REGULAR ARTICLE

The Brain Is Not a Tool

Alfredo Gaete & Carlos Cornejo

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract Some psychologists claim that the brain is a tool. This claim can be construedeither literally or figuratively. We argue that, in the former case, it is false, whereas in thelatter case it has no place in scientific psychology. We also try to show why thisdiscussion is relevant and suggest how a metaphor should behave to be of use in science.

Keywords Person . Brain . Metaphor . Scientific metaphors . Psychological theory

Introduction

Some psychologists find it helpful to talk of the brain as a tool. Svend Brinkmann (2010),for example, adopted this way of referring to the brain as one of the axis of his integrativetheory of the mind. His work is partly based upon ideas put forward by Rom Harré(1997), who also describes the brain as a tool. We have pointed out certain problemsinvolved in this linguistic usage (Gaete and Cornejo 2012), but neither Brinkmann norHarré appears to have seen the full strength of our criticism. The latter has explicitlydeclared that what we say depends on a wrong, unexamined assumption and insists onthe validity of the ‘brain as tool’ image (Harré 2012). The former has conceded to us thatthere are problems associated to the concept of tool, although he also believes that theycan be overcome by replacing it with the concept of mediation (Brinkmann 2012).1 Partof the very point of our argument, however, was that if mediation is extended beyondtools, the concept loses the thickness it must have to be of use in psychological theory.

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1He says: “I agree with Gaete and Cornejo that we easily risk inflating the use of the term ‘tool’ (e.g. if wefollow Harré in addressing the brain as a tool for the exercise of cognitive tasks), but this is exactly one of thereasons why a concept of mediation is needed. This concept is broader and more neutral than ‘tool’(…)” (p. 205).

A. Gaete (*)Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile - Campus Villarrica, O’Higgins 501, Villarrica, Chilee-mail: agaetes@uc.cl

C. CornejoEscuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860,Santiago, Chilee-mail: cca@uc.cl

We will not pursue this idea again here, but focus instead on the misrepresentation ofthe brain as a tool (or, if preferred, as a mediator in the thicker, Vygotskian sense ofthat term).

Not that we have any objection to the rather innocuous assertion that in certaincontexts it is perfectly acceptable to depict a person’s brain as a tool (which theperson may or may not use). But no matter how appropriate this manner ofspeaking may be in everyday, non-technical conversation, it does bring in importanttheoretical difficulties in the context of scientific psychology. Actually, it is ouropinion that these difficulties are serious enough to render untenable any scientificclaim to the effect that the brain is a tool. To explain why we have this opinion is themain purpose of this paper. We also try to show why this discussion is relevant inpsychology.

Persons and Their Parts

The brain, we have argued, is a part of the (human) person and, therefore, cannot be atool that the person uses (Gaete and Cornejo 2012). According to Harré (2012), ourargument is at fault because it depends on the allegedly erroneous premise that a personis a whole of which the brain and other organs are parts. The reason he thinks that thispremise is wrong is that he takes it to lead to a “fatal consequence”, namely, Cartesiandualism:

To declare that a person’s brain is part of that person invites the response—what isthe other part or parts? Down this road lies the Cartesian impasse. Brains aresubstances so the other parts of a person must also be substances. But they cannotbe material substances […] So, following Descartes’ lead, though unknowingly,we think that perhaps the other part is also a substance, for example a res cogitans.Then we reach the old, old impasse — how could these metaphysically diversesubstances form a coherent system? It seems that Gaete and Cornejo are committedto a path that leads to this impasse.

Granted, to say that the brain is a part of a person invites the question of what arethe other parts. But why should one think that these other parts are not material? Theanswer to the question of what are the other parts of the person by no means entailspositing immaterial substances. The other parts of the person are the other bodilyorgans, none of which is an immaterial substance. Naturally, if we had said that thewhole body (rather than the brain or another specific organ) is a part of the person,Harré’s complaint would be admissible — for then dualism would certainly be atempting option (‘what, besides the body, is the other part of the person?’). But sincewe did not say this, Harré’s response is simply misplaced.

Our argument then seems to be perfectly sound. Given that the brain is a part of theperson, it cannot be a tool used by the person. Unless, of course, one is speakingmetaphorically, which sometimes does seem to be Harré’s case (some other times itreally does not). But we will examine the ‘brain as tool’ metaphor later on. Ourpresent point is that persons are perfectly divisible into parts and, because of this, in

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literal speech none of these parts, the brain in particular, should be described as atool.2

Let us elaborate on this. Baker (2000) has offered a strong case for what she calls “theConstitution View” of the person. According to such a view, a person is constituted by herbody. This means, roughly, that even though a person is not identical to her body, she isspatially coincident with it. The same sort of relation— the constitution relation— can befound between a school and a certain building, between a statue and a certain lump of clay,between a flag and a certain piece of cloth, etc. Of course, what makes a certain body aperson is quite different from what makes a certain building a school, or a certain lump ofclay a statue, or a certain piece of cloth a flag. Yet all of these are cases of somethingconstituting something else — cases of a more intimate relation than, say, the causalityrelation, though not as intimate as the identity relation. In Baker’s (ibid) words, “consti-tution is as close to identity as a relation can get without being identity” (p. 55). The flag isa piece of cloth, but is not identical to it— it has certain properties that are not found in apiece of cloth that is not a flag. Analogously, the person is her body, but is not identical toit. The ‘is’ of constitution is different from the ‘is’ of identity (see also Wiggins 1968).

Now it is undeniable that a person’s body is divisible into parts, e.g., into its organs.But then, given that the person is spatially coincident with her body, it seems equallyundeniable that the person is divisible into parts. For anything that occupies the sameregion of space as something that is divisible into parts must be divisible into parts aswell. Thus, schools, statues, and flags can all be— and usually are — correctly said tohave parts, since they are spatially coincident with things that have parts (buildings,lumps of clay, and pieces of cloth).

None of this means that persons are nothing over and above the sum of their parts.They do have parts, but, as Baker (2000) puts it, “a description of the parts of […] aperson is far from the description of a person” (p. 180). Constitution is not identity. Nomatter how detailed a description of a person’s organs be, it will tell us nothing about theperson qua person unless it includes some description of the person as a whole — i.e.,one or more of such terms as ‘believes’, ‘hopes’, ‘generous’, ‘responsible’, and the like.3

Nor is constitution a relation between a thing and its parts (ibid). The building thatconstitutes a school is not a part of the school. The school is its building. Analogously, aperson’s body is not a part of a person. The person is her body. Still, any part of aperson’s body, e.g. her brain, is a part of that person too. It is her brain as much as herbody’s brain (just as any of the rooms of the school is also a room of the building).

Again, persons and schools are phenomena of quite different nature. The same goesfor schools and flags, for flags and statues, and for many other pairs of entities whichnevertheless share the property of being constituted by something else. What exactlyrenders a body a person is certainly a controversial matter, but whatever it is, the relationbetween both is the constitution relation. Naturally, Harré (or anyone else) may disagreewith this view. In that case, however, he must show that Baker’s solid argument for it

2 The boundaries between the literal and the metaphorical are of course unclear, if they exist at all (Cornejo2007, 2012). Still, the distinction is helpful in many situations. A relatively uncontroversial way ofunderstanding it can be found in Rorty 1987. See also Recanati 2004.3 Hence the primacy of the person grammar in psychology, on which we agreed with both Harré andBrinkmann (Gaete and Cornejo 2012). For if psychology is about persons in the sense we take it is, itsultimate goal is to provide us with descriptions of the person qua person.

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goes wrong in some way or another; and, additionally, that no view of the person can becorrect if it represents the latter as having parts—which, as far as we know, has not beenshown (either by Harré or by anyone else). Quite the contrary, it seems one of the mostpromising monist views on which contemporary psychology can rely on.

Tools, Sites, and the Road Down to Dualism

But why cannot a part of a person be a tool? After all, people are commonly describedas using (or not using) their brains, their hands, and other parts of their bodies. Is itnot sufficient for something to be a tool that it is used by someone? Of course not.The fact that people can use their time, for example, does not entail that time is a tool.

At this point it is necessary to distinguish between a literal and a figurative interpre-tation of the claim that the brain is a tool. Time can certainly be thought of as a tool, evenif literally speaking it is clearly not a tool. For literally speaking, tools are materialobjects, whereas time is not. More generally, in figurative speech anything can beanything else: stars can be the eyes of the night, necessity can be the mother of invention,and a person’s mind can be the software of her brain. So if we are to employ metaphorsor other figures of speech in order to assert something in psychology or, for that matter,in any other science, we need to have someway to decide between the more appropriateand the less appropriate figures.

Let us first consider the literal interpretation of ‘Brains are tools’. Tools in the literalsense of that word— hammers, shovels, pens, telescopes, musical instruments, etc.—are objects that people use in order to expand their ability to do things. They enablepeople to do things that they could not do by using nothing more than their body. (This isthe very reasonwe need tools.) Hence they cannot be parts of their users’ bodies. Indeed,if you ask a philosophically unprejudiced person howmany tools a carpenter has used tobuild something, she will be likely to include in her count such things as the carpenter’shammer and saw, but not the carpenter’s brain — presumably because she will assumethat you mean literal tools and, consequently, will count no part of the carpenter’s bodyas a tool. Our tools, in this literal sense, are the product of our intelligence, not itsbiological basis. (They are also a means for enhancing it, of course.)

So much for literalness. Consider now the assertion that the brain is a tool in ametaphorical sense. In principle, there is nothing particularly awkward with thisimage (insofar as it is a trope), especially because of the trivial fact that both brainsand tools can be correctly described as things that people use. In the context ofpsychological theory, however, there is a certain risk associated to this metaphor. Aswe have already suggested in our previous contribution, construing the brain as a toolmakes dualism tempting (Gaete and Cornejo 2012). Given that a person and, say, ahammer are different substances, the ‘brain as tool’ image may lead someone toconceive of the person and her brain as two different substances (rather than as a wholeand one of its parts). This by itself is a big step towards Cartesian dualism, but it is evenbigger if we couple it with the idea, also put forward by Harré (2012), that bodies are“sites” that persons “occupy”. As far as we can see, this is a strongly dualist image,reminiscent of Descartes’ suggestion that the pineal gland is the seat of the immaterialsoul. At any rate, when the purchase includes both this image and the ‘brain as tool’image, it seems quite difficult not to go ghostly.

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Now this substance dualism is precisely one of the views from which Harré wantsto save psychology. Actually, his hybrid psychology is partially intended to thiseffect. His metaphors, then, do not appear to be the most appropriate to his theory,since they are quite unsuitable to avoid one of the things the theory is meant to avoid(substance dualism). So, even if in certain contexts it may be natural to think of thebrain as a tool, Harré’s hybrid psychology would do better without this image.

The same goes for psychology in general if avoiding substance dualism is desir-able — and most contemporary psychologists think it is. But before elaborating on this,and partly in order to do so, we will elaborate on the idea that, metaphorically construed,the claim that the brain is a tool is, in psychology, as untenable as its literal counterpart.

What Makes a Scientific Metaphor Appropriate?

Nowadays it is widely accepted that metaphors are important linguistic devices not onlyin poetry and the like but in almost every linguistic activity, including science.Psychology, in particular, is loaded with metaphorical discourse (Leary 1990) — andit seems difficult for it to be otherwise.4 But metaphors can be more or less appropriate.Compare Wittgenstein’s celebrated metaphor ‘Language is a city’ with, say, ‘Languageis an eggplant’ (uttered in the same context). There is something about the former thatmakes it far more appropriate than the latter — something that makes it fit better thecontext in which it was put forward. What is this something? What is it that makes ametaphor fit better than others a given context?

Well, it certainly depends on what that context is. Even if ‘Language is an eggplant’does not fit a scientific context, it can fit a poetic one. This might be what Fermandois(2003) means by saying that there are no absolute criteria to determine the appropriate-ness of a metaphor. For each domain has requirements of its own, even if some of themare shared by several domains. Thus, the appropriateness criteria for a metaphor in ascientific discipline like psychology need not be the same as the appropriateness criteriafor a metaphor in poetry or journalism or politics or any other non-scientific activity.What works in science may or may not work anywhere else. The question then is, whatmakes a metaphor fit a scientific context?

One of the main jobs of scientific metaphors is to foster productive reasoning(Boyd 1979; Frawley 1982; Brown 2003). Indeed, metaphoric thinking generates noveltheoretical perspectives. It enables scientists to think anew and thereby to test, explore,expand, correct and replace their theories and explanations. For example, Bohr’srepresentation of the atom as a mini solar system “let him conduct verbal reasoningexperiments about the structure of the atom in terms of the structure of the solar systemwithout him actually having to measure, in a physical or technologically mediated way,the object under scrutiny: in fact, no apparatus existed at the time for him to measure theobjects called ‘atom’” (Frawley 1982, p. 135). Or, to consider a rather different case,consider again the representation of language as a city. This metaphor offered a complexnarrative in which certain neglected aspects of language could be pointed to. It openedup a series of new questions, which had remained relatively invisible or unimportantfrom the customary point of view. If language is a city, who built it? Has language a

4 See Eliasmith 2003 for a seemingly different view.

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historical center just like many cities? Are there neighborhoods in language, born in thesame period and sharing architectural features? Are our words edified upon parts ofprevious linguistic constructions?

Of course, the way in which metaphors like Bohr’s are productive is not the sameas the way in which those like Wittgenstein’s are. The former work by makingpossible certain sorts of thought experiments scientists must use to test or exploretheir hypotheses, whereas the latter function as generators of refreshing questions andscenarios which help to solve recalcitrant puzzles. Other metaphors are productive infurther ways, e.g., by enabling theorists to talk about novel phenomena and propertiesfor which they still lack a consolidated, technical vocabulary (Boyd 1979; Frawley1982; Hesse 1987; Brown 2003; Martin and Harré 1982). In this vein, Martin andHarré (1982) have observed that metaphor fills lexical gaps. Through this processscientists can refer to novel theoretical entities, thus developing the language of theirtheories (as well as their understanding of the phenomena they are concerned with).

Note that by describing a metaphor as productive we mean more than that it hasconsequences. Every metaphor has consequences. ‘Language is an eggplant’, forexample, suggests a series of entailments. But they are unproductive entailments. Inorder for a trope to be productive in the sense we are using here, it must produce thingsthat mean or favor theoretical progress.5 Perhaps it allows to explore and test a certainunexplored, untested hypothesis; perhaps it makes scientists see things they had not seenbefore and provides them with some words to talk about such things; perhaps itgenerates very good questions; etc. In one way or another, their thought is revitalizedby the metaphor and some sort of theoretical gain is produced. The more a metaphoricalexpression is productive in this sense, the more appropriate it tends to be (the more ittends to fit a scientific context); and, conversely, the less productive, the less appropriate.Call this the productivity criterion.6

A second appropriateness criterion has to do with a feature that any appropriatescientific statement, whether literal or figurative, must possess. Namely, its being con-sistent with the hard core of the scientific research programme (or programmes) it isembedded in.7 A Freudian can say nothing to the effect that behavior is not influenced byunconscious states or processes; a Darwinist is not entitled to put forward explanationsthat conflict with evolution. Whatever the scientist asserts, either literally or figuratively,it must be in line with the main assumptions of the programmes she espouses.

5 Just to avoid misinterpretation: By ‘theoretical progress’ we do not mean anything related to the Hegelianview of history or any other type of progress other than the one a scientific theory achieves when itimproves our understanding of something.6 Incidentally, it is worth noting that many approaches to metaphor fail to see that not every consequence ofa metaphor is of propositional nature (see Rorty 1987). By inviting us to consider language as a landscapethat we can travel around, the metaphor ‘Language is a city’ produces in us a disposition to do and even feelcertain things. To many effects, these volitive and affective repercussions of metaphor are just as relevant asits propositional entailments.7 By the ‘hard core’ of a ‘scientific research programme’ we mean, roughly, the set of all the mainassumptions underlying a certain theoretical framework, such that they cannot be abandoned withoutabandoning that framework. See Lakatos 1970 for an elaboration of the notion. We do not want to suggestthat this core is only a set of finite explicit statements, though. Rather, we tend to agree with Stegmüller’sarguments (1973) to the effect that it is a “quasi-pictorial” core, containing also images, values, and othercontents beyond linguistic description. Naturally, no matter how manifold the hard core may be, it remainstrue that it entails propositional contents.

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Now given the very nature of metaphor, the entailments of a metaphorical expressioncan perfectly be in contradiction both among themselves and, a fortiori, with the hardcore of any programme. Depending on the way a metaphor is construed, it may lead toassert something as well as to deny it. Consequently, it always can be construed as beinginconsistent with any given set of assumptions. This, of course, does not invalidatemetaphorical expressions, since one can, and must, endorse only those interpretationswhich are consistent with one’s assumptions.

But in order to avoid confusion, a constraint has to be placed. Scientists should tendto dispose of metaphors that are easily construed in a way that clashes with their main,basic assumptions. For example, describing people as machines can be appropriate inthe context of a few research programmes, e.g., most versions of psychoanalysis andevolutionary theory; but it would be totally inappropriate in the context of a programmethat assumes that people has free will and that the latter is incompatible with determin-ism, e.g., most humanistic psychologies. For even if the idea is metaphorically construednot as denying this assumption but, say, as stressing that, like machines, people are self-activated agents, it would still be highly misleading and, to that extent, not appropriatefor most humanistic psychologists to use thismetaphor. Given this particular context, theimage does not fit. It risks giving a message its proponents would like to fight. On theother hand, none of the more powerful entailments of images like, say, ‘The mindprocesses information’ and ‘The mind is the software of the brain’ goes against thecomputational theory of the mind — and, to that extent, the metaphor tends to fit thatprogramme.

A metaphorical expression, then, should be avoided whenever one or more of itsstrongest suggestions happen to contradict the main assumptions of the theoreticalframework or research programme within which it is meant to be used. Call this theconsistency criterion.

By combining the productivity criterion and the consistency criterion one is in aposition to account for the degree of appropriateness of any metaphor in science. Ametaphor that meets only one of the two criteria is less appropriate than a metaphor thatmeets both of them, but more appropriate than a metaphor that meets none of them.Moreover, of any two metaphors satisfying both criteria, the more productive will tendto be the more appropriate. As far as we can see, there is no clear counterexample to this.

Naturally, a central aspect of the appeal of a metaphor (rather than it appropriateness)resides in its aesthetical dimension— in how beautiful or elegant or resplendent it is. Buteven though achievements in this dimension is everything a metaphor needs to beappropriate in (some) poetic contexts, and even if appropriate scientific metaphors cometo be widely used only when they have certain aesthetical attributes, the latter explainonly part of their success. The remaining part is explained by what makes themappropriate in the first place, i.e. their intellectual productivity and their being consistentwith the central theoretical core underlying them. In other words, a metaphor’s aestheticsis crucial to understand its attractiveness, but not its scientificity.

How Appropriate is the Metaphor of the Brain as a Tool?

So let us examine the ‘brain as tool’ image in the light of our two criteria. One of themain assumptions underlying most, if not all, contemporary psychological theories is

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that substance monism is correct. It then is quite patent to us that the metaphor inquestion fails to meet the consistency criterion. For, as we have argued, it stronglysuggests something like Cartesian dualism. This is not the result of a complicatedinterpretation of the metaphor, but the very first thing that many of us think of whenwe are told that the brain is a tool. Thus, neither Harré nor anyone else who seriouslyassumes that psychological theory must be liberated from its dualist past shouldsuccumb to the temptation to describe the brain that way. Given that one of the strongestsuggestions of this metaphor is that the brain and its user are two different substances, itsimply does not fit well a (monist) scientific context.

What about the productivity criterion? Well, it appears to us that the metaphor doesnot do better on this. For one thing, it is far from clear that it provides us with any neededterminology, since it does not seem to do any real work that cannot be made with suchalready available technical concepts as physical realization, supervenience, and em-bodiment, among others. Nor does it give us any particularly refreshing insight into thenature of the brain or the mind or anything else. More generally, if there is sometheoretical gain in characterizing the brain as a tool, neither Harré nor Brinkmann noranyone else has been very convincing about it. That is, we have not been shown how thismetaphor is helpful, and it is far from obvious that it is. Thus, in the light of theproductivity criterion, the metaphor does not fit either.

What all this comes to is that the metaphorical interpretation of ‘The brain is a tool’is not more suitable than the literal one. Indeed, literally construed, the sentence isfalse; as a scientific metaphor, it is rather inappropriate, since it fails to meet both theproductivity criterion and the consistency criterion.

Of course, the brain can be thought of as a tool, as Harré (2012) suggests. Actually, itcan be thought of as many other things: as a mirror, as a working space, as a quantumsystem, as a society, as a computer, as a site, as a bathtub, as a city, as an eggplant, etc.But from themere fact that you can think of an entity as being whatever you imagine it tobe, it does not follow that you are right in thinking of it like that. In particular, eventhough there may be a number of contexts in which the brain can be correctly thought ofas a tool, scientific psychology is not one of such contexts. Whether one speaks literallyor metaphorically, scientifically speaking brains are not tools.

Final Remarks

Let us finish by giving a couple of reasons this discussion over the ‘brain as tool’ imageis worth pursuing. First, there is the general fact that by choosing certain expressions wedo more than merely decide on what noises or marks we will make to refer to certainthings. We also decide the way we will think or conceive of such things, which in turnwill have an impact upon our future linguistic options — in such a manner that, to useHarré’s (1997) own words, “sloppy terminology and sloppy thought engender oneanother” (p. 178). At least because of this, not anything goes when it comes to articulatea theoretical claim. The expressions in which a theory is conveyed, whether literal ormetaphorical, are not inconsequential to the theory itself. Hence we better assess the‘brain as tool’ image before using it.

Earlier we distinguished between the scientific and the aesthetic attributes of ametaphor.When ametaphor is both scientifically appropriate and aesthetically suggestive,

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it shines. When it satisfies only the first condition, it is a dull metaphor (and there are lotsof dull metaphors in science). But when, in science, a metaphor meets only the secondcondition, it is a dangerousmetaphor. Its use can make a theory appear to say somethingtrue or at least helpful when in fact it says nothing or, worse, nothing true.

This is what happens with the metaphor of the brain as a tool. Granted, it isaesthetically suggestive. It brings us back to the mythic primordial encounter betweenhuman being and Nature, where the Marxist homo faber is born. But this aestheticsuggestiveness obscures the inappropriateness of the metaphor in scientific contexts,which in turn leaves it ready to be used in theories that will seem constructive but will beeither uninformative or simply false. Hence another reason for revealing its inappropri-ateness is to prevent psychologists from being tempted by the wrong sort of theory.

In our post-positivistic times, the belief in uninterested, non-human descriptions ofreality has been progressively abandoned, whereas metaphorical speech has insteadbeen increasingly accepted as a valid mode of constructing knowledge in scientificdomains. Not all metaphors, however, perform well — and we must be on guard todistinguish those that do from those that do not. Metaphors are (metaphorical) tools that,as such, can be more or less appropriate, depending on their context of use. If we forgetthis, we run the risk of loading our theories with expressions that are detrimental to them.

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Dr. Alfredo Gaete is Assistant Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He teachesphilosophy of psychology and philosophy of education. His research interests include the philosophy ofmind and science as well as theoretical psychology and education, particularly the theory of mentaldisorders and the theory of teaching and learning.

Professor Carlos Cornejo is Full Professor in Psychology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.He teaches history of psychology, psychology of language, and philosophy of psychology. His researchinterests include theoretical and empirical aspects of meaning construction, figurative language, andpragmatism in psychology.

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