Brain and agency
Descartes' error
Western thinking has been deeply influenced by Descartes’ dual substance approach, distinguishing mind and matter, hence creating the infamous ‘mind-body’ problem, which was simply meaningless, for example, in Chinese philosophy (and hence led disciplines such as medicine on a very different track in East and West). Economics is also infected by Cartesian dualism, and the notion of ‘rationality’ is, as I said in the introduction, a ‘mathematical Geisteswissenschaft’ concept. This is why economics is struggling with the newly emerging subdisciplines of behavioural economics, and, in particular, neuroeconomics. What are the alternatives? Standard economics actually considers ‘minds’, such as in the theory of expectations or in game theory. Neuroeconomics studies brains. So, we stumble into the trap of brain/mind dualism, and those who claim that minds are brains challenge standard economic approaches to rationality. If you think that minds are brains, you might even claim that economics is ‘mindless’, in order to keep economic 'normal science' running!
Objective spirit
All these difficulties implode if we adopt the Hegelian alternative: Minds are not co-extensive with brains, and not even with ‘individuals’, so Hegel’s ‘Geist’ is translated into English as ‘spirit’, which I find very misleading because it suggests as if there were a difference between ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’. That seems outrageous to most economists, but today reflects the growing consensus in the cognitive sciences: Minds are ‘extended’ or ‘distributed’ across systems of interacting human individuals, they involve social networks and artefacts. This is what defines us as human beings and makes our brains work differently than neuronal systems of other animals. The medium that enables minds is semiosis, in particular language, but also all kinds of symbolic systems, such as the arts, dance or music. Hegel called this ‘objective spirit’. This is why Hegel is so important in my theoretical edifice.
This approach is elaborated in the 2014 book with Ivan Boldyrev. There is a paper in Mind & Society that presents the argument in condensed form.
Externalism
This view is called ‘externalism’ in the modern philosophy of mind. It has extremely broad implications for economics, especially for the entire approach to individual choice. Externalism means that there is nothing ‘inside’ us that we can use as a causal explanation for our actions, such as ‘preferences’ or ‘intentions’. In fact, this is what the theory of revealed preferences also suggests, but because it relates with the doctrine of methodological individualism, economists could never reach the full conclusions. ‘Preferences’ are mere mathematical descriptions of actions. As such, they can refer to whichever entity in the real world, individuals, parts of individuals, groups etc. As Don Ross suggests, in neuroeconomics ‘preferences’ in the sense of the standard utility model apply for certain mechanisms in brains, but never for entire brains. Entire brains become operative as wholesome entities aka minds only in semiotically interconnected populations of brains.
Dual selves
In my applied work, I combine this basic theory with a ‘dual selves’ approach as the most simple model for individual decision making that has been proposed, most interestingly, by the sociologist James Coleman in terms of the dualism of ‘object self’ and acting self’. The acting self is the decision maker, the object self is the recipient of the action consequences and evaluates them. Information flows between the two are asymmetric and incomplete. For the acting self, both the body and the external world are part of its environment, and it learns from its own actions about preference patterns that are sustainable through time. In this approach, preferences are always adaptive and social, and contra Becker never stable and individual. Following Don Ross, I think that the testing ground for the alternative models of individual behaviour is consumption disorders and addiction in particular. I elaborated on this, also drawing on Peircian semiotics, in a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics:
Beginning in 2016, as one of the principal investigators, I cooperate with colleagues from Witten/Herdecke University, from Helsinki and Louvain in the ERANET-NEURON ELSA project on 'The integration of cross-disciplinary research in neuroscience and social science – a methodological case study on economic policies and the neuroscience of agency'. In this project, we apply the methodological approach of 'constitutive explanations' on tha transdisciplinary integration of neurosciences and economics, also aiming at practical consequences for regulatory design of financial markets. First results have been published in JEM on money:
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This project has resulted in a volume of papers contributed by leading researchers in the field, edited by Jens Harbecke and myself: ‘Social Neuroeconomics: Mechanistic Integration of the Neurosciences and the Social Sciences’. In the course of that work I have substantially advanced my own approach, with papers on G.H. Mead’s theory of the self in the light of modern neurosciences (Beyond dualities in behavioural economics: what can G. H. Mead’s conceptions of self and reflexivity contribute to the current debate?, Journal of Economic Methodology, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2018.1501081) and a proposal to move from a dual systems approach in behavioural economics to a dual function approach (From dual systems to dual function: Rethinking methodological foundations of behavioural economics, Economics & Philosophy, 2019, doi:10.1017/S0266267118000378). My most recent work concentrates on evolutionary approaches to brain and mind. In one paper publishes in Economics & Philosophy, I go back to the origin of my interest in these topics, when I was a PhD student, which is Hayek's study of the 'Sensory Order': Evolutionary mechanisms of choice: Hayekian perspectives on neurophilosophical foundations of neuroeconomics. Another paper in 'Entropy' explores the relationship between the physics of information and the evolutionary theory of agency: The Natural Philosophy of Economic Information: Autonomous Agents and Physiosemiosis.
Currently, I go forward with a new project. With my friend and colleague, Fred Basso of LSE, we have signed a contract with Palgrave MacMillan and start to work on developing a new paradigm of ‘Embodied Economics’ which combines modern cognitive sciences with a new theory of embodied value that would be a major alternative to both current behavioural economics and neuroeconomics.
Currently, I go forward with a new project. With my friend and colleague, Fred Basso of LSE, we have signed a contract with Palgrave MacMillan and start to work on developing a new paradigm of ‘Embodied Economics’ which combines modern cognitive sciences with a new theory of embodied value that would be a major alternative to both current behavioural economics and neuroeconomics.
© Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, Max Weber Centre, Steinplatz 2, 99085 Erfurt, Germany