Reflections on F. Baldini essay "Naturalizing the mind. Ideas for a multidisciplinary reflection on the phenomenon of hunger"
What does naturalization mean? Well, it is a tricky concept used differently in different arenas.
It is often and erroneously thought to mean applying the methods and techniques born in the contexts of the so-called ‘natural sciences’ to the so-called ‘sciences of the spirit’ or ‘human sciences’. This drift has given rise to entire research projects based on naive scientistic or positivist hopes, whereby the methods and techniques of completely different contexts have been imposed, thus abdicating the possibility of investigating a phenomenon from different perspectives. Instead of building bridges, they prefer to ignore complexity and the fact that the method must be built on the basis of the object of investigation.
Transplanting ‘effective’ methods or techniques into other fields uncritically, can only lead to paradoxical results.
We therefore reject this drift, which for us is just bad science.
In this short post, I will try to outline what we mean with naturalization taking as main reference the work done by Franco Baldini, which sees a great synthesis in the essay "Naturalizing the mind. Ideas for a multidisciplinary reflection on the phenomenon of hunger".
A definition
We agree with Domenico Parisi (Parisi, 1998), who by naturalisation means the study of a phenomenon (X) by bringing it back to nature. Naturalisation implies the use of a vocabulary and methodologies that do not separate the study of nature from the study of X, thus rejecting all forms of dualism: there is no such thing as the mind separated from the brain, nerve endings or more generally from the body (1). The concept of naturalisation in addition is opposed to that of reduction, or rather, to what Parisi always calls ‘bad reduction’. Indeed, Parisi distinguishes between ‘good’ reductionism, which is science itself and implies connecting phenomena of different types, and ‘bad’ reductionism, which denies the reality of phenomena not studied by certain disciplines. Naturalisation rejects ‘bad’ reductionism and is based on the theory of complex systems, according to which the characteristics of a system created by a large number of elements interacting in a highly non-linear manner cannot be deduced or predicted from the characteristics of the individual elements and the rules governing their interactions.
Clarifying the differences between gnosiology, ontology and objectivities with reference to naturalization
But let us delve further and follow Franco Baldini's theoretical elaboration in his essay ‘Naturalizing the mind. Ideas for a multidisciplinary reflection on the phenomenon of hunger' (Baldini, 2023). Well, we also realise how naturalisation implies the gnosiological irreducibility of one level of knowledge with respect to the other. To naturalise means to examine how one went from a world that did not contain a certain phenomenon to a world that does contain it; to truly understand what that phenomenon is, one must reconstruct this transition. It also means explaining how the cognitive levels still maintain a specific autonomy that is nevertheless relative: one level is not conceivable without the other, but it is not completely explicable without it, and this happens because there are ‘emergent properties’.
To better explain the autonomy of the different levels, Baldini distinguishes between two aspects: 1) the relationship between objectivity and ontology and 2) the relationship between different objectivities.
With reference to the first aspect, it can be said that while the ontology of nature may be unique, scientific objectivities are plural (2). While ‘bad’ reductionism confuses objectivity and ontology, naturalisation means realising this difference.
Turning instead to the relationship between different objectivities, one realises how it is precisely the process of objectification, through - for example - theory, that brings gnoseological discontinuity. Kant made it clear that it is not ontologies that are regional, as Husserl (Husserl, 1952) thought, but objectivities. Therefore, naturalisation seeks to integrate these discontinuities by building a theoretical and conceptual bridge.
To sum up then...
When we speak of naturalisation we are concerned with integrating objectivities born in different disciplines through an intermediate theorisation and conceptualisation in order to enrich the understanding of the phenomenon and recognise the gnosiological discontinuities as a result of theories.
Notes
(1) For a more in-depth look at the relationship between body and mind, I recommend reading Baldini's essay ‘Corpo e Mente. Progetto per un'antropologia psicanalitica’, where he provides a pointed critique of reductionist drifts and instead proposes an integration of the two concepts through a complexification of the concept of the body, not reduced to the organism.
(2) Any well-constructed scientific theory implies fundamental symmetries that define the gnosiological horizon. Jean Petitot, quoted by Baldini, states that symmetries impose a limitation on what the theory can know, separating the objectivity of physics from any substantialist ontology. We agree with Baldini that this statement by Petitot on physics can be generalised and extended to all sciences.
Bibliography
Baldini, F. (1990). Corpo e mente. Progetto di un’antropologia psicanalitica. THELEMA – La psicanalisi e i suoi intorni, 1990/2, 7-29.
Baldini, F. (2023). Naturalizing the mind. Ideas for a multidisciplinary reflection on the phenomenon of hunger, Metapsychologica - rivista di psicanalisi freudiana 2023/1, pp. 7-23
Husserl, E. (1952). Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, in Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie,Book II, M. Biemel (Ed.). Martinus Nijhoff
Parisi, D. (1998). La naturalizzazione della cultura. http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:OC3YQP1K5lQJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=it&as_sdt=0,5
Petitot, J. (2009). Per un nuovo illuminismo (F. Minazzi, Trans.). Bompiani.
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