Program in Science,Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E5I-185, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Soc Stud Sci. 2011 Aug;41(4):515-38. doi: 10.1177/0306312710397689.
The young field of neuroeconomics converges around behavioral deviations from the model of the human being as Homo economicus, a rational actor who calculates his choices to maximize his individual satisfaction. In a historical moment characterized by economic, health, and environmental crises, policymakers have become increasingly concerned about a particular deviation for which neuroeconomics offers a biological explanation: Why do humans value the present at the expense of the future? There is contentious debate within the field over how to model this tendency at the neural level. Should the brain be conceptualized as a unified decision-making apparatus, or as the site of conflict between an impetuous limbic system at perpetual odds with its deliberate and provident overseer in the prefrontal cortex? Scientific debates over choice-making in the brain, we argue, are also debates over how to define the constraints on human reason with which regulative strategies must contend. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, we explore how the brain and its treatment of the future become the contested terrain for distinct visions of governmental intervention into problems of human choice-making.
神经经济学这一新兴领域主要关注人类作为理性经济人在行为上的背离，理性经济人会计算自己的选择，以最大化个人满意度。在当前这个经济、健康和环境危机的时代，政策制定者越来越关注一个特定的偏差，而神经经济学为其提供了生物学解释：为什么人类会不惜牺牲未来而看重当下？对于如何在神经层面上对这种趋势进行建模，该领域存在着激烈的争论。大脑应该被视为一个统一的决策机构，还是应该被视为一个冲动的边缘系统与前脑皮层中深思熟虑和有远见的监管者之间冲突的场所？我们认为，关于大脑中的决策制定的科学争论，也是关于如何定义人类理性的限制的争论，而调节策略必须应对这些限制。我们借鉴民族志和档案研究，探讨了大脑及其对未来的处理方式如何成为政府干预人类决策制定问题的不同愿景的争议领域。
