David D. Franks

Emotions and Violence: Shame and Rage in Destructive Conflicts.

This text examines the causes of violence and destructive conflict through an exploration of human interaction in situations ranging from a psychotherapy session and marital quarrels to television game shows.

The Neuroscience of Emotions

It is hard to imagine a field as different from sociology as neuroscience. The differences in theory, method, tradition, and practice could readily breed antagonism between any two fields. However, it is just because of these differences that neuroscience has been able to present important findings about covert brain processes that can expand sociological theory. Traditionally, sociological social psychology has focused on self-consciousness and language as primary mechanisms of human adaptation. This focus might be appropriate to the cerebral image of the human animal, but neuroscience has produced evidence that emotional capacities underlie the intelligence implied by this image and indeed make it possible (Carter and Pasqualini 2004; Damasio 1994).

Handbook of neurosociology

Forward Douglas Massey.- Chapter 1. Introduction: Summaries and Comments David D. Franks and Jonathan H. Turner.- PART I. LARGE ISSUES.- Chapter 2: Neural Social Science George Lakoff.- Chapter 3: Why We Need Neurosociology as Well as Social Neuroscience David D. Franks.- Chapter 4: Social Cognitions and the Problems of Minds John Shook.- Chapter 5: Social Neuroscience of Human Aggression: Genetic, Hormonal and Neural Underpinnings Pranjal Metha, Stefan Geotz and Justin Carre.- Chapter 6: Social Neuroscience and the Modern Synthesis of Social and Biological Levels of Analysis Greg J. Norman, Louise C. Hawkley, Maike Luman, John T. Cacioppo and Gary G. Berntson.- Chapter 7: Can the Two Cultures Reconcile? Reconstruction and Neuropragmatism Tibor Solymoski.-Chapter 8: Notes Towards a Neuroethics David D. Franks.-Chapter 9: Emergence in Sociology and Neuroscience David D. Franks.- PART II. NEUROLOGY, SELF, INTERACTION, AND SOCIALITY.- Chapter 10: Neurology and Interpersonal Behavior: The Basic Challenge for Nuerosociology Jonathan H. Turner.- Chapter 11: Neurology Supports of G. H. Mead and Relations to Symbolic Interaction David D. Franks.- Chapter 12: What are the Neurobiological Foundations of Identities and Identity Related Processes Richard Niemeyer.- Chapter 13: The Emergent Self: How Distributed Neural Networks Support Self-Representations Istvan Molnar-Szakacs and Lucina Uddin.- Chapter 14: The Human Mirror Neuron System, Social Control and Language Shook-Lei Liew and Lisa Aziz- Zadeh.- Chapter 15: A Neurosociological Theory of Weberian Rationality: Its Cognitive, Conative, and Neurobiological Foundations Warren D. TenHouten.- Chapter 16: Theory of Mind Rosemary Hopcroft.- Chapter 17: Attachment, Interaction and Synchronization: How Innate Mechanisms in Attachment Give Rise to Emergent Structure in Networks and Communities Thomas S. Smith.- PART III. EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN.- Chapter 18: The Mind of a Hominin: An Evolutionary Story Alexandra Maryanski.- Chapter 19: The Evolution of the Neurological Basis for Sociality Jonathan H. Turner and Alexandra Maryanski.- Chapter 20: Neurophysiology of Rewards: Implications for Sociology Michael Hammond.- PART IV. THE NEUROLOGY OF SOCIAL ISSUES AND PROBLEMS.- Chapter 21: The Effect of Persistent Poverty on the Brain Jeffery Davis.- Chapter 22: Prejudice, and Stereotyping Todd Nelson.- Chapter 23: Testosterone, Dominance and Violence Allan Mazur.- Chapter 24: Comprehending the Neurological Substratum of Paraverbal Communications: The Invention of SplitSpec Technology Stanford Gregory and William Kalkhoff.-Chapter 25: Neurosociology and Mental Health, by Anne Eisenberg.-

Relationships Between Neurosociology, Foundational Social Behaviorism, and Currents in Symbolic Interaction

This chapter discusses the contributions of neurosociology to what symbolic interactionists refer to as the foundational social behaviorism of G.H. Mead. First, the varieties in symbolic interaction are described. A theme of this chapter is that if a field so different from symbolic interaction as neuroscience can contribute to it, then neuroscience can certainly contribute to all of sociology. This chapter starts with describing symbolic interaction’s early interest in aphasia, then how it supports accounts through evidence given by split-brain research. Then memory is shown to be highly unreliable and interpretive. Much of this chapter describes the issues that created pragmatism and closes with how mirror neurons support the philosophy of pragmatism and contribute to our ability to speak, another area critical to symbolic interaction.

Why We Need Neurosociology as Well as Social Neuroscience: Or—Why Role-Taking and Theory of Mind Are Different Concepts

In Chap. 3, David Franks demonstrates why neurosociology and social neuroscience can be seen as complimentary to each other. Once again, neurosociology diverges from time-honored academic traditions, in this case shedding what T. D. Kemper referred to as our fortress mentality. Ironically to some, this complimentarity can only be achieved efficiently by being very clear about the units of analysis that distinguish the disciplines. This would be an interactional unit of analysis in sociology and an individual one in psychology. G. H. Mead’s role-taking and his four-staged theory of the act exemplifies the more voluntaristic sociological unit of analysis while learning theory, applicable to all mammals, distinguishes the psychological one. Suggestions are made to what kind of cross-disciplinary research could be conducted that would contribute to both fields.

Determinism and Free Will

We have seen that reductionism and determinism are conceptual cousins each implying the other. Benjamin Libet is another neuroscientist who rejected both the reductionism of Sir Francis Crick and the determinism that would reduce the self to its past causes; it is especially ironic, therefore, that he discovered a brain process which firmly challenges the notion of free will or better put the idea of agency.

Emergence and Reductionism in Sociology and Neuroscience

This chapter looks at the concepts of emergence and reductionism as different pathways to causal analysis. Paramount herein is Roger Sperry’s thesis about mind as an emergent from the synaptic circuitry of the brain and as a causal force that can, in some circumstances, work down to change the material brain’s synaptic structures. This is shown to be true only with a great deal of work on the part of the patient and their helpers with OCD, strokes, and recidivism in acute depression. Views of leading figures in sociology and neuroscience are presented. Both emergence and reduction are seen as acceptable ways of conducting science. Five types of reduction are described and evaluated. An exclusive reductionism that reduces human feelings and existence to nothing but synaptic connections is seen as invalid by leading neuroscientists.

Introduction: Summaries and Comments

In 2008, Howard Kaplan, sociology series editor for the Springer Press, requested that professor Franks undertake this volume. At that time, the latter’s response was that a handbook in neurosociology would be premature. Sociology was behind other disciplines in embracing neuroscience because anything biological was associated with the radical reductionism of E. O. Wilson’s (1975) position that would have rendered sociology unnecessary. Things are obviously different now, but it has been an uphill battle, however rewarding for these editors. While early usage of the term neurosociology should be credited to Warren TenHouten (Bogen et al. 1972), the trek started in earnest with an issue of Franks’ annual series with the JAI Press (1999) titled Mind, Brains and Society coedited with Thomas S. Smith. At that time, a reviewer wrote that all sociologists ought to read this volume, but that few would. According to our royalty checks, he could not have been more correct. A year later, Jonathan H. Turner came out with his Origins of Human Emotions (2000) that was heavily embellished with biological insights into the development of the Hominin brain processes underlying human emotion.

Mirror Neurons: A Return to Pragmatism and Implications for an Embodied Intersubjectivity

Mirror neurons came on the neuroscientific scene in 1991 when an Italian animal researcher named Giacomo Rizzolatti observed that the very same neurons fired when monkeys were watching an activity as occurred when the monkey’s themselves performed that same activity. That is, the same neurons fired when the animals were watching something being grasped as fired when they actually grasped it themselves. Passively watching a behavior and actively doing that behavior where activated by the same neurons.

Emotions on a Continuum

An alternative approach to emotion is presented here, which differs from that of Kagan and others. It orders emotion along a continuum of the embodiment of emotion, starting with a clear but rare case of pure emotion and at the other extreme discusses Damasio’s intelligent prefrontal patients who could not feel emotions critical to social life.