Francken Jolien C, Slors Marc
Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 15915, 1001 NK Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Brain Cogn. 2018 Feb;120:67-74. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2017.09.004. Epub 2017 Sep 10.
To enable the impact of neuroscientific insights on our daily lives, careful translation of research findings is required. However, neuroscientific terminology and common-sense concepts are often hard to square. For example, when neuroscientists study lying to allow the use of brain scans for lie-detection purposes, the concept of lying in the scientific case differs considerably from the concept in court. Furthermore, lying and other cognitive concepts are used unsystematically and have an indirect and divergent mapping onto brain activity. Therefore, scientific findings cannot inform our practical concerns in a straightforward way. How then can neuroscience ultimately help determine if a defendant is legally responsible, or help someone understand their addiction better? Since the above-mentioned problems provide serious obstacles to move from science to common-sense, we call this the 'translation problem'. Here, we describe three promising approaches for neuroscience to face this translation problem. First, neuroscience could propose new 'folk-neuroscience' concepts, beyond the traditional folk-psychological array, which might inform and alter our phenomenology. Second, neuroscience can modify our current array of common-sense concepts by refining and validating scientific concepts. Third, neuroscience can change our views on the application criteria of concepts such as responsibility and consciousness. We believe that these strategies to deal with the translation problem should guide the practice of neuroscientific research to be able to contribute to our day-to-day life more effectively.
为了使神经科学的见解能够对我们的日常生活产生影响，需要对研究结果进行谨慎的转化。然而，神经科学术语和常识概念往往难以协调一致。例如，当神经科学家研究说谎以便将脑部扫描用于测谎目的时，科学案例中的说谎概念与法庭上的概念有很大差异。此外，说谎和其他认知概念的使用缺乏系统性，并且与大脑活动存在间接且不一致的映射关系。因此，科学发现无法直接为我们的实际关切提供信息。那么，神经科学究竟如何能够最终帮助确定被告是否具有法律责任，或者帮助某人更好地理解自己的成瘾问题呢？由于上述问题为从科学过渡到常识设置了严重障碍，我们将此称为“转化问题”。在此，我们描述神经科学应对这一转化问题的三种有前景的方法。首先，神经科学可以提出超越传统民间心理学范畴的新“民间神经科学”概念，这可能会为我们的现象学提供信息并改变它。其次，神经科学可以通过完善和验证科学概念来修改我们现有的常识概念体系。第三，神经科学可以改变我们对诸如责任和意识等概念应用标准的看法。我们相信，这些应对转化问题的策略应该指导神经科学研究实践，以便能够更有效地为我们的日常生活做出贡献。
