The lead speaker was Professor James Q. Wilson of Pepperdine University, but I was far more interested in the perspectives of Sally Satel and David Brooks.

Satel seemed to hold the view that in spite of the gee-whiz factor of fMRI, we’re a very long way from being able to “see” free will in the human brain. As I’ve written here several times in the past I tend to agree: fMRI is in grave danger of being over-hyped.

Satel also had a very interesting perspective on the medicalization of addiction. From her standpoint, substance-abuse is qualitatively different from other medical diseases (such as cancer for example) in that its behavioral outcomes (which in the case of addiction are in fact the manifestation of the disease) are uniquely sensitive to external sanctions and rewards. I’m not so sure of that, but I’d like to see the data. So she wants to attach a free-will component to addiction.

David Brooks has talked to a lot of neuroscientists and is clearly a very quick study–we seem to find that in many University of Chicago alums. On the other hand, I find his conclusions in the area of brain sciences a bit glib. Just because the human brain is very complex doesn’t mean we can delineate the principles or rule-sets which allow things like mind to emerge. For Brooks, the brain’s complexity pretty much precludes us every finding out whether free will is an attractive illusion or, in some dualistic manner, entirely separate from the brain’s biology. Brooks also gives too much weight to unconscious processes in the brain–missing the point that the phenomenon of consciousness itself (the “hard problem”) is in fact the central driver for much of cognitive neuroscience.

I find David much more compelling on the economy and politics than on neuroscience. Yesterday evening on the Jim Lehrer hour, I found myself agreeing with him.

Jim