Jacobson, Anne J.. Norms and Neuroscience: The Case of Borderline Personality Disorder
2022, In McWeeny, J. and Maitra, K. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Mind, New York: Oxford University Press, pp.207-220
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Abstract: Cognitive neuroscience can offer us new explanations of episodes human behavior that, unlike many explanations traditionally available, do not draw on questionable past theories arising from cultures and traditions that are in fact patriarchal. At the same time, feminists have had a number of reasons for regarding it suspiciously as, among other things, reductive and dehumanizing. In this paper, new work on borderline personality disorder provides an illustrative example of the first. It is also used in an extended argument against the second. Cognitive neuroscience is interested principally in explaining how creatures function well in their niches. It is replete with covert references to values and interests. The paper draws an important distinction between cases in which culture creates new conditions for old functions to be realized and those where it creates new functions.Comment (from this Blueprint): Jacobson's chapter is an insightful exemplar of feminist philosophy of neuroscience that charts a course between hard-naturalism of mind in science and the pure social-constructivist theories of mental disorder. Jacobson's case study of Boderline Personality Disorder (BPD) demonstrates the ways in which values may be embedded in psychiatric categories, but the phenomena can nevertheless be accounted for using normatively-informed neuroscience. Feminist philosophy of science at large is an influence here, and thus this chapter is an important bridge between this topic and our own, feminist philosophy of mind.Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!