Alexander Rosenberg

The American philosopher of science Alex Rosenberg (b. 1946) has a very black and white view of reality: anything that is not based on scientific ground is no good. His ‘faith’ (pun intended) is scientism, pure and simple. In this book, Rosenberg focuses on narratives, and historical narratives in particular. In this review, I’m going to focus on his critique of narratives in general.
Since the postmodern wave in the second half of the twentieth century, we know that narratives are ubiquitous; we use the frame of stories to interpret and express both the banal reality of everyday as well as fundamental issues; “everything is a story” has become a very inflationary expression. Well, says Rosenberg, these narratives just are bullshit, and what's more, they're harmful: “all narratives are wrong – wrong in the same way and for the same reason”.
To prove his point, he elaborates on the ‘Theory of Mind’-technique, that is the instrument we use to imagine how other people function, what their motives and desires are. It’s a method that homo sapiens has developed throughout its evolutionary history, and that allowed it to survive. It was such a success that we have completely internalized, and still use it throughout the day.
According to Rosenberg this development has come with a vengeance. Through a very detailed and technical overview of neuro-cognitive studies, he shows that this Theory of Mind constantly misleads us; because there’s no way we can be sure we’re on the right track of motives and desires of others, and that’s why we constantly make bad choices. If we have to believe Rosenberg, neurosciences even have proven that this instrument makes no sense, it even has no neurological basis at all.
The only remedy according to Rosenberg is to renounce our addiction to narratives, and resolutely turn to science, through the simple registration of events and actions, sticking to factual information and expressing that in tables, graphs, etc. It’s no wonder Rosenberg ventures into a rehabilitation of the long-discredited behaviorism.
Look, I could demonstrate extensively how fundamentally wrong Rosenberg is. But I’m going to limit myself to two points of criticism. To begin with, Rosenberg is purely misleading: if you read carefully, his critique of (historical) narratives focuses almost exclusively on the process of attributing motives and desires to others (hence his focus on the Theory of Mind); that is a serious limitation of the concept of narrative. Isn’t it strange that an intelligent person like Rosenberg does not even notice that he is constantly using narratives (in the broader sense of the word) himself, almost constantly throughout this book. How could it be different: they’re ubiquitous, remember?
And secondly, his scientism is so out of line (“science and nothing but science”) that he simply ignores entire chunks of (human) reality. Try this exercise: replace the ‘Theory of Mind’-method with "friendship" or "love", two other forms of human relating; it is quite simple to show that friendship and love in many cases are just illusions, are neuro-cognitive based on nothing, and very often are rather harmful. This critique can easily be justified with logical and rational arguments. But does this mean we just have to throw them overboard, and deny that they are fundamental to the possibility of a ‘good life’?
Well, I know it sounds derogatory, but I actually feel very sorry for Rosenberg: he is clearly someone who can only think in binary (scientific or non-scientific) terms, and as a result simply wishes to ignore fundamental parts of human reality. I’m not saying this book isn’t interesting (it absolutely is thought provoking), and I’m not saying Rosenberg is wrong all the time, but his central message just is wrong.
In my historical account on Goodreads, I explore more in depth the (ir)relevance of this book for historians: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4988720518… (meer)

(...) when I learned Rosenberg had written a book about our addiction to stories, I couldn’t resist and bought it. This book is a very different read than Darwinian Reductionism: a whole lot more accessible, written for a somewhat larger audience – although this is still no pop science book. While not without problems, it is very much worth your time if you have a serious, academic interest in human behavior, theory of mind, and narrative – Rosenberg’s scope is both broad and deep.

How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories biggest shortcoming is its title. It’s great from a marketing point of view, but it is a bit misleading. Yes, history features, as do stories, but in the end, they are a sideshow. Rosenberg uses the fallacies of narrative history to frame his central argument, which is a refutation of the most commonly held (folk) ‘theory of mind‘. He does so mainly with recent findings from neuroscience.

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One more remark before the jump, maybe a crucial one, I don’t know. Neural circuits in the brain do not have content or represent something indeed, but it is obvious that their material output (our speech, our writing, to a certain extent maybe our conscious thoughts as well, …) does. The brain lacks content, sure, but it forms content. I would think that you cannot treat the brain as a closed system, and that we need to take its extensions so to say into account as well.

I’m not sure what this means for Rosenberg’s overall theory. Maybe it is not much more than a matter of sharper definitions. Rosenberg talks about cell circuitry that does not ‘represent’ or ‘interpret’ etc. – but again, what about their output? Is that part of the brain as well? Or part of its representation/interpretation/aboutness?

Or maybe his main beef shouldn’t be with narrative history and theory of mind, but narrative history and the folk theory of mind that presupposes rational, non-causally determined agency of human actors. The neuroscience and other points raised could easily support that.

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Full review on Weighing A Pig… (meer)

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I will not get into the nuts and bolts of every argument. Aside from a general appraisal of the book, I’ll elaborate a bit on two small – yet fundamental – elements of critique, and end with a list of nuggets of wisdom I found while reading – a list that is probably of interest to those readers not interested in the general content of this book, yet who do have a healthy interest in science.

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While I don’t claim to be a specialist nor a philosopher, there’s two issues I want to bring up.

1. While I agree words matter, a part chapter 8 (the final chapter) actually revolves around semantics: there is a difference between ‘causation’ and ‘determinism’, but it is crystal clear that PKU (an inherited metabolic disease) is caused by some combination of genes. The fact that one can alter the environment to deal with this disease (change one’s diet) does make these genes less (or not fully) determining in one sense. True, genes don’t necessarily cause the disease as one can change one’s diet, but in that case, the genes do cause the need for dietary changes. In that respect, there still is determination.

Similarly, the fact that not merely one gene or group of genes causes this or that effect, but that often different genetic pathways also lead to a similar outcome, doesn’t make the overall statement that genes determine less true. It only refutes a very narrow approach to genetic determinism. A part of Rosenberg’s refutation of genetic determinism boils down to ‘it’s too complex to describe’; but that’s obviously not a valid argument.

All things considered, it seems that Rosenberg is fighting a specific, very narrow definition of genetic determinism. It’s obvious that genes are not the full story, but they – and all the molecular structures related to them – irrefutably do their part in materialistically determining biological outcome.

2. I missed Rosenberg’s stand on free will. It is the elephant in the room that isn’t addressed at all in this book. In chapter 8, on human behavior, Rosenberg only talks about genetic determinism, while in much of the rest of the book, he often talks about the more general macromolecular reductionism. Why not go the full mile, and write a chapter about the consequences of general material determinism?

I think he didn’t go there out of fear for controversy – but that’s kind of strange in the light of the rest of the book, which was/is also controversial: a large part of biologists apparently are physicalists yet anti-reductionist – something I can’t wrap my head around.

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Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It… (meer)