2 INTRODUCTION
many neuroscientists in recent years to speak as philosophers and sociolo-
gists. The brain is also understood as itself a product of sociality, built
through experience and open to transformation.
The prevailing scientific conception of the brain, as everyone knows, is
plastic. Plasticity refers to the brain’s ability to biologically change and be
changed, not merely on a phylogenetic scale but also an ontogenetic scale. It
means that the brain is not hardwired, but rather constantly developing and
changing in response to experience. The plastic brain can be understood
as nurtured as well as natured, and thus as a mode for and a reflection of
environmental influences on the body and self. It is now possible to argue,
“Each person’s brain has a great degree of plasticity and develops uniquely
in response to the social and natural environment as the person develops
over the course of his or her life” (Glannon 2002, 250). This means, in
principle, that neurobiology is not universal and predictable, but rather
differentiated through experience. Contemporary depictions of the “social
brain” also see it as relational, “in dynamic interaction with the environ-
ment” (250). Advocates of social brain research argue that while humans
are “constituted by evolutionary biology,” they also must be seen as “em-
bedded in complex social networks,” “largely habitual,” “highly sensitive to
social and cultural norms,” and “more rationalising than rational.”^1
The plastic, social brain challenges the separation of mind and body,
culture and nature, that is characteristic of twentieth- century thought.
Throughout much of the past century, in many different fields of inquiry,
the mind was treated independently of the brain. The mind once was un-
derstood in cognitive science, for example, as a problem of abstract compu-
tation that could be modeled by computers, without attending to the capaci-
ties of a fleshly, biological organ. In the humanities and social sciences the
mind often was addressed through rationalism or psychological drives, or
in terms of symbolic interaction, cultural inheritance, socialization, or dis-
course and subjectivation. These different perspectives assumed the brain
to be fixed hardware — necessary for, but inessential to the study of, cog-
nition and culture. The brain belonged to the biological body, whereas the
mind was understood as immaterial, symbolic, intellectualist, or discursive.
A focus on symbolic representation allowed studies of consciousness, the
psyche, the self, the subject, and behavior to proceed without reference to
the brain or neurophysiology.^2 Crucially, this also enabled a more or less