noch fraglich, ob es sich dort, wie auch
bei meiner [11]Notiz von Belang, um P. musschenbroeki handelt. Ob
die Art auch in Central, Nordost und Süd Celebes 3 vorkommt, bleibt
festzustellen.

Ein altes Männchen und ein junges Weibchen sind auf Tafel V in ⅕–
⅙ n. Gr. abgebildet.

B l a n f o r d , der vorzügliche Kenner der Paradoxuri, sagt (P. Z. S.


1885, 790): „P. musschenbroeki differs greatly from all other species
in its annulated tail. The skull is intermediate in form between the last
mentioned little group (Paguma) and typical Paradoxuri, but rather
nearer to the former. The shape of the palate is peculiar“. Und (p.
806): „The most remarkable peculiarity of the skull and dentition is
that the rows of upper premolars and molars, instead of diverging
greatly behind, as in all other Paradoxuri, are nearly parallel 4, the
hinder part of the palate being proportionately much narrower than in
other species of the genus. The distance between the anterior
premolars is 0.68 inch [17,3 mm], between the last molars 0.77
[19,6]. In other species the latter measurement exceeds the former
by at least one half“. Die von B l a n f o r d erwähnten Maasse sind
bei dem Tafel VI Figur 1 in ⅓ n. Gr. abgebildeten männlichen adulten
Skelette (2324) 20,6 und 23,6 mm, der Schädel ist auch länger mit
157 mm, gegen 146 (5.75 inches) bei B l a n f o r d . J e n t i n k (p.
179) giebt die Länge eines adulten Schädels auf 148 mm an, die
Breite auf 45, die Jochbogenbreite auf 85, bei dem 157 mm langen
Schädel von 2324 ist die Breite nur 43 und die Jochbogenbreite 79,
er ist also länger und schmäler als der von J e n t i n k abgebildete.
Die ersten Praemolaren sind noch vorhanden, J e n t i n k sagt, sie
fehlen bei adulten Exemplaren, was aber wohl nur bei alten der Fall
sein mag, denn 2324 ist adult, wenn auch etwas jünger als das
Exemplar a (Cat. p. 94), dessen Schädel J e n t i n k abbildete. Länge
des Körpers und Kopfes des ausgestopften Ex. (2310, zu Skelet
2324) 820 mm, Länge vom Vertex zum Anus 680, Länge des
Schwanzes 690.

Da mir das Exemplar 2310 in Spiritus zukam, so liess ich die (linke)
Vola und Planta, ihres bemerkenswerthen Oberflächenreliefs wegen,
photographiren und bilde sie Tafel VI Figur 2 und 3 in n. Gr. ab. Ein
auffallender Unterschied mit anderen von mir daraufhin untersuchten
Paradoxuri besteht darin, dass die Tastballen bei P. musschenbroeki
glatt, bei jenen gefeldert sind.

V o l a (Figur 2). Die 5 Nagel- oder Endballen (a–e) 5 sind relativ


mässig, die sie verbindende Schwimmhaut dagegen ist sehr stark
entwickelt, die 4 Metacarpophalangealballen (α–δ), besonders der 3.
(γ), zeigen mächtige Ausbildung, wie auch der Radial- und der
Ulnarballen (r und u), besonders letzterer, der überhaupt der grösste
Tastballen der Vola ist; der 4. Metacarpophalangealballen (δ) zeigt
proximal eine kleine Abschnürung; ein Pisiformballen (P) ist kaum
angedeutet. Diese Metacarpophalangeal-, Radial- und Ulnarballen
bilden mehr oder weniger ein zusammenhängendes, nur durch
schmale Furchen von einander getrenntes Gebilde, mit der
Ausnahme jedoch, dass sie in der Mitte eine mit groben Warzen
besetzte vertiefte intermediäre Tastfläche 6 umschliessen, auch
proximal und peripher reihen sich den Ballen einige Warzen an; die
Tastballen aber sind ganz glatt und nicht mit Warzen besetzt.

P l a n t a (Figur 3). Die Endballen und Metatarsophalangealballen


verhalten sich sehr ähnlich denen der Vola, so dass die Abbildung
zum Verständnisse genügen dürfte. Der Tibialballen (t) ist
langgestreckt, und verschmälert sich proximalwärts, der
Fibularballen (f) ist etwas kürzer; zwischen beiden liegt eine
längliche intermediäre Tastfläche, die mit unregelmässig
angeordneten polygonalen oder abgerundeten, groben, an einander
stossenden Warzen besetzt ist. Die peripher stehenden Warzen sind
hier regelmässiger (einreihig) angeordnet als auf der Vola.

Untersucht man dagegen dieselben Gebilde z. B. bei P. musanga Gr.


(B 3261 von Sumatra, in Spiritus), so findet man eine grosse Reihe
von Unterschieden, vor Allem aber sieht man schon mit
unbewaffnetem Auge, dass alle Tastballen gleichmässig mit
polygonalen flachen Hautwarzen vollkommen [12]besetzt sind, und
ebenso die intermediären Tastflächen, soweit vorhanden, so dass
ein dichtes Netzwerk, eine Felderung, entsteht; nur die
Schwimmhaut zwischen den Endballen und den Metacarpo- und
Metatarsophalangealballen ist glatt. Die 5 Endballen der Vola und
Planta sind sehr stark entwickelt. Der 1. Metacarpophalangealballen
steht etwas abgegrenzt, die anderen 3 sind aber fast mit einander
verschmolzen; der Ulnarballen ist sehr gross, der Radialballen etwas
kleiner, beide liegen aber direct an den Metacarpophalangealballen;
dem Ulnarballen reiht sich ein kleiner Pisiformballen an. 1. und 2.
Metatarsophalangealballen etwas gegeneinander abgegrenzt, 3. und
4. mit einander verschmolzen; Tibial- und Fibularballen
langgestreckt, letzterer etwas breiter und distal mit dem 1.
Metatarsophalangealballen verschmolzen; zwischen dem Tibial- und
Fibularballen eine lange breite intermediäre Tastfläche mit groben
polygonalen, an einander stossenden Warzen besetzt.

An trockenen Exemplaren lässt sich die Disposition der Tastballen


nicht genau studiren, ihre Felderung aber konnte ich bei P. musanga
von Borneo, fasciatus Desm. von Java, philippensis Jourd. von
Panay und leucomystax Gr. von Borneo (?) als die gleiche erkennen
wie bei P. musanga in Spiritus. K l a a t s c h (Morphol. Jahrb. 14, 417
1888) beschreibt die Ballen von P. typus [niger (Desm.)] auch als mit
grösseren polygonalen, ziemlich flachen Hautwarzen besetzt, es
scheint also, dass die meisten, wenn nicht alle Paradoxurus-Arten,
bis auf P. musschenbroeki, gefelderte Tastballen haben, während
dieser die glatten mit Viverren gemein hat. 7 Das Oberflächenrelief
einer jeden Paradoxus Art wird wohl anders gestaltet sein, allein
wenn alle bis auf P. musschenbroeki gefelderte Tastballen besitzen,
so hat dieses abweichende Verhalten des letzteren doch wohl mehr
Gewicht. Allerdings kommen derartige morphologische
Differenzirungen innerhalb einer Gattung auch sonst vor, wie wir
denn oben (S. 8) eine solche, nach W e b e r , in dem beschuppten
und glatten Tarsier-Schwanze zu erkennen hatten; falls jedoch dies
Verhalten von P. musschenbroeki unter den Paradoxuri wirklich ein
isolirtes ist, und Hand in Hand geht mit den anderen abweichenden
Charakteren (Schädel, Schwanzringelung etc.), so wäre eine
generische Abtrennung vielleicht geboten. Der ganze Habitus von P.
musschenbroeki weicht von dem der anderen Paradoxuri durch
Plumpheit ab, der dicke Kopf ferner mit seinen langen steifen, hellen
und dunklen Schnurren, und die breiten Füsse mit ihren stark
ausgebildeten Schwimmhäuten geben dem Thier etwas otterartiges,
was Jedem sofort in die Augen springt, so dass man zuerst gar
keinen Paradoxurus vor sich zu haben vermeint.
1 Wie Cryptoprocta ferox Th. Benn. das grösste von Madagaskar; Paradoxurus
leucomystax Gr. von Malacca, Borneo und Sumatra ist kleiner als P.
musschenbroeki. ↑
2 F a b e r hatte 1878 auch zwei Exemplare an das Gothaer Museum geschickt. ↑
3 Te i j s m a n n (Natuurk. Tijdschr. Nederl. Ind. 38, 77 1879) hörte, dass sie am
Pik von Bonthain vorkomme, dies bedarf natürlich der Bestätigung; W e b e r
(Zool. Erg. I, 110 1890) fand in Süd Celebes keine Spur davon, ebensowenig wie
W i c h m a n n (l. c.) als er von Palos nach Parigi ging, allein wenn man bedenkt,
wie lange das relativ grosse Thier in der naturwissenschaftlich so viel
durchsuchten Minahassa verborgen blieb, so sind solche negativen Befunde
vorläufig ganz und gar nicht beweisend. ↑
4 Wie aus J e n t i n k s Pl. 2 ersichtlich. ↑
5 Ich folge der Nomenklatur und sonst K l a a t s c h : Zur Morphologie der
Tastballen der Säugethiere (Morphol. Jahrb. 14, 407 1888). ↑
6 K o l l m a n n : Tastapp. d. Hand 1883, 40. ↑
7 Bei Viverra civetta Schreb. fand K l a a t s c h (p. 418) sie glatt und punktirt, was
ich auch für V. tangalunga Gr. angeben kann, die Tastballen bei Paradoxurus
musschenbroeki aber zeigen diese höckerige Punktirung nicht, sie sind ganz
glatt. ↑
[Inhalt]
11. Bubalus mindorensis Heude

Tafel VII und VIII

1860 B l y t h J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal. XXIX, 303 (Misc. pap. rel. to


Indo China II, 295 1886) Tamarao
1878 E v e r e t t P. Z. S. 792 Anoa depressicornis
A . B . M e y e r P. Z. S. 881 Tamarao
B a r t l e t t P. Z. S. 882 Indian Buffalo of small size
1885 J o r d a n a Bosquejo geogr. Fil. 171 Antilope depressicornis
1887 H o f f m a n n Abh. Mus. Dresden 1886/7 Nr. 3 p. 26 Taf. Fig. 6
a–f Bubalus indicus?
1888 (vor Aug.) H e u d e Mém. Hist. Nat. Chin. II, 1 p. 4 und 50
Bubalus mindorensis
(16. Aug.) S t e e r e (bei S c l a t e r ) Nature 38, 363 Anoa
mindorensis
(1. Nov.) A . B . M e y e r Nature 39, 9 Bubalus sp.
(20. Nov.) S t e e r e P. Z. S. 413 Anoa oder Probubalus
mindorensis
(6. Dez.) H e u d e Nature 39, 128 Bubalus mindorensis
(13. Dez.) E v e r e t t Nature 39, 150 Bubalus sp.
G o g o r z a An. Soc. Espan. XVII, II (des S. A.) Anoa
depressicornis
1889 A . B . M e y e r Zool. Garten 251 Bubalus sp.
1890 H e l l e r Abh. Mus. Dresden 1890/1 Nr. 2 p. 3 u. 31 Bubalus
mindorensis
S t e e r e List Phil. 29 Probubalus mindorensis
N e h r i n g Zool. Anz. 448, SB. Ges. naturf. Berlin 101,
Naturw. Wochenschr. V, 227 Bubalus mindorensis[13]
1894 J e n t i n k Notes Leyden Mus. XVI, 199 pl. 8–11 Bubalus
mindorensis
B o u r n s & W o r c e s t e r Notes Exp. Phil. Is. 63 Bubalus
mindorensis
L y d e k k e r Nat. Hist. II, 206 Bos mindorensis
H e u d e Mém. Hist. Nat. Chin. II, 4 p. 204 pl. XIX E Fig. 19
Bubalus mindorensis
1895 O u s t a l e t Bull. Mus. Paris 202 Anoa mindorensis
E l e r a Cat. sist. Fil. I, 33 Bubalus mindorensis
1896 L y d e k k e r Geogr. Hist. Mamm. 47, 279, 305 Bos
mindorensis

Es könnte ein Zweifel darüber entstehen, ob H e u d e oder S t e e r e


als Autor dieser Art zu nennen sei, da S t e e r e s erste Beschreibung
am 16. August 1888 veröffentlicht war, und das 1. Heft des 2.
Bandes der Mémoires concernant l’histoire naturelle de l’empire
chinois par des pères de la compagnie de Jésus in Chang-Hai im
Jahr 1888 ohne Datum erschien. Es lässt sich aber aus
buchhändlerischen Catalogen (z. B. F r i e d l ä n d e r Nat. nov. Sept.
1888, 289) nachweisen, dass H e u d e s Publication vor August statt
gefunden hat, und dieser daher, und nicht S t e e r e , als Autor
figuriren muss.

Der einheimische Name des Zwergbüffels von Mindoro ist, nach


vielfachen Angaben, Ta m a r a o 1, nicht Tamaron oder Tamarou, wie
S t e e r e (P. Z. S. 1888, 414 und List 1890, 29) schreibt. Er ist bis
jetzt nur von Mindoro bekannt, denn dass E l e r a (l. c.) ihn auch von
Celebes aufführt, beruht auf einer Verwechslung mit der Anoa oder
auf einer anderen Unzulänglichkeit, wie man sie auf Schritt und Tritt
in seiner Compilation antrifft. N e h r i n g (SB. Ges. naturf. Berlin
1894, 185) beschrieb von der Mindoro nahen Calamianen Insel
Busuanga noch einen wilden Büffel als B. moellendorffi, der etwas
grösser als der Tamarao sei, allein ich halte ihn nicht für einen
wilden, da Dr. S c h a d e n b e r g mir mittheilte, dass es nach der
Aussage von Don B e r n a r d o A s c a n i o , der 20 Jahr auf den
Calamianen, speziell in Malbató auf Busuanga gelebt hat, dort keine
wilden Büffel gebe. Dass auf der kleinen Insel Jemandem, der so
lange dort als Pflanzer ansässig ist, das Vorhandensein wilder Büffel
unbekannt geblieben sein sollte, kann man ausschliessen; es
handelt sich daher nur um einen verwilderten, oder vielleicht nicht
einmal um einen solchen, 2 falls man darunter nur schon seit
Generationen verwilderte versteht. 3 Dr. S c h a d e n b e r g theilte mir
mit, dass auf Mindoro verwilderte Büffel neben dem Tamarao
vorkommen sollen, er habe aber keine gesehen; man spräche auch
davon, dass sie sich mit Tamaraos kreuzten, worüber er sich jedoch
vorläufig kein Urtheil erlauben wolle. Den Schädel eines solchen
angeblich wilden Carabao von Mindoro sandte er auch ein (B 3199).
Die bis jetzt bekannten Tamaraos geben keinen Anlass zur
Annahme von Kreuzungen, und wenn sie ausnahmsweise statt
hätten, so würde dies bei dem zweifellosen Überwiegen des auf
ganz Mindoro und, wie es scheint, zahlreich vorkommenden
Tamarao wahrscheinlich keinen dauernden Einfluss auf die
Umgestaltung der Art gewinnen können. J o r d a n a (Bosquejo
1885, 172) sagt: „El Tamarao es animal muy agreste y vigoroso, que
á veces lucha victoriosamente con el bufelo silvestre en el seno de
los bosques“, allein auf solche Angaben nach Hörensagen ist vorerst
gar Nichts zu geben.

J e n t i n k (l. c. 204) hält es für möglich, dass der Tamarao ein


Bastard zwischen Bubalus bubalus und Anoa depressicornis von
Celebes sei. Ich kann mir gar nicht vorstellen, wie eine solche
Hybridisation hätte zu Stande kommen sollen. Dazu hätte die Anoa
zahlreich nach Mindoro gebracht worden sein [14]müssen, was
gewiss nicht geschehen ist. Auch ist der Tamarao eine ganz stabile,
typische und gewiss alte Form. Der Schädel 1569 des Museums,
den S e m p e r vor dem Jahr 1865 erhielt, stimmt vollkommen
überein mit denen von in den Jahren 1894 und 1895 durch
S c h a d e n b e r g erlegten Exemplaren. Dies beweist schon die
Constanz, nicht minder wie die in den Museen vorhandenen, ganz
untereinander übereinstimmenden Häute es darthun. Nimmt
J e n t i n k an, dass die Anoa früher auf Mindoro gelebt habe, und
sich dann mit den importirten Büffeln kreuzte? Welche Gründe
könnte man wohl zu Gunsten einer solchen Annahme ins Feld
führen? L y d e k k e r , der (l. c. 306) die Möglichkeit einer
Bastardirung nach J e n t i n k nicht abweist, sagt, der Tamarao
müsse noch als gute Art erwiesen werden. Wenn aber, wie jetzt,
schon viele gleiche Exemplare bekannt sind (Berlin 1, Dresden 6,
Leiden 3, Manila 2, Paris 2, durch Steere 3, Stuttgart 1 etc.), so ist
es mir ganz unerfindlich, wesshalb man noch an der Artberechtigung
zweifeln, oder einen Bastard im Tamarao erblicken wollte. Auch
vermag ich J e n t i n k darin nicht beizustimmen, dass er meint,
wenn der Tamarao kein Bastard sei, so müsse er eine neue
generische Bezeichnung erhalten, da er weder als echter Büffel,
noch als Anoa angesehen werden könne, denn der Tamarao hat, m.
A. n., genügend Büffelcharaktere, um ihn zu den übrigen Büffeln zu
stellen. Doch die Bildung einer neuen Gattung ist in diesem Fall
unwesentlich und mehr oder weniger Geschmacksache. Die
Hypothese, dass der Tamarao ein Bastard sei, halte ich für um so
entbehrlicher, als sie an und für sich wenig plausibel ist. Tamarao
und Anoa können vielmehr als Nachkommen des Sivalikrindes
angesehen werden, daher die vielfache Übereinstimmung. Die
insulare Sonderung führte zu einer Divergenz in ihrer Entwicklung,
auf Celebes zur Anoa, auf Mindoro zum Tamarao. Diese Hypothese,
wenn schon eine aufgestellt werden soll, scheint mir weit
annehmbarer. (Vgl. H e l l e r : A n o a in Abh. Mus. Dresden 1890/1
Nr. 2 p. 34.)

You might also like