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My paper is composed of three parts. In the first, I consider some connections between phenomenology, neuroscience and politics, examining the context of recent interest in these connections and offering some critical comments. On the basis of those criticisms I suggest an alternative departure in relating phenomenology and neuroscience to politics, via ontology. Since it is my intention to think from the perspective of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the Flesh here, I devote the second part of the paper to sketching in some of the relevant background to his thinking, focusing in particular on the way he finessed the mind-body relation. These two parts constitute a necessary preamble, but it is in the third and final part of my paper that I develop a distinctive argument. Having presented Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the Flesh as a non-dualist ontology of generative immanence, I consider four ways of figuring the political that might express the way this ontology unfolds in collective life. The aim as I present it here is to achieve a thick theory of intersubjectivity and its mode of becoming, thereby avoiding some of the criticisms I made earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuro-theology (a science of religious experience) has deepened our understanding of the religious brain but the research inevitably runs into many of the classical philosophical problems associated with any study of human consciousness. One of these problems is what philosopher John Hick (2006) has called the hard problem of consciousness. If we are going to understand something about the causes and content of religious consciousness we must devise a framework that will adequately address the hard problem. This paper gives a brief overview of Sam Harris' and Andrew Newberg's research on the religious brain, as well as an introduction to the hard problem and concludes that the problem materializes because the question of consciousness is ill-posed by materialism and dualism. The paper concludes that a plural aspect conceptual framework known as Complex Adaptive Systems Theory (CAS) with its emphasis on dynamical emergence allows researchers to escape reductive materialism without resorting to dualism. Instead of turning to dualism or reductive materialism researchers can turn to complexity and emergence to frame studies in neuro-theology. Emergence provides a basis for a position promoted by Nancy Cartwright (2004) known as causal pluralism which is promising in helping to explain the complex relationships between the brain and the mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Images, as literal or metaphorical idols, have consistently been accused of having enormous power over human minds, as in Plato's parable of the cave. Contemporary politics are often characterised as 'image politics', in which style matters more than substance, and personalities more than policies. Yet, what are the political images under whose sway electorates are said to be held? How can images be theorised in a way that does not assume the power they allegedly have (in contrast, for example, to Baudrillard)? The paper will begin by distinguishing visual political pictures from non-visual political images through a brief discussion of Sontag's essay on the Abu Ghraib photographs. It then explores conceptions of political images by scholars of political marketing (such as Scammel), to relate them to marketing notions of branding (Klein). Such connections generally trigger alarm that electorates are thus subject to the persuasive power of marketing, rendered passive by their rhetorical force. However, considerations from contemporary neuroscience about thinking in images rather than or as well as in language (Antonio Damasio) can dispel some of the concerns about the assumed passivity of citizens in the face of political images. The paper closes with an example of a failed political image (John Major's image of Englishness) to demonstrate not only that such images frequently do not have much power, but also that critical political thinking can be conducted by means of contesting (in this case, multicultural) images. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to unpack and historically contextualize the claims made by those applying discoveries in neuroscience to political philosophy and practice. We attempt to deflate some of these claims first by critically analyzing them, then bringing them into dialogue with conversations about the brain that took place in the nineteenth century. Central to the paper is an exploration and refutation of the claim that the theory of the embodied mind renders Cartesian dualism obsolete and thus demands a reconsideration of the whole cannon of Western philosophy. Additionally, we tease out the power relations that circulate in models of the body, attempting to establish a link between the rise of cognitive science and changes in the mode of economic organization. Ultimately, our aim is to urge political theorists and political scientists to critically consider the broader cultural context and history of neuroscience before embracing and applying it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to link political science more closely with research in other sciences is illustrated by concrete issues in which governmental actions need to integrate information from such fields as epidemiology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, or sociology. To illustrate, this paper explores two complementary reasons why public policy makers need to consider how exposures to lead and other toxic chemicals change brain chemistry and human behavior. On the one hand, regulation of toxins and correction of their effects may have enormous cost-benefit advantages as responses to social problems like learning disabilities and violent crime. On the other hand, effects of environmental neurotoxins challenge traditional perspectives on health and behavior, indicating shortcomings in perceived benefits from or responses to public policy interventions. From a theoretical point of view, because behaviorists in the tradition of B. F. Skinner treat "contingencies of reinforcement" as the primary determinants of human choices, policy enforcement has traditionally focused on socio-economic incentives. In many urban settings, however, lead and other toxins interfere with brain chemistry, health, and normal behavior. Since individuals can differ in vulnerability to toxins due to genes (e.g., lactose intolerance) as well as to social factors (e.g., poverty and old housing), these findings both increase the importance of reducing environmental pollution and reveals biological obstacles to lawful behavior. Such interactions between "nature" and "nurture" are illustrated by empirical findings in four areas of relevance to political behavior and public policy: 1) Synergistic Effects of Pollution with Multiple Toxins from Mine Tailings and Superfund Sites; 2) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; 3) Asthma; and 4) Violent Crime. Recent research thus provides evidence that linking the life sciences to human behavior can benefit both our understanding of many public policy issues and indicate more effective strategies for implementing policy decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea is to draw upon cultural theory and neuroscience together to think about the compositional and creative dimensions of political thought and the layered character of political life. By the compositional dimension I mean the way the activity of thinking itself helps to shape and consolidate body/brain connections, forming corporeal habits and visceral drives. By the [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature of both political science and political theory, increasing attention has been devoted to the role of emotion in political judgment, and a number of recent treatments have claimed that emotions are physiological events which both complement and underlie conscious cognition and reasoning. The contemporary turn, in various dimensions of political inquiry, to the findings of neuroscience manifests significant conceptual and theoretical problems, but, in at least two related respects, it also represents a challenge to a concept of democratic judgment. The attempt to locate judgment in nondiscursive aspects of human behavior has been characteristically associated with programs of social control, and there are elitist implications attaching to the claim that it is possible to find a naturalistic trans-conventional ground for explaining and critically assessing political judgment. Ludwig Wittgenstein's treatment of emotion provides an important theoretical antidote to the often unreflective enthusiasm for embracing the idea that emotion is a neurological phenomenon, and his work suggests that the language of democracy is closely tied to the democracy of language, that is, to the theoretical autonomy of discursive performance. Emotion is an aspect of judgment, but it is a public rather than subliminal phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In politics specifically and society generally people often make decisions on behalf of others or experience the results of decisions made on their behalf. In exactly what manner is this important class of decisions different from traditional situations in which people make decisions on their own behalf? How are people's behavioral and thinking patterns altered by shifting from personal to representational decision-making? Previous neuroscience research on the related behaviors of altruistic giving and social reward provide some expectations for brain activation patterns, but to date no work specific to representation has been conducted. We explore the neuroanatomy of representation with set of brain scans (fMRIs), recently completed in cooperation with the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine, that were designed to make it possible to identify any distinct brain activation patterns occurring when representational as opposed to standard (self) decisions are being made. Our preliminary results indicate that activation of the reward processing circuitry of the brain (striatum) in response to reward is very similar regardless of whether subjects are acting for their own benefit or as representatives. What is distinctive in the representation role is the activation of the insula, a brain region previously associated with social tasks and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first academic discipline was philosophy. There were no political scientists or neuroscientists in the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Since then the sciences have divided and subdivided, until each has become a more or less narrow field of study withstudents rarely overlapping their specialties. However, occasionally, overlaps occur and prove useful because new information from one field of study can impact another field. For example, findings about the biological causes of mental illness have virtuallysupplanted the old Freudian view creating concerns in the criminal justice arena about how the mentally ill should be treated under the law. Furthermore, within a discipline old dogma is replaced by new findings that force a change in viewpoint. Recent findings in the study of genomes have forced revision of our concept of DNA. What all of this means is that academics (and others), who hope to contribute to their fields, need to be mindful of how the findings in other fields could impact upon their own. Thus, the 2007 American Political Science Association conference theme is crossing disciplinaryboundaries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]