The neurological material in the foregoing chapter operates within an ontology and epistemology that many in the social sciences have long fought against. At its hard scientific edge, this belief holds that human behaviour is fully explicable through close study of the operations of the brain. All social science and theory would therefore, in time, be superseded by an all-embracing explanatory vocabulary of neurophysiological brainstates. Before we can proceed to unpack such material for use in a political context, this fundamental concern must first be addressed.

It is argued that the best way to engage with this debate is to move a step up (or down) from neuropsychology, to the philosophies of the mind that are built on it. This chapter will begin with a short exposition of the materialist philosophy of mind and objections to it from social theorists. It will then go on to discuss the most recent and fullest attempt to connect political theory to neuroscience, working from a dualist perspective, William Connolly's Neuropolitics. Finally, it will be suggested that a fruitful engagement between the two spheres can be centred around two connected planes: the mind (through the functionalist philosophy of mind) and the role of the body in cognition. This approach avoids objections to strict reductive materialism, allowing neuropsychological material to be used in a thoroughly political manner.

The materialist problem

Materialist philosophy of mind generally resolves itself into two streams: reductive and eliminative. Both begin from the presupposition that the ‘common sense’ psychological ideas we deploy in everyday life are, in some way, wrongheaded. These common-sense ideas (generally, and somewhat disparagingly, termed ‘folk psychology’) include such propositions as a person who goes without liquid will tend to feel thirst; or, at a higher level, a person who has a lot to do before an important deadline will tend to feel stressed, and a person who ends a long term relationship with a partner will tend to feel some degree of loss.