Situating Neuroscience in the Context of Transcendental Realism/Materialism and

Non-Reductive Naturalism
Cengiz Erdem
Inferential Rationality
The question I had in mind as I was in search of funding for a research project that would
enable me to write a book comparing the ontological and the epistemological modes of
being and thinking in and through which the subject constitutes itself as object of
knowledge in contemporary social and natural sciences was simply this: How does it
further our understanding of the subject to situate neuroscience in the context of
transcendental realism/materialism and non-reductive naturalism? The answer I have in
mind to this question is that ideas are objects we the subjects are embedded in and
embody at once. This ontological/epistemological principle is the point of departure for
a broader research into the developmental possibilities of a new mode of enquiry which
would put philosophy and neuroscience into a more interactive relationship with one
another. This initial act of thought upon the matter at hand already problematises the field
of study and changes the co-ordinates, thereby causing a new mode of the correlation of
being and thinking manifest itself as that which is not-I. This not-I is what Freud calls the
Unconscious, Lacan calls the Real, and Hegel calls the Spirit, which is not only driven by
the dialectical process constitutive of the methodological differences between natural
sciences and philosophy, but also driving my intention to sustain the conditions for the
possibility of a generative interaction between the ontological and epistemological modes
of being and thinking.
As is well known since Kant, the instruments (software and hardware tools) social and
natural scientists have at hand to investigate natural and cultural phenomena play a very
significant role not only in the analysis, but also in the production of the object/subject of
study itself. This study is a venture into the relationship between the manifest and the
scientific images of humanity designated by Wilfrid Sellars and Alain Badious
materialist dialectics of the human animal and the immortal subject of truth. The rigorous
disjunction introduced by Sellars and Badiou between sentience and sapience will be
investigated in conjunction with the contemporary thought embodied by and embodying
transcendental realism and materialism, taking into consideration the emerging
technologies within the Neuroscientific field in the light of Gilles Deleuzes
transcendental empiricism. These explications will then be followed by a reconstructive
rendering of Michel Henrys theory of the subject as immanent affectivity and the role of
representation in its self-constitutive process which associates the algorithmic dynamics
of the neuroplasticity softwares as well as the programs visualising the neuronal
interactions and even analysing the data provided by the synaptic network in all its
complexity.

Statement of Intent
My aim is to produce a book in the way of contributing to the contemporary debates
between Analytic and Continental philosophies of mind, cognition and language in the
context of neuroscience. With the recent developments in neuroscience, computational
linguistics and neuroplasticity softwares it seems that Platos, Descartes and Hegels
claims as to the dual nature of being/thinking, mind/body, and self/other turned out to be
more sensible and less unrealistic than many philosophers thought they were. By way of
problematising the correlative mode constituting the triadic relationship between the
dualities of being/thought, consciousness/brain, and subject/object I intend to draw a
cognitive map tracing the contours of the current theories concerned with connecting
natural sciences and humanities in general, and neuroscience, philosophy and
psychoanalysis in particular.
I shall therefore attempt to establish a triadic correlation constitutive of a mode of being
and thinking subsumed under a non-reductive and non-physicalist account of the
relationship between reasons and causes, intentions and actions, inferences and
references, concepts and percepts.
Mode of Enquiry
The nature of this study requires an inter-/trans-/multi-disciplinary and mixedmethodological attitude which goes beyond the opposition between merely conceptual
and merely empirical approaches. It is based on a mode of enquiry which takes its driving
force from a gap that opens paths to a new field in which various perspectives interact
and constitute a theoretical practice in order to initiate the emergence of a new subject out
of the old paradigm. To achieve this one must not only pose new questions, but also
provide new answers concerning the workings of the human brain and its interactions
with the world surrounding it, out of which the concepts of mind, consciousness,
affectivity and intentionality emerge.
What Neuroscience lacks is a cultural context, likewise what humanities and social
sciences lack is a natural basis. A non-reductive and non-physicalist interaction between
nature and culture, organic and inorganic, empirical and conceptual, epistemological and
ontological, transcendental and immanent, the objective and the subjective can break out
of the closure not only of humanities, but also of social and natural sciences in the way of
establishing the link which has come to be considered missing between the mental
phenomena and the physical entities, as well as the analytic and continental philosophies.
Conceptual Context
This project can be summed up as the investigation of the relationship between concepts,
percepts and affects in contemporary analytic and continental philosophies of mind,

cognition and language in a psychoanalytic and neuroscientific context. To name more

exactingly the subject of this project, we shall define it as an investigation concerning the
concepts of consciousness, intention and agency in the emerging field of
neurophilosophy. If one is to embark on a journey within this new field one should be
prepared to take upon oneself the difficult task of demonstrating the existence of
something, or the non-existence of nothing, immanent to and yet transcending the
physical realm as well, in turn acting upon the matter which has caused it to emerge and
become a vital force with material effects in the first place.
If we keep in mind the Parmenidean and the Cartesian axiom that thought is being, it
becomes clear why, in his article on Plato, Kant and Sellars, Brassier tries to answer the
question of how to orient ourselves towards the future in accordance with that which is
not. Against the idea that thought and being are one and the same thing, Brassier claims
that thought is non-being rather than being. Put otherwise, the correlate of thought is nonbeing rather than being, being and non-being are entwined.
While Brassier openly asserts that he endorses a transcendental realism by way of
engaging in a rigorously affirmative reading of Wilfrid Sellars take on the subject in
comparison with Thomas Metzingers self-model theory of subjectivity, Adrian
Johnston takes it upon himself the task of refuting John McDowells theory of first and
second nature, proclaiming a transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity as a
Phenomenology of Spirit for today, in the light of the recent developments in
neuroscience, that is. I would like to introduce to this ongoing discusson the concept of
affect and the role of agency in relation to the formation of concepts and percepts in and
through a close analysis of the effects of the subjects relation to pain and suffering as
well as joy and pleasure in its own self-constitutive process. It is at this point that I intend
to bring in Thomas Metzinger who is known for his innovative research and novel output
on the subject. That said, although Metzinger is an eminent neuroscientist and
philosopher of cognition, he reserves no room at all for affects in relation to
consciousness and agency in his books on the self as no one and the subject as non-being.
Lacking a sufficient theory of the subject as an agent acting in accordance with rational
thought, or a rational self-consciousness as Sellars would put it, a conception of
subjectivity as agency in the service of truth as manifestation of a dynamic real,
Metzinger remains trapped in Platos cave with his phenomenal self-consciousness,
thereby failing to give an account of how more than material subjectivity emerges from
matter itself. What is required today is a conception of self-consciousness which also
includes the concepts of affectivity and agency within the field of neurophilosophy, or a
non-reductive naturalism as John Mullarkey puts it.
Regulative Idea
In a world wherein conscious desire is absent, one cannot know what is to be done, what

can be done, and how to do it. The reduction of consciousness to physical matter deprives
humanity of the possibility of rationally intended change. The idea that intervening in the
workings of nature solely by way of that which nature presents independently of culture
is to fall into the trap one sets for oneself. It is not only necessary, but also possible to
develop a theory of self-conscious subjectivity as being aware of ones embeddedness
within ones own time and space. Thought can mean something only in so far as it is
situated within an already given context indeed, but for thought to mean something
worthy of the name of truth it also has to leave the old paradigm behind, change the cooordinates, and perchance initiate a new course of continuity in change separate from but
in contiguity with the myth of the given at the same time. The emergence of a more
than material subjectivity arising from matter itself is indeed a consciously desirable
drive to sublate the very mode of being and thinking in which the subject is embedded
and embodies at once.
It is a matter of realising that theory and practice are always already reconciled and yet
the only way to actualise this reconciliation passes through carrying it out and across by
introducing a split between the subject of statement (the enunciated content) and the
subject of enunciation (the formal structure in accordance with this content). In Hegels
work this split is introduced in such a way as to unite the mind, the brain and the world
rather than keeping them apart. It is a separation which sustains the contiguity of these
three constitutive elements of consciousness, not only as concept but also as percept and
affect. The presumed dividedness of philosophy into the analytic and the continental
theories of mind, language and cognition is not a division between different modalities of
the same thing, this division is rather between something and nothing, and therein resides
a gap that splits as it unites the physical and the metaphysical in a fashion analogous to
the synapses connecting and disconnecting the neurons in the brain.

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