Sci & Educ (2012) 21:1507–1526

DOI 10.1007/s11191-012-9447-7

Between Homo Sociologicus and Homo Biologicus:

The Reflexive Self in the Age of Social Neuroscience

Andreas Pickel

Published online: 26 February 2012

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract The social sciences rely on assumptions of a unified self for their explanatory
logics. Recent work in the new multidisciplinary field of social neuroscience challenges
precisely this unproblematic character of the subjective self as basic, well-defined entity. If
disciplinary self-insulation is deemed unacceptable, the philosophical challenge arises of
systematically bringing together neurological, psychological, sociological, and anthropo-
logical dimensions of analysis in one framework such as dynamic systems theory; and of
finding bridging concepts such as memory, social cognition, and cultural scripts that can
facilitate the cross disciplinary study of the reflexive self. Relying on the systemic phi-
losophy of science developed by Mario Bunge, this paper takes some steps in this
direction.

1 Introduction

[T]he ongoing self is an occasional state, emerging only to the extent that the constituent mechanisms
are recreated in the continual flux of psychophysiological processes. (Tucker 2005, p. 220)
The ‘I’ is just a convenient word, representing the centralized sense of a global event, but with no true
center, ultimately just the thalamocortical system with its massively distributed, parallel apparatus,
built slowly over evolutionary time to give motile creatures an advantage. (Llinas quoted in Moss
2003, p. 20)
Self-reflection may be, in one sense, an epiphenomenon—an extraordinary side-effect of the crucial
ability to read other minds. (Happe 2003, p. 136)
The assumptions about individual and society widely held in the social sciences and
humanities have in common the belief in the individual as a unified self—a belief
confirmed by our subjective experience. Both methodological individualism and holism
rely on this assumption of a unified self for their explanatory logics. The self in most
sociological and anthropological perspectives is assumed to be constituted socially or
culturally, through roles, norms, values, beliefs, or practices. To varying degrees, the

A. Pickel (&)
Global Politics, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada
e-mail: apickel@trentu.ca

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individual’s motivations and intentions are accorded explanatory status—a high degree in
methodological individualist approaches such as hermeneutics or rational choice,1 a low
degree in holistic approaches such as structural functionalism, social linguistics, or
Marxism. But the individual as a basic entity in reality and as a fundamental unit of
analysis is rarely called into question. Even in much of psychology, whether behaviorist or
cognitivist, the individual as a basic unit of analysis is as such unproblematic, though of
course what exactly the individual mind is composed of and how it works is controversial.
The significance of recent work in the new multidisciplinary field of neuroscience is that it
challenges precisely this unproblematic character of the individual self as basic, well-
defined entity.
True, social scientists themselves have injected an important sense of time and con-
tingency into our understanding of the social constitution of the modern individual by
radically historicizing the individual’s capacity for reflexive deliberation.2 A number of
books written since the 1970s by such authors as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck (see
e.g. Beck et al. 1994) maintain that the sociocultural conditions of late modernity give
reflexivity a qualitatively new role in the formation of self-identities and the capacity for
individual rationality (overview in Adams 2003). A similar historical argument can already
be found in accounts that date the earlier historical emergence of a modern reflexive self in
the origins of modernity itself, from the sixteenth century onward (Hall and Jarvie 1992).3
The term ‘‘reflexivity’’ was coined in the seventeenth century (Tauber 2005), referring to a
new mode of introspection and self-awareness, perhaps best epitomized by Descartes’s
categorical ‘‘cogito ergo sum.’’ This reflexive foundation of the modern self was called into
question in the nineteenth century by Hegel and others who argued that the foundations of
the modern individual lie not inside but outside of itself, in ‘‘others’’, society, and history.
Both classical rationalism and radical relativism are explicitly founded upon a reflexive
understanding of the self that is accompanied by new conceptions of society, agency, and
temporality (Wittrock 2003)—conceptions that made it possible to envision the conscious
creation of social institutions (Wittrock 2000; cf. also Elias 1994). According to Giddens
et al., the ‘‘reflexive project of the self’’ has reached its current historical culmination as
‘‘contemporary actors have gained enormous control (reflexivity) over their selves and
their environments.’’ (Jeffrey Alexander 1996, p. 135)
Neuroscientists, by contrast, seem to support the opposite conclusion by calling into
question ‘‘from below’’ the very concept of the individual as a unified, reflexive self. By
firmly tying (and in some cases by trying to reduce completely) mind to brain, and by
placing the human species in a comparative evolutionary context, the individual person, the
self, appears in a completely new light. This paper will present the challenge posed by
social neuroscience to the conceptions and assumptions about the reflexive individual
widely held in the social sciences and humanities. Of course, the social sciences have been
challenged before by the biological sciences,4 though, as in the recent case of sociobiology,
with little success. Ignoring such reductionist claims on the social is therefore a plausible
response to the alleged challenge most recently posed by social neuroscience, and this

1
For the surprising overlap between the two methodologically individualist approaches, i.e. rational choice
and hermeneutics, see Bunge (2003, ch. 13.).
2
Few sociologists, as Callero (2003) has shown, have systematically examined the nature of the human self.
For a recent significant exception, see Archer (2003).
3
A classic study of the formation of the historical individual is Elias (1994); see also Elias and Schröter
(1991).
4
See e.g. Benton (1991), Sharp (1992).

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seems to be the general stance adopted by social scientists.5 However, as this paper will
argue, there is more to this challenge than yet another radical reductionism. In fact, John
T. Cacioppo (2002, p. 820), a leading figure in the field, underscores ‘‘the complementary
nature of social, cognitive, and biological levels of analysis and how research integrating
these levels can foster more comprehensive theories of the mechanisms underlying com-
plex behavior and the mind.’’ The central question for social scientists then becomes
whether psychological and biological levels of analysis are more than marginally relevant
to their own work, and if they are indeed significant, how their relevant insights could
possibly be integrated into their work. The paper will proceed in four steps. First, it will
present novel arguments and insights from social neuroscience that seem to have a sig-
nificant bearing on conventional conceptions of the self. The second section will show how
theoretical assumptions employed at one level of analysis—whether biological, psycho-
logical, sociological—may be undermined by theoretical and empirical results on self and
reflexivity gained at another level of analysis. The third section will step back and sketch a
broad ontological perspective on reflexivity and the human self. In light of these philo-
sophical considerations, the final section will discuss some initial attempts at integrating
social, psychological and biological mechanisms, in particular with respect to memory,
social cognition, and cultural scripts.

2 The Challenge of Social Neuroscience

Methods and principles from the neurosciences have offered valuable additional information from
which to draw inferences about social and psychological processes [including:] an appreciation for
the complexity of the mechanisms underlying social behaviors … [and] conceptualizations of social
phenomena ranging from attachment, morality, and social prejudices to social cognition and decision
making. (Cacioppo 2002, p. 821)
Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists have worked together since the early 1990s on
problems of individual perception, attention, consciousness, and memory. More recently,
some neuroscientists have abandoned the simplifying assumption that any effects of the
social world, if relevant at all, could and should be considered separately. Instead, social
neuroscientists attempt to examine how phenomena and processes at different levels of
analysis interact or constitute each other.6 The paper begins by reporting results of social
neuroscience on human reflexivity that appear to be of some import for the social sciences.
What is it that distinguishes human reflexivity from self-consciousness or awareness in
other animals? Some biologists have suggested that all living organisms distinguish ‘‘self’’
from ‘‘non-self’’ (Lowenstein 2002; Smith 2005), if only in the most primitive ways of
reacting to signals from their environment. It therefore makes sense, as Bekoff and Sherman
(2004) have suggested, to assess knowledge of self in different species in terms of a con-
tinuum, or degrees of consciousness. The continuum ranges from a relatively simple

5
CSA Sociological Abstracts for the period 2000–2009, keyword ‘‘social neuroscience’’, generated seven
citations. Three in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, one each in Journal for the Theory
of Social Behaviour and Social Justice Research, one in the journal Druzboslovne Razprave (in Slovenian),
and one book review. See, however, Cerulo (2010).
6
Eighty-three foundational articles in social neuroscience are collected in Cacioppo et al. (2002). For further
articles reviewing the field, see e.g. Aue et al. (2009), Lieberman (2007), Cacioppo and Visser (2003),
Cacioppo (2002). A new journal, Social Neuroscience, was launched in 2006. However, the new field, which
includes many cognitive psychologists and some developmental psychologists, barely links up with social
psychology (Dovidio et al. 2008; Todorov et al. 2006), let alone other areas of sociology (see fn. 5).

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perceptual process of ‘‘self-referencing’’ involved in discriminating based on phenotypic

characteristics such as odour or appearance, to the more complex cognitive process of ‘‘self-
awareness’’ that allows an individual to distinguish its own body from that of others, to the
most evolved process of self-consciousness that allows an individual to think of one’s self
and behavior in relation to others. Not surprisingly, primates seem to have the highest degree
of self-consciousness among non-human animals (Seyfarth and Cheney 2000), though some
other highly evolved animals such as elephants and dolphins also display reflexive behaviors
that indicate empathy, jealousy, and an awareness of death (Braden 2003).
What seems to make human reflexivity fundamentally different from the self-con-
sciousness of other higher animals is the evolution of so-called episodic memory. ‘‘The
notion here is that even before episodic memory emerged in human evolution, humans
were capable of acquiring and making use of knowledge about their personal experiences,
in the absence of autonoesis [or sense of subjective time], and possibly without a precise
temporal ‘tag.’ The same scenario holds for nonhuman animals. They too are capable of
learning about and from experiences of the past, but without autonoetic awareness that they
are doing so’’ (Tulving 2002, p. 7). Humans’ sense of subjective time, Tulving suggests, is
not a biological necessity, but an ‘‘evolutionary frill,’’ though one that is necessary for
‘‘mental time travel’’ (ibid., p. 2). A sense of subjective time, autonoetic awareness, and
self are the three central components of episodic memory which compose a ‘‘neurocog-
nitive (mind/brain) system’’ (ibid.). What distinguishes this hypothetical system from other
theoretical schemes in psychology is that it is presented as more than just a useful or
plausible conceptual scheme about memory. Rather, the system is claimed to exist as a
separate structure/function in the brain, a concept that has a ‘‘home, even if still a hidden
one, in the brain’’ and thus is part of objective reality (ibid., pp. 11, 19).7 This claim, as we
will see, is crucial because it rests on the ontological assumption that mind is an emergent
property of the brain, and as such not an independent ontological level of reality.
Neuropsychological approaches to the self tend to be reductionist in so far as they
search for the neural or brain basis of psychological phenomena. In other words, they are
not content with conceptualizations and classifications of mental processes that have not
been linked to underlying brain processes.8 The question whether this reductionism is
possible and desirable will be considered in the next section. At this point in the discussion,
let us make the assumptions about the self held by neuroscientists more explicit. An overly
simplistic portrayal of neuroscientists searching for the precise locations in the brain of
complex mental processes such as reflexivity would be inaccurate since there is an
increasing recognition that most complex mental processes cannot be mapped in this
fashion. ‘‘It is now clear that rather precise and focal topographical maps, with a high
degree of functional specificity, exist within sensory and motor systems. On the other hand,
more complex cognitive processes increasingly appear to entail multiple neural operations
mediated by distributed, interacting cortical-subcortical circuits.’’ (Berntson 2006)
However, in clear contrast to widely held assumptions among psychologists and sociol-
ogists, Don Tucker (2005, p. 220) argues, ‘‘the self cannot be assumed as an organizing
principle for all mental or neural processes. Rather, it forms a context for only those processes

7
A similar claim about the key importance of memory as ‘‘the essense of the self’’ is made by LeDoux
(2003). Conway (2005) presents a conception of the self based on two memory systems in the human brain,
an older one shared with other species, and a more recent one, knowledge based and conceptually organized
providing a context for the older system. The key point in all these views is the evolution of a neural
memory system that makes the human self possible.
8
See, for example, Eric Kandel’s (2006) radical reductionist strategy to learning and memory.

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that operate when constituent self mechanisms are activated … [D]ynamical psychophysio-
logical systems are indeed dynamic, such that the embedding context of the ongoing self is an
occasional state, emerging only to the extent that the constituent mechanisms are recreated in
the continual flux of psychophysiological processes.’’ From a neuropsychological perspec-
tive, the sheer number and complex functional interconnections between mental modules and
their contents raise the question how the brain/mind manages to unify them into a coherent
self. Michael Gazzaniga asserts that the mind just makes it up by creating a fictional self.
‘‘98% of what the brain does is outside of conscious awareness’’ (Gazzaniga 1998, 21; quoted
in Moss 2003, p. 3). Attributing mental states to others, as Francesca Happe (2003, p. 136)
argues, is the hallmark of reflexivity: ‘‘Self-reflection may be, in one sense, an epiphenom-
enon—an extraordinary side-effect of the crucial ability to read other minds.’’
Regardless of evolutionary origin, it is clear that self-awareness has a highly dynamic
character and may perhaps be better viewed as a process.9 ‘‘Awareness of ourselves (or,
rather, a representation of some aspect of our so-called selves) … [appears] often only
fleetingly in the cognitive foreground, depending on the attentional resources that we are
motivated to devote to aspects of our selves in any behavioral circumstance’’ (Gusnard
2006, p. 54). Thus, importantly, subjective experience goes beyond self-awareness—the
latter being a temporary state of the former. Recent findings on the ‘‘implicit self’’ (Devos
and Banaji 2003), that is, subjective experience outside conscious awareness, have
potentially very significant implications for our understanding of intentional behavior and
rational action. The working of implicit and explicit conceptions of self, while not
unconnected, can be clearly distinguished. Thus a mechanism active in implicit self-
concepts is that ‘‘a minimal social categorization is sufficient to automatically or uncon-
sciously activate positive attitudes toward self-related groups and negative or neutral
attitudes toward non-self-related groups (Devos and Banaji 2003, p. 184).’’ Importantly,
however, this basic mechanism of ingroup preference formation can be moderated by a
more evolved mechanism based on broader sociocultural evaluations of social groups that
assigns one’s own group a higher or lower rank in the general social hierarchy. The latter,
higher neurobehavioural mechanism can suppress or bypass the former, lower mecha-
nism.10 However, even such ‘‘ideological bolstering can occur outside conscious aware-
ness, and this prevents perceivers and even targets of prejudice from questioning the
legitimacy of social arrangements’’ (ibid., p. 196). This result seems to be compatible with
certain sociological reductions of self-consciousness to supraindividual structures of one
kind or another (culture, class, gender, etc.), but in contrast to them provides for specific
neuropsychological mechanisms underlying these dimensions of reflexivity.
In sum, from an evolutionary biological and neuropsychological viewpoint, the
reflexive self is firmly lodged in the brain, though not in any easily identifiable location.
Reflexivity is a product of evolutionary changes in the human brain, possibly as a
byproduct of other functional changes, some of them (e.g. empathy) shared with other
highly evolved animals. Perhaps the most crucial function of the human brain with respect
to reflexivity lies in its episodic memory system which makes possible a subjective sense
of time, or historical consciousness. Our sense of self itself, however, emerges in a more

9
A similar argument with respect to the conceptualization of habitus is proposed in Pickel (2005). See also
Greenberg (1996).
10
Cacioppo (2002, p. 824) offers the following illustration: ‘‘If an individual unknowingly touches a hot
flame, the individual reflexively withdraws his or her hand from the painful fire. If, however, a person hears
a child on the other side of a wall of flames, he or she can override this defensive reflex and push through the
flames.’’ Of course, a variety of courses of action are conceivable between the two extremes.

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complex interaction between explicit or conscious selves and implicit or unconscious

selves. The major underlying claim of the research reviewed in this section is that
reflexivity can only be understood if a neural perspective is applied. There are no mental
processes that are not at the same time neural processes. It is therefore untenable to
postulate the self as more or less exclusively culturally constituted. Some complementary
assumptions about reflexivity can be found in developmental perspectives.
The literature discussed up to this point has called into question the very concept of an
individual self in light of the new realities that are being discovered by brain science. In the
process, neuroscientists can sound positively postmodern in their refusal to accept a
simplistic (linear, essentialist, rationalist) understanding of the self so widely held in the
social sciences and humanities.11 Operating as a unified self on a daily basis, looking back
on a more or less eventful history of personal development and looking forward to a future,
most of us would want to ask whether there really is no neuroscientific evidence for such a
self. Gusnard (2006, p. 54) seems to hedge when she answers: Yes, if one includes ‘‘altered
states of awareness as well as dynamics (deactivation as well as activation) of information
processing functionality of personal salience to the individual subject.’’ Antonio Damasio
(quoted in Moss 2003, p. 19) offers the following answer: ‘‘The minimal self must be
individual, singular, stable, continuous across time, and inclusive of the totality of per-
ceptual experiences of the organism, even as the organism experiences change across time.
In this sense, all organisms have such a minimal, implicit self, ‘implemented in biological
tissue’, and serving as a foundation or precursor for more explicit forms of self as may arise
in self-conscious creatures.’’ Body awareness, especially of body movement, seems to
serve as a foundation for a sense of self that draws together the emotional and rational
aspects of consciousness into a seamless whole.12
The reflexive self is not only the product of biological evolution, but also of individual
development. This is where the assumptions about the self held in the social sciences and
humanities are most directly affected and come under challenge. For socialization is, in
part, a developmental psychological process. Self-consciousness in an infant—the idea of
‘‘me’’—emerges sometime during the middle of the second year of life. It coincides with
the onset of social emotions, in particular embarrassment. Michael Lewis (quoted in Moss
2003, p. 14) argues that emotion provides the physiological-psychological impetus for the
emergence of the explicit self. At later developmental stages, as work in human devel-
opmental psychology shows, ‘‘increasingly complex capacities for self-awareness are
achieved … that parallel increasing competences in perceptual discrimination, categori-
zation, and self-regulation’’ (Gusnard 2006, p. 42). Crucially, historical consciousness, that
is, a sense of subjective time, does not emerge until age 4 (Tulving 2002, p. 7) and
develops further during adulthood. In old age, a person’s sense of time often weakens or, as
in Alzheimers patients, gradually disappears, eventually destroying self-consciousness.
Two further developmental dimensions of particular relevance for reflexivity should be
mentioned here, both directly linked to social and cultural processes. The first concerns the
development of ‘‘cultural selves,’’ that is, of conscious, self-reflective individuals with a
specific cultural identity. The process is both universal and culturally specific. ‘‘[C]hild
rearing is everywhere designed to make the child’s experience of important lessons con-
stant, to link those lessons to emotional arousal, and to connect them to evaluations of the

11
In addition, sociologists inspired by phenomenology or symbolic interactionism, as well as individual
social theorists focusing directly on the self, have moved beyond any simplistic treatment of the individual -
Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, and Habermas are some of the most obvious examples.
12
A fundamental insight stressed already by French philosopher Merleau-Ponty (1962/1945).

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child’s goodness or badness. […] Constancy of experience alters synaptic connections to

grant the pattern of their firing especially high-resolution, so that the lessons to be learned
are unmistakable ones.’’ (Quinn 2003, p. 145) The content of the lessons, that is, the rules,
norms and behaviours to be internalized by the child, are culturally highly variable. What
is not culturally variable, however, are the basic neuropsychological mechanisms of
learning and self-development. ‘‘Cultural models of child rearing, thus, exploit the neural
capacities of the children so reared, to achieve a result, human adulthood, that could not be
accomplished by the human brain alone’’ (ibid.)
The second developmental dimension of particular relevance for reflexivity has to do
with the ‘‘multiple self’’ that seems to contradict many conventional assumptions about a
unified, consistent self or ‘‘rational individual.’’ Thus the same individual will act differ-
ently, that is, apparently follow different, often mutually inconsistent values, norms, or
behaviours, as he lives through different situations. Some, such as rational choice theorists,
deal with such inconsistencies by assuming them away through postulates such as ‘‘tran-
sitivity’’ (Green and Shapiro 1994), others label them ‘‘rationality deficits’’ (Elster 1989)
but don’t really explain them. As Walter Mischel notes, while ‘‘conspicuously absent in
most personality psychology, such patterns are portrayed in virtually every character study
in literature’’ (Mischel 2004, p. 6; cf. also Hermans 2001). ‘‘When closely observed,
individuals are characterized by stable, distinctive, and highly meaningful patterns of
variability in their actions, thoughts, and feelings across different types of situations,’’ what
Mischel (2004, p. 8) refers to as a kind of ‘‘behavioral signature of personality.’’ ‘‘Once the
outlines of such personality signatures become clear, the route opens to exploring the
psychological processes and the social and biological histories that underlie them, and the
mechanisms through which they are maintained or open to change’’ (ibid., p. 14).
In sum, a developmental perspective brings out some additional assumptions about
reflexivity. Two in particular were noted. The first concerns the interplay between uni-
versal neuronal maturation processes and specific cultural socialization processes. The
second set of assumptions concerns the development of complex patterns of selves which
are compatible and link up with both sociocultural and neuropsychological processes. The
question of linkages between and integration of different levels of analysis and reality with
respect to reflexivity will be revisited in Sect. 4.

3 Reductionisms: Biological, Psychological, Sociological, and Anthropological

As science enters the 21st century, scientists are in a position to move beyond simplifying
assumptions … to develop more comprehensive theories of mind and behavior. (Cacioppo 2002,
p. 820)
Identifying hidden and possibly faulty assumptions in particular approaches and theories is
one of the fundamental methods of rational criticism. Such criticism can appear in various
forms. Take the critical rationalism of Karl Popper and his followers, which considers the
refutation of knowledge claims13 to be the major force of scientific progress.14 Or take the
self-conscious anthropological critique, which as part of the analysis seeks to expose all of
13
Popper is perhaps best known by his falsificationism, i.e. the view that scientific progress is the result of
the falsification of empirical hypotheses. However, Popper’s epistemological fallibilism extends beyond the
empirical to the whole range of metaphysical assumptions contained in any theory, all of which, while not
empirically falsifiable, remain debatable and refutable. See on this Pickel (2006, ch. 2), cf. also Bartley
(1984).
14
Bunge (1996b) has dubbed it Popper’s ‘‘logical negativism’’.

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the assumptions it brings to its fieldwork. What this section proposes to do is another
variant of criticizing hidden and possibly faulty assumptions. These are the simplifying
assumptions made, respectively, by biological, psychological, and sociological disciplines
studying the problem of reflexivity in order to deal with areas of reality that lie outside of
the discipline’s claimed expertise but may have a significant bearing on their own
conceptualizations and theories.15
Methodologically and theoretically, reinforcing disciplinary boundaries is probably the
simplest way of maintaining a sharp focus on one’s established definition of the problem. It
implies that one can ignore the work of neighboring disciplines since their area of
expertise, to the extent it is considered relevant at all, is dealt with through the simplifying
assumptions of one’s own paradigm. Admittedly, many problems and areas of reality
studied by individual disciplines are not so evidently multidisciplinary as is the problem of
reflexivity and therefore may not usually pose challenges to basic assumptions. However,
for any disciplinary approach to reflexivity and the self, such a choice would be difficult to
defend.16 Since reflexivity is studied in natural science, social science, and humanities
disciplines, no individual approach or theory should be able to claim any a priori immunity
for its simplifying assumptions.17
We begin our survey of problematic assumptions with the recent work of neuroscientists
on reflexivity. Neuroscience itself is a relatively new research field rather than a classic
academic discipline. Its research programs (plural) are multidisciplinary, as is the field’s
composition. Nevertheless, there are plenty of problematic assumptions in neuroscience.
One of the most important is methodological: reflexivity can be fully explained by neu-
roscience.18 This optimistic view is supported by new evidence generated as a result of
impressive advances in brain imaging technology. The classic mind–body dualism on
which many conceptions of reflexivity and the self rest has been seriously undermined.
One alternative to this dualism is a materialist monism according to which mind can and
should be reduced to brain. If successful, this would eventually make psychology as a
separate discipline redundant, and only a psychology that has joined the field of neuro-
science would survive. As Moss (2003, p. 23) writes: ‘‘Some neuroscientists consider the
‘artifact’ of the self an epiphenomenon, a mere illusion,’’ confirmed, as most materialis-
tically inclined neuroscientists believe, by ‘‘the deep automaticity and unconscious nature
of mind and behavior.’’ Eric Kandel in his research program, for instance, details the
‘‘neurophysiological and neurochemical changes that underlie simple, but general, memory
and learning processes, including operant conditioning, classic conditioning, habituation,
and sensitivization’’ (Moss 2003, p. 15). As Kandel himself puts it: ‘‘There is a ‘dogma’ in

15
It needs to be acknowledged that it is to some degree problematic to speak about ‘‘disciplinary
assumptions’’ about reflexivity, since theories and approaches especially in the core social science disci-
plines, are quite diverse and often fundamentally at odds with each other. Nevertheless to continue speaking
in terms of (mainstream or dominant) disciplinary conceptions of the self is a simplifying assumption made
for the particular purposes of the present analysis.
16
At a minimum, a serious attempt at acknowledging relevant results of other disciplines could be
expected. More ambitiously, attempts could be made to integrate such results from other disciplines into
one’s own work, which in some cases leads to the establishment of whole new research fields. There is a fair
number of examples of recently emerged, integrative (rather than more narrowly specialized) new research
fields, among them social neuroscience, cross-cultural pragmatics, international political economy, and
historical sociology.
17
A full argument in support of this disrespectful stance is not possible here. See, however, Bunge (1998).
18
A similar, unsuccessful biological reduction of social-psychological phenomena was at one time
advanced by sociobiology, one of several failed reductionist research programs (Bunge 2003, pp. 154–156).

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biology that deep biological processes have a limited set of solutions, and if you under-
stand them in any context, they can be applied broadly (quoted in Moss 2003, p. 15).’’
What is wrong with this kind of biological reductionism? In our context, it is the
assumption that reflexive deliberation ultimately is nothing but neurophysiological process.
What is problematic is not the claim that there is a neurophysiological substrate of
reflexivity, but that it is ‘‘nothing but.’’ Such a biological reductionist view of reflexivity
simply assumes what it cannot prove, that is, that there are no distinct psychic and social
processes affecting the neural level. This far-reaching assumption, however, remains
tenable only as long as one is willing to rule out in an a priori fashion evidence from other
disciplines and fields that have documented and theorized precisely those processes. Social
neuroscientists, as we have seen above, have therefore rejected this simplifying
assumption.
Psychologists have to fend off not only neurobiological reductionists, but also socio-
logical reductionists, traditionally the major challenge. They do so, not surprisingly, using
their own immunization strategies. A growing number of psychologists who have aban-
doned the mind-brain dualism seem to consider cooperation with or joining the field of
neuroscience as the best way forward. While not denying that mind is materially contained
in the brain, they defend psychological conceptions with the argument that even if mind is
nothing but an emergent property of the brain rather than a separate reality, psychological
systems and processes cannot be reduced to the neural level. As long as neuroscience
is still far from able to explain basic psychological phenomena in its own terms, the
psychological remains a fundamental level of analysis. However, particular conceptions of
the self have to confront new evidence calling into question some of their own underlying
assumptions. As Tucker (2005, p. 220), quoted earlier, has argued, ‘‘the self cannot be
assumed as an organizing principle for all mental or neural processes. Rather, it forms a
context for only those processes that operate when constituent [psychophysiological] self
mechanisms are activated …’’ Basic psychological constructs such as arousal, as Berntson
(2006, p. 8) remarks critically, continue ‘‘to be employed in the psychological literature,
partly because of [their] utility, despite overwhelming evidence against either the gen-
eralized nature of arousal or the existence of a uniform neural activating substrate.’’ The
same is true for such fundamental psychological concepts as intention, appraisal, and
emotion. ‘‘For many contemporary psychologists,’’ Kagan (Kagan 2003, p. 19) points out,
‘‘psychological types resemble biological species as traditionally defined. That is, a
psychological category is defined by a set of fundamental features (for example, a
depressed mood).’’ Assumptions and constructs of this kind are coming increasingly under
fire from the neurosciences which show that particular psychological phenomena con-
ceptualized as sui generis are the result of previously unknown underlying neural mech-
anisms that strongly suggest the need for reconceptualization.
Sociologists don’t need to be reminded of a longstanding criticism concerning
psychology’s reductionism with respect to the social:
It is usually assumed, without particular argument, that knowledge about the social meaning of a
stimulus depends in part on knowledge about the basic motivational value of a stimulus, but not
conversely. The assumption is that we could impair social knowledge while sparing knowledge
about more basic emotional and motivational value; but that impairing knowledge about basic
motivational value would necessarily entail impairments in social knowledge. What is puzzling
about this picture is not merely that it is reductionist, but rather that we assume the reduction to
proceed in one direction rather than another. Why not suppose that social cognition is the basic
adaptive package, and that motivated behavior in general draws in part on that? (Adolphs 2006,
p. 280)

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1516 A. Pickel

What is notable is not the basic criticism that psychology ignores social factors, but that the
criticism in this instance is leveled from the viewpoint of neuroscience rather than
sociology or anthropology. Representatives of the latter disciplines, in particular symbolic
interactionists, have of course argued for quite some time that the self is constituted
primarily by social processes, a fact that psychologists frequently ignore (Moessinger
1999). Thus Hermans (2001, p. 270) argues that ‘‘the universalist perspective, which
typically treats self and culture as ‘variables’, implies a self-exclusive conception of
culture and a culture-exclusive conception of the self.’’ Most damaging for a self-avowed
universalist conception of the individual is what linguist Anna Wierzbicka (2005, p. 594)
has identified as psychology’s ‘‘unconscious reliance on constructs derived from the
English language and from the unconscious absolutization of Anglo culture.’’ The last two
criticisms—misdirected universalism and unconscious Anglocentrism—are also highly
relevant with respect to typical simplifying assumptions in sociology and anthropology.
Sociology’s assumptions about reflexivity and the self are to a large extent implicit. In his
instructive review article on ‘‘The Sociology of the Self,’’ Peter Callero (2003, p. 116)
notes that ‘‘it is still generally true that within U.S. sociology, most research on the self
remains the relatively localized disciplinary concern of those working in the tradition of
symbolic interactionism.’’ Here the assumption is that ‘‘the self is first and foremost a
reflexive process of social interaction,’’ and that ‘‘[r]eflexivity is not a biological given but
rather emerges from the social experience’’ (ibid., p. 119). As Callero (ibid., p. 121) sums
up the consensus in sociology today: ‘‘Whether phenomenal or discursive, fragmentary or
unitary, stable or transitory, emotional or rational, linguistic or embodied, the self is
assumed to be a product of social interaction.’’ Explicit sociological reductionism thus can
easily be combined with a range of different assumptions about the self. What these
assumptions have in common is that they are usually unconnected to social psychological
and neuropsychological work and instead tend to be speculative, simplistic, and
unchecked. In the way they are presented by Callero, they would also seem to be
mutually inconsistent.
Sociology takes a backseat to anthropology when it comes to the study of reflexivity.
The ‘‘cultural self’’ is a central focus for the discipline that has traditionally defined itself
through the concept of culture. The concept of culture itself, however, has become
increasingly and fundamentally contested, and with it any substantive conception of spe-
cific cultures to which selves are linked. As noted earlier, there are some surprising
parallels in the way that neuroscientists and postmodern critics of the culture concept reject
any conceptions of a unitary, stable, and rational self, even though they arrive at these
similarities via vastly different routes. The biological reductionism of neuroscientists, as
we have seen, pays no attention to social or cultural dimensions of reality. By contrast,
postmodern critiques of the self practice a sort of cultural reductionism, or perhaps more
accurately, a multicultural reductionism that is oblivious to biological realities.
[A]n increasingly interconnected world society requires attention to dialogical relationships between
different cultures, between different selves, and between different cultural positions in the self (e.g.
multiple or hyphenated identities). Cultures can be seen as collective voices that function as social
positions in the self. Such voices are expressions of embodied and historically situated selves that are
constantly involved in dialogical relationships with other voices. At the same time these voices are
constantly subjected to differences in power (Hermans 2001, p. 272).
The problem with this set of assumptions is not that multiculturalism as a contemporary
phenomenon is overrated or of minor political importance. Rather, the problem is that the
underlying conception of culture has become highly ambiguous and ill-defined. As Anna
Wierzbicka (2005, p. 588) argues:

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The Reflexive Self in the Age of Social Neuroscience 1517

[I]t is true that ‘modern urban multiculturalism’ does not fit in with the concept of ‘culture’ as a
stable complex of ways of living, thinking, and doing things, linked with a place and transmitted
across generations from older to younger people living in the same place. But it is hard to see how
this ‘urban multiculturalism’ could be understood if not in terms of a ‘mixing’ of different ‘cultures’,
in the classic anthropological sense of the word.
As Mary Besemeres (2002, p. 277; quoted in Wierzbicka 2005, p. 592) observes, there are
‘‘serious limits to the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic understanding afforded by the
post-modern theoretical approach, which tends to affirm the category of cultural hybridity
in a way that elides actual differences between languages and cultures.’’
There are, in short, two basic cultural reductionisms in contemporary anthropology,
both problematic. The ‘‘old’’ conception of culture with its ‘‘essentialist’’ view of different
cultures is a limited conceptual construct that admittedly highlights some aspects of human
experience while ignoring others, being rooted in a particular, often Anglocentric, point of
view. In this sense, the attempt of some anthropologists to apply reflexivity to their own
work in order to expose such conceptual perspectives as based on contestable assumptions
is in principle laudable. In practice, however, it is highly problematic. Not only are we as
reflexive beings capable of being deceived and of deceiving others, we are also quite
capable of self-deception. Applied reflexivity cannot escape these problems. As Salzman
(2002, p. 810) sums up his critique:
Reflexivity as self-positioning and self-reporting, in depending on realistic self-awareness and honest
disclosure, is a rather pre-Freudian idea, assuming, as it does, that all of our critical personal
parameters are available to the consciousness, and that people present themselves with no ulterior
motives. These assumptions seem to be unwarranted.
This section has illustrated the common practice of—biological, psychological, sociolog-
ical, and anthropological—reductionism. In its radical versions, reductionism rules out
a priori the relevance of other types of reality for its own subject-matter. In its moderate
version, other types of reality are in principle acknowledged through the—often implicit—
use of simplifying assumptions about these realities that themselves remain immune from
the findings of other disciplines specializing in their study. There is a range of serious
philosophical arguments in support of both radical and moderate reductionism. The
philosophical agenda of this paper, however, is integrative with respect to theories of
human reflexivity and the self. Integration, even if it is considered a worthwhile goal,
requires an overarching perspective in which to anchor a general explanatory framework as
well as conceptualizations capable of bridging between specialized fields focusing on
different dimensions of reality. The remainder of the paper is devoted to these questions.

4 An Ontological Sketch of Reflexivity

The conceptions of reflexivity and their underlying assumptions so far examined do not
share a common ontology and epistemology. This certainly helps to explain the general
tendency to ignore the results of other disciplines and research fields, even if they are
potentially quite relevant for one’s own work. These results are not easily compatible and
may indeed even be incommensurable in the ways they are currently formulated. A
strongly idealist conception of reflexivity (widespread in sociology and anthropology) is
inconsistent with a strongly materialist one (as in the neurosciences). This is true not only
for the problem of reflexivity, but also for others such as ‘‘emotion,’’ which is receiving
growing attention in a whole range of disciplines (surveyed in Turner and Stets 2006). In
order to be able to speak meaningfully about such matters as compatibility and

123
1518 A. Pickel

material substructure immaterial, emergent properties

(1) neurological entities (2) psychological manifestations

brains cells cognition
synapses emotion
neural modules memory
brain structuresl functional subsystems
networks of modules behavioural signatures

(3) selves
unitary self
multiple selves
implicit selves
conscious selves
historical selves
developing selves
dialogical selves
fragmented self

(4) sociological entities (5) social representations

families discourses
networks semiotic systems
organizations symbolic codes
societies habitus
civilizations rituals

Fig. 1 An ontological sketch of reflexivity

incommensurability, I will try to make explicit what ontology and epistemology underlie
key concepts such as reduction(ism), emergent property, level of analysis, and types or
dimensions of reality employed earlier in this analysis. The structure of this discussion
follows the systematization provided in Fig. 1.
Figure 1 distinguishes five levels of analysis that we have encountered in our discussion
of reflexivity. While reflexivity may best be conceptualized as a process at all these levels
rather than a thing or the property of a thing, we are here interested in the entities and
phenomena involved in reflexivity, and their ontological and epistemological status. The
self—as product and producer of reflexivity—is at the centre of the various conceptions we
have discussed. The ontological status of the self has traditionally been that of a thing or
entity, whether material or ideal, specifically of a unitary entity. Under the critique of both
neuroscience and postmodern philosophy, this unitary self as concrete entity has been
deconstructed, leaving fragments of the self with uncertain ontological status. However,
neither a simple conception of a unitary self nor that of a fragmented self is satisfactory. In
fact, different disciplines and fields are developing a variety of conceptualizations of the
self, from implicit selves to dialogical selves, that represent a more complex reality. The
ontological status assigned to these conceptions ranges from neural materialism’s ‘‘self as a
temporary state of brain activity,’’ to sociological idealism’s ‘‘self as constructed and
reconstructed in social and cultural dialogues.’’ A conception of the self of course depends
on the reality to which a discipline or field assigns primacy. In strong reductionist for-
mulations, these primary realities would be, respectively, neural entities (1), psychological
manifestations (2), social structures (4), or cultural symbols (5).

123
The Reflexive Self in the Age of Social Neuroscience 1519

The position I take rejects any kind of radical reductionism, but at the same time it also
rejects the view that each of the four dimensions19 can simply be seen and studied as self-
contained areas of reality. Ontologically, I adopt a materialist conception of reality: there is
only one reality, albeit several levels of organization—physical, chemical, biological,
social and technological—each with its own systems, mechanisms, and laws. While each
level of organization emerges from the one below it, it cannot be reduced to that or any
other level. The reason is that each level of organization possesses emergent properties,
that is, qualitatively new characteristics that are not contained in the properties of the lower
levels of which it is composed. This makes the ontology proposed here different from
materialisms that do not grant irreducible higher level properties to material systems.
Following Mario Bunge, this ontology is referred to as emergentist materialism.
A monist materialism would not grant ontological status to psychological manifesta-
tions (2) or cultural symbols (5). Each would be reduced to its material basis—biological
entities and social structures, respectively. In the ontology proposed here, in contrast, both
psychological manifestations and cultural symbols are considered real. That is, they dis-
play emergent properties relative to the material systems in which they arise. As a result,
they qualify as real systems with their own properties even though they are not material
systems. They are real, non-material systems (minds, cultures), but they do not exist
separately from ‘‘their’’ material systems from which they emerge. In other words, no
brain, no mind; no society, no culture. In short, no dualism. This ontology has specific
implications for the study of reflexivity, which brings us to epistemology.
In order to be causally efficacious, real systems do not have to be material. That is,
psychological states such as the feeling of embarrassment affect neuronal networks in
particular ways that alter the self. Social representations such as culturally coded preju-
dices against minorities affect the social structure of the groups in which they are played
out. Being not simply caused by their material substructure as emergent properties, but in
turn causing changes in that substructure has a crucial epistemological implication. We
have to know how non-material systems function in order to understand how material
systems work. The functioning of minds and cultures, in other words, transcends the
functioning of the brains and societies from which they emerge. This does not make minds
and cultures ontologically separate, but it does make them epistemologically distinct. It
implies that they have to be studied on their own terms. However, they cannot be studied as
if they were independent ontological entities, the way philosophical idealists and dualists
would. That is, minds, while being real, are always the product of brains, even when mind
affects the brain. Social representations, while real, are always the product of social
entities, even when they shape such entities.
Thus we cannot study reflexivity as if it existed only on the biological level, or only on
the level of social structure. We have to take into account psychological and cultural levels
as distinct levels of analysis. Neither one is a separate ontological level, but both are
distinct epistemological levels. The distinction between ontological and epistemological
levels is crucial for our purposes because it allows us to break free from dualistic con-
ceptions of reality which lead to faulty problem formulations along the lines of ‘‘how are
mind and brain causally linked’’ or ‘‘how are culture and society causally linked’’? They
are, ontologically speaking, not separate entities that can be described as distinct variables
with causal relations between them. Ontologically, they are identical. Brain does not cause
mind, but mind is (an emergent property of) brain. Society does not cause culture, but

19
Or five dimensions if the self is assigned independent ontological status—which is of course at odds with
the view presented here.

123
1520 A. Pickel

no . . . theory of reflexivity without . . . assumptions

biological theory of reflexivity neurophysiological and psychological assumptions

psychological theory of reflexivity neuropsychological and social-psychological assumptions
social-psychological theory of reflexivity neurosocial and cross-cultural psychological assumptions
cross-cultural psycholog. theory of reflexivity sociolinguistic and sociological assumptions
sociological theory of reflexivity cross-cultural psychological assumptions
philosophical theory of reflexivity all of the above

Fig. 2 What partial theories of reflexivity need to acknowledge

culture is (an emergent property of) society. The epistemological distinction between levels
of analysis when studying brain or society allows us, on the other hand, to address psy-
chological and cultural phenomena that a strict or monist materialism would dismiss as
epiphenomenal.

5 Rethinking the Reflexive Self: Frameworks and Bridge Concepts

On the basis of these philosophical considerations, we can now return to the discussion of
disciplinary assumptions about reflexivity. In particular, as Fig. 2 illustrates, we can
specify in general terms what type of assumptions a particular discipline or field studying
the problem of reflexivity will be forced to make—implicitly or explicitly—that go beyond
its disciplinary territory. Ignoring the work of adjacent fields leads to the adoption of
overly simplistic, misleading, or erroneous assumptions, as we saw earlier. A more ade-
quate approach to reflexivity would acknowledge relevant work outside one’s own disci-
plinary boundaries. Of course acknowledgment may lead to the conclusion that this
external work is not useful. But it would require some arguments why this is the case—a
task that the numerous proponents of ‘‘ignore other disciplines’’ do not have to deal with.
Figure 2 illustrates in general terms what kinds of assumptions a particular—neural,
psychological, social—theory of reflexivity would have to make in light of the position
advocated here.
Figure 2 acknowledges that reflexivity can be studied without taking on the knowledge
of all the disciplines and fields relevant to it. However, a theory at a particular level of
analysis would have to make assumptions about reality at the next lower and the next
higher level of organization, since both are likely to have strong effects on its own level.20
Thus a psychological theory of reflexivity would entail assumptions about neuropsycho-
logical and social psychological levels. A sociological theory of reflexivity would contain
assumptions with respect to the cross-cultural psychological level. A set of criteria
developed along the lines of Fig. 2 could thus be used as a diagnostic tool in helping to
assess the adequacy of particular theories and approaches to reflexivity. It also suggests
what disciplinary elements a general approach to reflexivity would have to contain and
where interdisciplinary bridging work might be needed or promising.
It is one thing to identify and stress the need for cross-disciplinary connections in the
study of reflexivity. It is quite another to do the conceptual and theoretical work to build
those connections. It may therefore be worthwhile by way of conclusion to briefly illustrate

20
Among the limited number of recent bridging or integration attempts of this kind, see Hardt et al. (2010),
Ibáñez et al. (2009), Harmon-Jones and Winkielman (2008), Petit (2008), Semin and Cacioppo (2008).

123
The Reflexive Self in the Age of Social Neuroscience 1521

some such attempts at interdisciplinary bridge building relating to the problem of

reflexivity.
Social scientists do not share a basic analytical framework or an underlying philosophy
that would provide at least some shared methodological principles. The most recent highly
influential attempt in this direction was Parsons’ systems theory, though its temporary
success prompted an equally strong backlash21 that has stained the idea of systems thinking
in the social sciences to the present day.22 The same is not true in the biosocial sciences. In
the new multidisciplinary research field of neuroscience, an analytical framework called
dynamic systems theory (DST) is widely and enthusiastically embraced.23 As Berntson
(2006, p. 9) has formulated the challenge for such a general framework:
Brain localization can inform neuropsychological theories, but meaningful neurosocial theories will
not be theories about places, nor will their critical elements and conceptual relations be couched in
the language of space. Rather, they will have to incorporate fundamental underlying processes that
subserve social psychological phenomena. For this, multilevel approaches that can calibrate con-
structs and theories across levels of organization will be indispensable.
Although insufficiently known and generally underused in the social sciences, a
sophisticated systemic approach with a strong philosophical foundation for all the sciences
can be found in the works of philosopher of science, Mario Bunge (e.g. Bunge 1996a,
2003). Bunge, like some users and critics of DST, is very clear that such a systemic
framework should not be confused with substantive theory. Its indispensable contribution
to multidisciplinary work such as on the problem of reflexivity is to provide a unified,
consistent, scientifically informed and philosophically profound reference frame that
explicitly addresses key methodological questions. It provides important preconditions for
bridging levels of organization of reality as required by, among others, analyses of
reflexivity. This is not the place to discuss the systemic framework in further detail, but
simply to underscore the need for such a framework.24
Fruitful theoretical and empirical work spanning several disciplines, in addition to a
systemic framework, requires basic concepts that can work in such different contexts. As
Berntson (2006, p. 7) reminds us: ‘‘Social psychological concepts and theories do not
necessarily correspond to neurological processes and codes. The ultimate development of
social neuroscience will await a convergence of constructs across disciplines and levels of
organization and analysis; from the social and behavioral to the anatomical to the cellular
and genetic.’’ For illustration, let us look briefly at three concepts of this kind.
Section 1 introduced the concept of episodic memory as the major neurocognitive
system distinguishing human reflexivity from less evolved forms of reflexivity found in
other organisms. Importantly this historical memory system, containing or giving rise to
our subjective sense of time, was claimed to refer to a ‘‘real system’’ in the brain. The
general concept of memory, and closely related ones such as remembrance, and indeed
historical memory (both personal and collective), have traditionally played a significant
role in psychology, the social sciences and the humanities. It would seem to be a very
21
I do not include Luhmann’s systems theory under the rubric of ‘‘highly influential,’’ though, like systems
theory in general, it still has followers among social scientists.
22
See, however, some recent attempts to return to systems thinking without following Parsons (let alone
Luhmann) in the social sciences in a special issue on ‘‘rethinking systems theory’’ in Philosophy of the
Social Sciences (Pickel 2007).
23
For a recent example of multidisciplinary debate in neuroscience on bridging the gap between emotion
theory and neurobiology with explicit reference to DST, see Lewis (2005), see also Kitayama (2002).
24
The need to rethink systems theory and a programmatic agenda are set out in the introductory essay to a
special issue of the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Pickel 2007).

123
1522 A. Pickel

promising candidate for a bridge concept in the study of reflexivity, in particular for
connecting biological and psychological levels of analysis.
A second concept with bridging potential is that of social cognition (not to be confused
with cognitivist psychology, which has no explicit social dimension).
Social cognition is too broad a capacity, and makes contact with the rest of cognition at too many
places, to be considered anything like an encapsulated, impenetrable module. Yet it is reasonable to
think that it comprises computational strategies that evolved specifically to guide social behavior;
that some of those social computations are relatively involuntary, automatic, and below the level of
our awareness; and that it draws on a restricted set of neural structures that are sufficiently well
defined that we can speak of a neural system for social cognition (Adolphs 2006, p. 280).
In keeping with the ontology of emergentist materialism introduced earlier, it is important
that a bridge concept like social cognition can be directly linked to a neural system. This is
not biological reductionism because not all basic aspects of social cognition are to be
explained in neural terms. Rather, the existence of a material system underlying non-
material processes is what is at issue. Established functional conceptions and distinctions in
psychology as a result are confronted with the evidence of more or less well corresponding
neural systems and mechanisms. As Tucker (2005, p. 220) points out, ‘‘neurophysiology
shows us the scope of constituent mechanisms. […] each system seems to cross multiple
functional levels, leading to the remarkable conclusion that functions such as motives or
emotions that we would isolate so clearly in a psychological analysis turn out to be
embedded within a larger neurophysiological landscape.’’ In a dualist ontology,
psychology would not be challenged by such results since mental processes are not seen
as an expression of material processes. This is not the case in an emergentist perspective.
Neither cognitions nor emotions are discrete causal agents that can be separated from the whole of
the biological context. This context is formed both by immediate physiological exigencies, such as
environmental threats or visceral need states, and by the enduring residuals of the person’s devel-
opment history. In neural terms, the whole of the organism’s cognitive-emotive matrix is achieved by
vertical integration of multiple systems of the neuraxis. In psychological terms, the embedding whole
represents the superordinate construct of the personality, the self. (ibid.)
The concept of social cognition is thus anchored at the biological level. The process of
social cognition, however, not only extends beyond the biological level, but is constituted
and causally affected by events and properties at psychological and social levels that in
turn find their expression at the neural level. The concept of social cognition also can be
linked to the level of the individual person in a way that illuminates the developmental
dimension of reflexivity. A useful example is the so-called cognitive-affective processing
system (CAPS) which was formulated as ‘‘a metatheory of the person as an organized,
coherent system, designed to facilitate and invite questions about how the specifics of its
multiple constituent components and subsystems and processes interact and exert their
influences’’ (Mischel 2004, p. 13).25 Although focused on the individual person, this
approach is not handicapped by restrictive assumptions based on methodological
individualism. CAPS analysis is designed to model emergent properties of social
relationships: ‘‘cognitive and affective states that an individual experiences in a given
relationship are an emergent property of that interpersonal system, not a simple
combination or average of the personalities of the individuals’’ (ibid., p. 16). In addition

25
As Mischel (2004, p. 18) points out, ‘‘[the] study of personality has expanded vigorously into an
increasingly interdisciplinary science … The field was intended to ask the deepest questions about human
nature, and to become the meta-discipline … from the biological to the psychosocial and cultural, to capture
the unique patterning and organization of the functioning distinctive ‘‘whole person.’’

123
The Reflexive Self in the Age of Social Neuroscience 1523

to small group dynamics, the approach seeks to integrate cultural processes affecting
personality systems. Its particular strength, however, lies in linking biopsychological and
biosocial levels, and in the centrality it accords to human personality.
This brings us to our final example of a bridge concept, that of ‘‘cultural scripts.’’ The
concept of culture, as we saw earlier, has been embattled in recent decades, especially
among anthropologists.26 It seems unlikely that a concept so fiercely contested even within
the same discipline might have potential to serve as a bridge concept in the multidisci-
plinary study of reflexivity. But, as announced earlier, the concept of ‘‘cultural scripts,’’
especially as defined, developed, and applied by Anna Wierzbicka (1992, 1997, 2004a, b)
and others, allows us to steer clear of excessive essentialism and false universalism and yet
not follow the exaggerated postmodern gesture of throwing out the baby (in this case,
concrete lived cultures) with the bathwater.
The theory of cultural scripts describes cultural norms and values from within rather than from the
outside. Thus, the researcher does not bring to the description of a culture external conceptual
categories such as ‘individualism’ or ‘collectivism’, as is usually done in the literature. Rather, norms
and values are always identified from within—that is, from the point of view of those people who are
the bearers of the postulated norms and values (and in their own language). At the same time, these
unique norms and values are presented in a way which makes it possible to compare them: not
through identical labels applied across the board, but through identical building blocks out of which
the different formulas are built. As a result, the proposed formulas are both unique and comparable:
each is qualitatively different from all others, and yet each constitutes a configuration of the same
elements—non-arbitrary, universal, and universally understandable (Wierzbicka 2005, p. 584).
The concept of cultural script links biopsychological and biosocial levels with concrete
symbolic formations as reflected in specific languages and cultures. In this sense, cultural
scripts are a concretization in space and time of social cognitions, the second bridging
concept above. Cultural scripts are inherently historical, and should therefore connect well
with the first bridging concept described above, that of episodic memory. These are no
more than short illustrative examples27 of possible responses to the basic challenges for the
multidisciplinary study of reflexivity in the age of neuroscience. Of course another possible
response to such challenges is to ignore them by reaffirming the traditional mind–body
dualism and the corresponding disciplinary division of labour it helps to uphold.

6 Concluding Comment

This paper has examined some of the challenges posed for the social sciences by the new
field of neuroscience. Focusing on the problem of reflexivity and conceptions of the self, it
was shown that typical simplifying assumptions employed in the social sciences are in fact
seriously called into question by new findings and arguments in neuroscience. Since
reflexivity simultaneously belongs to different types of reality and the disciplines spe-
cialized in their study, two strategies applied across disciplines were identified: radical
reductionism, which makes an a priori and exclusive claim to explaining reflexivity; and a
moderate reductionism acknowledging the multidimensional reality of reflexivity. Mod-
erate reductionism practiced by any particular discipline is forced to adopt simplifying

26
It is important to note that in social neuroscience the concept of culture is in fact taken seriously. See e.g.
Moss (2003, p. 9), Quinn (2003).
27
Cerulo (2010, p. 126) reports that the concepts of ‘‘schema’’ and ‘‘domain,’’ both used by neuroscientists,
have been embraced by some sociologists ‘‘as a useful tool for bridging the study of culture and cognition,
although such work has been surprisingly limited.’’

123
1524 A. Pickel

assumptions about dimensions of reality beyond its ken, but these are not immune from
knowledge generated in other disciplines undermining those same assumptions. For those
who consider greater integration of relevant fields rather than the reinforcement of disci-
plinary boundaries the most promising response to challenges of this sort, a number of
basic philosophical problems need to be confronted. The paper sketched an ontology of
reflexivity that can deal with its multidimensional reality, identified a general framework
already widely used in the biosocial sciences for cross-disciplinary analysis of reflexivity,
briefly illustrating the role of potential bridging concepts for cross-disciplinary theorizing.

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