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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Sjakkalle (Check!) 20:44, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism of the scientific status of neuroscience

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Criticism of the scientific status of neuroscience (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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This is an essay, representing only the personal views of the article's creator. I have never seen anybody else, reputable or otherwise, criticize the idea that neuroscience is a scientific discipline. It's bizarre, actually. The article is templated as "under construction", but I'm pretty sure there are no reputable sources to use to construct a valid article on this topic. Looie496 (talk) 16:51, 11 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment This is an essay, a piece of OR, perhaps a POV fork, and quite poorly sourced, but the question it raises is not a figment of the author's imagination. It is backed by a few sources, and I know there is more literature on this topic. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 17:16, 11 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Although I don't fully understand all of it, this essay looks to argue the position that because one could take a dualist position that the mind and brain are different, many experiments in neuroscience are fundamentally flawed science. The relation of philosophical dualism to neuroscience is an important topic in neurophilosophy. But most neuroscientists are not dualists and I suspect most dualists would agree that science is being done, it is just the interpretation of results that is flawed. So I think this qualifies as WP:FRINGE in the sense of few adherents and I doubt if it is notable fringe. The article itself is an opinion piece, not an encyclopedic description of the sources of this philosophical position; it would require a full rewrite with good RS. A non-notable fringe topic and a seriously flawed article suggest deletion. --Mark viking (talk) 18:07, 11 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: The argument is not that "because dualism is possible, the neuroscience is wrong". The authors know well that neuroscientists are not dualist, they actually note that they are some kind of mix between theorist of identity, theorist of emergence, and theorist of causal perception; and this constitutes one of the main critiques. The aim of this article is actually to expose some of the criticisms on this topic (which are at least 3, as stated in my other comment), although it is incomplete, because I am working on it.--Refulgir (talk) 07:41, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • The argument could be better stated as "because the identity or emergence of the mind from the brain is assumed from the beginning, it wrong to state that their experiments scientifically demonstrates they identity or emergence of the mind from the brain"; and that "statements made about the mind are not justified empirically, because they are experimenting with the brain only, and they are not giving reason to believe that what is explained in the brain can be applied to the mind".--Refulgir (talk) 07:54, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I do feel that I can understand the material pretty well, and there are pretty solid reasons to delete the page. Most of the page summarizes work by neuroscientists who do consider it to be a science, and that is followed by a lengthy essay that is 100% uncited and WP:OR. Thus, there is hardly any sourcing for what ought to be the main topic of the page, with most cited sources contradicting what the pages says, except in the opinion of the editor who wrote it. Now, that said, as much as I like neuroscience, I like WP:NPOV too, and I'm quite receptive to having some coverage of "criticism of neuroscience", subject to WP:DUE. As Mark viking correctly says, the available source material indicates that the premise that "neuroscience is not really science" is a WP:FRINGE premise, mostly promulgated by critics of psychiatry (claims that psychiatric diseases are not really diseases, and that psychiatrists are corrupt, or whatever). However, on the more precise question of mind-body dualism, there is plenty of source material, already covered on those existing pages. It does occur to me, however, that Human brain#Cognition, the place in our neuroscience-related pages that is most directly related to the issues in the page nominated here, could be expanded (again, subject to due weight) to include some mention of the arguments against materialism and physicalism, so that might be worth about a sentence or two. That does not really add up to a merge, however. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:51, 11 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: The whole section you are referring is an exposition of the criticism made in the article "Philosophical doctrines, mental processes, and empirical observations". The lengthy section you are referring to, is actually a resume of their final criticism, which is far bigger. I tried to extract only the main ideas. I thought it would be understood that this was the exposition of their article because the section is entitled as it, but if it wasn't, this can be fixed too.--Refulgir (talk) 07:41, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:50, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:50, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: This article is focused specifically in criticism about the scientific status of the conclusions that the neuroscientists make about the mind, after studying the brain. The main idea is that those statements are not justified by their experiments, so they are not scientific when they make those statements. The main author of these criticism is Nydia Lara Zavala Ph. D. , in the articles "Neuromitología y cualidades ocultas en el cerebro" ("Neuromitology and hidden qualities in the brain") and "Doctrinas filosóficas, procesos mentales y observaciones empíricas" ("Philosophical doctrines, mental processes, and empirical observations"); which are written in Spanish. She is a well respected philosopher, specialized in philosophy of science; she teaches in the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in the Facultad de Ingeniería, and the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras.
She criticizes their assumption of the brain and mind identity, or emergence, and their attempt to make conclusions about the mind, after the research on the brain, claiming them to be scientific.
This article includes only an exposition of one of her articles, but I was planning to add the other articles, and other critiques as What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves of Raymond Tallis; and the book of Alva Noë Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness.
As you can easily note, what they have in common is that they state that neuroscience is not really explaining mind when it studies the brain. In example, Raymond Tallis says that what neuroscience can tell us is a revelation of "some of the most important conditions that are necessary for behaviour and awareness", but what it can not tell us is what are the "sufficient [conditions] for behaviour and awareness".
I understand that you can make comments like "none of the reputable philosophers I know criticizes neuroscience", and I hope that you know that not only because no one has ever said it, it is not true; so I would like to note that it would be unfair to dismiss this article just because you don't know anyone sharing the opinion.
I have referred 4 different articles, made by 3 different and unrelated philosophers, which make very similar criticism against the neuroscience. I hope this demonstrate that this is not an original research, neither an unjustified article, nor unstudied topic.
We can cooperate to write this article properly. As I said before, I was planning to make a section for each article, so the critique of each article can be explained independently, so the reader can have a general view of the problem.
I know you might not like my redaction style. That is why I put the tag asking help to improve the redaction, in hope of making the article more didactic, and less intricate.
I hope you consider these reasons.--Refulgir (talk) 07:41, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Refulgir: based on your description, the article would be more appropriately titled Philosophical perspectives on neuroscience in the context of the mind-body problem (please do not create that article; just pointing out that even if the premise was accepted it still would only narrowly apply to neuroscience as a science). Quoting Tallis whom you mention above: Moreover, there is strong reason to believe that the failure to provide a neuroscientific account of the sufficient conditions of consciousness and conscious behavior is not a temporary state of affairs. This is an inherently philosophical as opposed to scientific line of reasoning, since it is not possible to create a falsifiable hypothesis that neuroscience can never fully explain consciousness or personhood. Per our policy on balance (part of our policy on neutrality): An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. Accordingly, I think there is adequate reason to include the sources you link above with a brief summary in the article Neurophilosophy, which does overlap some with the article up for deletion here. A full merge still would be unwarranted, since there is an undue amount of coverage in the existing article. VQuakr (talk) 08:51, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@VQuakr:There are articles here that are made about criticism and contrary positions only, the best example is this one: HIV/AIDS denialism. --Refulgir (talk) 19:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Refulgir: that article does not describe HIV/AIDS denialism from a "denialist" point of view or attempt to argue that HIV does not cause AIDS. It describes the denialist movement from a neutral point of view and makes very clear that those views are at odds with the scientific consensus. VQuakr (talk) 20:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As stated before, the article is projected to be more complete, and currently I am working on it. It talks about a topic discussed by different philosophers, in different academic articles, and it is planned to expose each of those articles and their arguments. The redaction can be improved, but that is not enough reason to delete an article, as it can be fixed. It is suggested that an user better skilled in English redaction improve the article.--Refulgir (talk) 07:46, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete for many reasons:
    • Clear violation of WP:POVFORK, you cannot just create a "Criticism of X article". The only exceptions currently are those that have been size forked from larger articles, and even those are highly dubious. Also, merely renaming this article "Views on the scientific status of of neuroscience" would be insufficient as it would merely be a name change to an article that has been written from a fundamentally one-sided point of view. Any article must present both sides and not merely espouse a biased, one sided viewpoint.
    • Article violates WP:OR specifically synth. Adding more content won't remove the current authors voice and opinions from this article. Compounding the troubles with determining what is original research and what is merely a reflection of the sources is also the fact that this article lacks inline citations.
    • This article is called "Criticism of the scientific status of neuroscience", but only makes arguments concerning ability to generalize aspects of the brain to the mind. Neuroscience is an incredibly broad field, and encompasses everything from determining the developmental signals present during nerve cell development, to developing new anaesthetics. The article's title should therefore not cast a huge net over all of neuroscience, but instead be renamed something along the lines of "Viewpoints about the ability to make judgements about the mind from the brain", but even then that would be better served as an addition to the Philosophy of the mind article.
    • It is a really poorly written article. Almost every sentence should be rewritten for clarity, or could have a [dubious – discuss] template posted after it.AioftheStorm (talk) 03:29, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. There needs to be a really good reason for there to be an article entitled Criticism of foo, otherwise it becomes a coatrack. Stifle (talk) 15:04, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per Stifle and AioftheStorm. This is a soapy essay of orgiginal research, and is unlikely to form an article that is no more than a fork. Bearian (talk) 19:46, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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