Introduction
Cognitive sciences are the study of the human mind and brain. It draws from a range of disciplinary perspectives – drawing from psychology and anthropology, neurosciences and philosophy, linguistics and artificial intelligence. The mind is not only an apparatus but also constituted by discourses loaded with meaning that is embedded in a socio-historical context. Both the theory of knowing and the theory of being operate within existing power relations in society. If that is so, how do we study the sociology of mind, the sociological studies of culture and cognition and the sociology of body and sexualities? What kind of knowledge do we wish to generate as regards the sociology of mind? Is it the amodal approach of knowledge or the modal approach of knowledge that we are propelled to employ to write the sociology of mind? It is said and followed by many sociologists such as A. Cicourel, K. Cerulo et al., that it is the 1950s-60s “cognitive revolution era”: that is, the era of Classical Cognitive Science (1st wave of Cognitive Sciences) when knowledge or epistemic system was beginning to be understood as independent of perceptions and sensations. Following the death of the first computer scientist Alan Turing, cognitive scientists like Noam Chomsky, Herbert Simon, Allen Newel, Marvin Minsky et al., of the Cognitive Revolution era prescribed, that knowledge should be best assumed to function independently of human perceptual systems and human sensorium, constituting our visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory and emotional apparatuses. The idea gained traction that society, culture, institutions, and environment do not have any bearing on our cognition or in the representation of knowledge. Consequently, this approach to knowledge and cognition is reflected in disciplines like logic, applied mathematics, statistics, automata theory and theory of computation belonging to the discipline of computer sciences. This trend was also aided by the dominant doctrine of positivism, or, that of the philosopher of science Rudolf Carnap’s neo-positivism that shaped such trend in 1950-60s cognitive sciences.
Chomsky and Foucault: The Post-Cognitive Revolution Debate
A comment from Noam Chomsky’s infamous 1976 debate with Michel Foucault on human nature: justice vs power, might shed a bit of light on this discourse. To explicate how a child after his/her/their birth, derives complex systems of knowledge from partially structured, data, through subjective communications. Chomsky argues that there is an “innate mental schematism” that we humans are biologically endowed with. This innate schematism, when rendered possibly meaningful only in terms of neural networks underwriting the properties of human cognitive structure, can explain our human nature and complex language acquisition processes. Chomsky believes that “… human mind is part of nature, that it is a biological system like others, perhaps more intricate and complex than others that we know about but a biological system nevertheless, with its potential scope and intrinsic limits determined by the very factors that provide its scope.”[i] [Emphasis mine] Whereas French philosopher Michel Foucault understands human nature as a kind of “epistemological indicator.” Foucault says “I would say that the notion of life is not a scientific concept, it has been an epistemological indicator […]”[ii] forever structured in relation to diverse non-egalitarian, polymorphous power fields. That is, the mind or brain is not only a biological apparatus but in reality, has a form that resembles a discursive power-knowledge complex. Chomsky makes a rejoinder to Foucault’s enunciation of the human mind, nature or life and says that “Foucault considers the scientific knowledge of a given epoch to be like a grid of social and intellectual conditions, like a system the rules of which permit the creation of new knowledge. In his view, human knowledge is transformed due to social conditions and social struggles […]”[iii]
Broaching the “Medicalization Critique”
In the 1960s and 1970s France, especially in the post-1968 May movement, medical sociology arose in the global academia through Foucault’s critique of psychiatric medicalization thesis which is nowadays called: “the medicalization critique”. What is believed in the critique of medicalization is that in order to explicate “social relations of medicine and health in Western societies”, one has to revolt against the bio-psychiatry model of mind. Medicalization critique as purportedly upheld by Foucauldian medical sociologists such as Deborah Lupton who works against the traditional bio-psychiatric medicalization thesis that, following Diagnostic- Statistical-Manual-III, claims to believe in (1) a biological model of self where “self comes to be viewed as an encapsulated material body”[iv] and preaches that (2) psychic illnesses should be construed as “chemical imbalances” resulting in “observable behaviours”. So, what matters in the ‘medicalization critique’ of bio-psychiatry is (3) not a deeply penetrating insight into one’s personality; but (4) a “symptom relief” that is achieved by the breaking down and classification of all kinds of brain diseases and nervous disorders, with the help of the prescription of psychotropic drugs and cognitive-behavioural therapies.
Genealogy of critique of medicalization thesis
Critique of Medicalization thesis arose in Western societies and medicine initially from Marxist perspectives and liberal humanism that underlay the emergence of 1960s and 1970s social movements in the West. Lupton says that “medicalization critique” was a “repudiation of [the claims of] Parsonian structural functionalism that dominated [the epistemic spaces of] 1950s and 1960s medical sociology.”[v] Both T. Parson’s 1951-published: “The Social System” and Eliot Friedson’s 1970-published: “Profession of Medicine” were instrumental in understanding the medico-social experience of illness, during 1970s social sciences, in terms of “social constructionism”. That is, understanding the social constructionist account of medical discourses and practices in terms of projecting a critical view of bio-medical power. It has been argued several times in history that such a critical turn in the disciplinary taint of medical sociology is influenced by (1): “Marxian-influenced ‘critical theory’ with its origins in the Frankfurt school”[vi] and by (2) Foucauldian critical social philosophy. It has been argued that Foucauldian sociology is a sharp, radical departure from Classical, that is, Weberian-Marxist sociology, and thereby, sort of, post-Marxist in nature in which the historical field is not totalizable only by accounts of class struggles.
Sociologist Ronjon Paul Datta[vii] emphatically finds striking parallels between Emily Durkheim and Foucault He argues that there striking parallels between Foucault’s meta-anthropological rationality and Durkheim’s critique of anthropomorphism. Both admit of an understanding of human subjective structure, not in terms of an a priori static, transcendental conditions of the possibility of experience; but in its contingent ‘becoming’ for whom all the transcendental a priori(s) are historically specific.
On the techniques of problematization:
Critics like Irving Zola and Eliot Friedson in the 1970s, critiqued medicine being an instrument of social regulation; they spoke against medicine becoming “an institution of social control.” Thus, the movement of anti-psychiatry was getting socially shaped where the discourse of biomedicine, diminishing and constraining lay people’s capacity for cognitive autonomy, was being sidelined. (1) That there is a radical power imbalance or power asymmetry between doctors and patients; between psychiatrists and the psychiatrized; between psychoanalysts and the psycho-analysand; and (2) that human individuals should not be subject to the power constraints of more powerful others and be compromised on their autonomy, became the mantras of the “medicalization critique”. The primary strands of social constructionism were back then, and are still now, buttressed upon the frameworks of problematizing the stable, coherent and taken-for-granted categories of bio-medical reality and bio-medical knowledge. People working in the medical profession started becoming socially and politically conscious of differentiating between the disease model and the illness model of mind. Sociology of mind and sociologies of illness and health perspectives started contesting the disease model of traditional/normative bio-psychiatry. The hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to mental health issues believes in the lived embodied experiences of the patient and seeks to make sense of, or interpret, their/her/his disease or illness or medical conditions.
Further on, Heidegger, to explicate the mind as an embodied agent or being-in-the-world, broached the differentiated ideas of two kinds of bodies: (1) the measurable, bio-physical body (Körper) and the finite, lived body (Leib). Heidegger prescribed that since the biophysical body, that is, the realm of the corporeal, is measurable or objectively quantifiable, it “stops at the skin”[viii] whereas the lived body, being “ec-static”, intersects with our concrete life-world. The phenomenological approach to mental illness; that is, this hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to mind, conforms to the “perspectives of the lived body” wherein the phenomenological evidence of illness is most often neither objective nor quantifiable.
As opposed to the representalist-cognitivist model of biological psychiatry, the thesis of ‘social construction of medicine’, I argue, speaks for a sociology of mind that is based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach. That sees the mind as a ‘discursive formation’[ix]: an interpretive construction that emphasizes the situated-embodied life of the patient. In this kind of particular hermeneutic dialogue between the psychiatrist and the patient, both the doctor and the patient lose themselves in a communicative ‘to and fro’ speech movements and gravitate towards a “self-understanding” (Sichverstehen) through a singular-nominalist hermeneutic openness. I argue that this entire wave of critiquing the pretentious and deceitful medico-scientistic power structures regulating the epistemic spaces of psychiatric medicines arose to regular discourses due to Foucault’s cult-classic ‘Madness and Civilization’. But, here nevertheless we need to remember that doctors or psychiatrists in Foucault’s oeuvre are not merely “figures of domination” or subjugating/dominating/constraining agents but also people who slowly become “links in a set of power relations” in discursive medical practices, passing through the discursive/relational power-field. Thus, according to Foucault, the pastors in a Christian or Catholic church, or the psychiatrist/doctor in a hospital are not only political (con)figurations of domination; but also, those through whom power passes in modern society.
Mental Illness/Disorder as a discursive/cultural phenomenon:
The human mind cannot be only seen as a biological system, but embedded in its deeper socio-historical contexts. Thus, opposing the traditional representable cognitivism of the 1950s-60s “cognitive revolution era”, Foucault explicated the idea of mind or soul, through his research into the curious and meticulous admixture of disciplines like psychoanalysis; archaeology; sociology; bio-psychiatry; biomedicine; existential phenomenology; and history and philosophy of science etc. He proclaims in ‘Madness and Civilization’ that madness or mental illness in the classical era; that is, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, instead of being designated as a change in the mind and the body, was construed in terms of a “delirious discourse”[x] which did not conform to the ‘unity of language’ thesis. But deep down under the “agitated forms” of madness or mental illness, has always existed a certain kind of weakness or vulnerability subject to certain kind of power structures.
Foucault argues that if minds or spirits are subjected to “irregular movements”, “if spasms and [hysterical] convulsions so often occur in nervous illnesses, it is because the [nerve] fibre is too mobile, or too irritable or too sensitive to vibrations; in any case, it lacks robustness.”[xi] Thus, Foucault hints that the explication of the mind is contingent on certain kinds of processes of subjection to power structures, which accordingly, socially construct the field of knowledge. This particular discourse of mind highlights that underneath the linear causal explanations of the world, lies a neural physiology of the human mind that often eludes causal thought, Thus, we can argue that all the social aspects of the mind, reveal that there is a terrain of “polyvalent causality” associated with our human minds.
References:
Aho, K. (2008). Medicalizing Mental Health: A Phenomenological Alternative. Journal of Medical Humanities, 29, 243-259.
Basu, S. (2023). The Discursive Apparatus Between Haraway and Foucault: Locating the Formal Features of Discursive Space. Philosophical Papers: Journal of Department of Philosophy, NBU, 19(1), 274-300.
Bury, M. R. (1986). Social Constructionism and the Development of Medical Sociology. Sociology of Health and Illness, 8(no. 2), 137-169.
Chomsky, N., & Foucault, M. (2006). A Philosophy of Language (1976). In N. Chomsky, M. Foucault, N. Chomsky, & M. Foucault (Eds.), The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature (pp. 117-139). United States, New York: The New Press.
Chomsky, N., & Foucault, M. (2006). Human Nature: Justice Vs Power (1971): A Debate Between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. In N. Chomsky, M. Foucault, N. Chomsky, & M. Foucault (Eds.), The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature (pp. 1-67). United States, New York: The New Press.
Datta, R. P. (2008). Politics and Existence: Totems, Dispositifs, and Some Striking Parallels between Durkheim and Foucault. Journal of Classical Sociology, 8(2), 283-305.
Foucault, M. (1988). Doctors and Patients. In M. Foucault, & M. Foucault (Ed.), Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (R. Howard, Trans., pp. 159-198). New York: Vintage Books Edition.
Foucault, M. (1988). Passion and Delirium. In M. Foucault, & M. Foucault (Ed.), Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (R. Howard, Trans., pp. 85-116). New York: Vintage Books Edition.
Foucault, M. (n.d.). Doctors and pa.
Lupton, D. (1997). Foucault and the Medicalisation Critique. In D. Lupton, A. Peterson, & R. Bunton (Eds.), Foucault, Health and Medicine (pp. 94-112). London and New York: Routledge.
[i] See (Chomsky & Foucault, 2006)., pp. 120-121
[ii] See (Chomsky & Foucault, Human Nature : Justice Vs Power (1971) : A Debate Between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, 2006)., pp. 6-7
[iii] See (Chomsky & Foucault, A Philosophy of Language (1976), 2006)., p. 132
[iv] See (Aho, 2008)
[v] See (Lupton, 1997)., p. 95
[vi] See (Bury, 1986)., p. 139
[vii] See (Datta, 2008)., pp. 287-289
[viii] See Zollikon Semninars by Martin Heidegger quoted in (Aho, 2008)., p. 257
[ix] The concept of ‘discursive formation’ is a Foucauldian import; has been explicated first in Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge (1966) and re-theorised in (Basu, 2023)
[x] See (Foucault, 1988)., p. 99
[xi] See (Foucault, Doctors and Patients, 1988)., pp. 159-160
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Shirsankar Basu is a PhD candidate at the School of Cognitive Science, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.