This will be a short post as I’m in transit to Brown for a talk on Tuesday, but I just finished RS Bakker’s Neuropath, and felt the need to mention it to spare myself the disquiet it’s generated in me (think about how Naomi Watts saves herself and her son in The Ring). This novel is not for the faint of heart. Indeed, I’m half tempted to sue Bakker for plunging me into a first-order existential crisis. It is also a novel well worth reading. I don’t know that I agree with Bakker (though I also don’t know that I have an argument against his claims), but I do think he is posing the right questions regarding the significance of neurology for who we are, ethics, and politics. This novel has really wrecked me. I do wonder, however, why we have consciousness or a sense of self at all if it’s just an illusory output? What evolutionary function do these things serve? Are the just spandrels? Readers will find an excellent review of Bakker’s novel by Shaviro here. While this is one of the most intellectually thought-provoking novels I’ve read in years, I wouldn’t recommend it to tender hearts.
November 5, 2012
Larval Subjects . 
November 6, 2012 at 12:09 am
Levi –
Where are you speaking at Brown? Is it open to the public? Thanks,
Jeff
November 6, 2012 at 4:16 am
Weird I had been working on an essay on his Disciple of the Dog thriller for a week… haha! strange:
http://darkecologies.com/2012/11/05/r-scott-bakker-disciple-of-the-dog-or-how-a-cynic-bites-his-own-ass/
November 6, 2012 at 4:26 am
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=698 – this might be the link you meant to attach to ‘here’ there. ^.^
November 8, 2012 at 12:40 pm
In some sense it sounds like the culmination of the Evil Demon thought experiment in Descartes’ meditations … is it Foucalt who argues that the demon undermines Descartes’ alleged ‘clear and distinct ideas’, leaving only the menace of Renaissance madness?
The culmination of neurotechnologies seems to force the issue, as if the Evil Demon intruded upon Descartes’ meditation, saying No Sir, your clear and distinct ideas could never be supreme … your God is but a sad little thought …
As for the details of the neurobiology, for what it’s worth, since I’ve thought about these arguments in various forms for years, quantum biology research (DNA, Microtubules) is beginning to offer at least a plausible way forward in the face of neurotech capacities for behavior modification.
The central tenets of Neuropath cast an amusing pallor over Roger Penrose’s notion of non-computability (based on his reading of Godel’s theorem), which argues that what we see as deterministic brain events could be the consequence of a selection among possible states taking place at smaller scales of spacetime. In Neuropath’s pale light, such mathematical strategems are nothing more than the squirming of pitiful worms. Brilliant! Terrifying!
Philosophically, the best source I know of for analyzing determinism and constructing a novel form of Humeanism is Bernard Berofsky (of Columbia University). Berofsky wrote an influential book on Determinism for his PhD, plus a magisterial work called Liberation from Self on the fate of personal autonomy in the face of determinism. His latest book published in 2012 attempts to construct a Humean system that attacks the implicit claims that attend determinism (i.e. the concept of physical laws) and can be found in e-book format through most university libraries.
I agree that Neuropath’s affective disambiguation is haunting stuff.
November 9, 2012 at 9:55 pm
“The sound of this table scraping the floor fails adequately to render the floor, and is a very limited use of the table. Therefore there is no scraping of the floor by the table, and no sound.”
November 30, 2012 at 1:18 am
A fiction is a thought experiment. Read that way, Bakker’s novel is perhaps an experiment that fails.
Neil conducts scientific experiments in the sense that he repeatedly tests his theory of neurology: if person X is rewired to do act Y, X will do Y. Repeatedly these tests succeed. Repeated success strengthens the credibility of his theory, which reduces human motivation to neurological processes that may be manipulated however one wishes.
The fictional thought experiment requires an account of Neil’s motives consistent with this theory. Evidence that Bakker’s fiction is sensitive to this requirement appears in various accounts of Neil’s motives that make a stab at such consistency.
But none of these stabs address the core issue. On the one hand, Neil is governed by neurological processing, like everyone else. On the other hand, Neil has commanding knowledge of neurology, as is evident in the success of his experiments. What is it, then, in neurological processing that enables it to achieve the knowledge of itself exhibited in Neil’s character?
The answer would seem to be “nothing.” This processing seems to be incapable of this kind of knowledge. Neil’s character exhibits capacities that go beyond what neurology is capable of explaining. The thought experiment fails.