Abstract
Max Weber’s classical conceptualization of instrumental rationality (formal, practical, scientifically theoretical) is interpreted by its associated social relations and its neurocognitive infrastructure. Such rationality requires calculation, planning, and their interaction. Calculation is linked to a larger cognitive structure, left-hemisphere-dependent logical–analytic cognition, which includes propositional logic, deductive reasoning, linear and numeral thinking, linear time consciousness, and the quantitative assessment of value. Planning is linked to the central-executive functioning of the frontal lobes and associated brain structures. The language-based integration of calculation and planning is interpreted on both sociological and neurobiological levels, the result being a neurosociological level of analysis of instrumental rationality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Rather than use a vocabulary of causality, Weber invoked Goethe’s notion of “elective affinity” to explain the perceived relationship between the this-worldly asceticism and precepts of Calvinist Protestantism, and the ethos, business practices, and behaviors associated with and propitious to the emergence of modern industrial capitalism in nineteenth century Germany. “Elective affinity” refers to an hypothesized non-deterministic and synergistic interaction between two independent yet convergent historical processes. Weber elaborated on the key facets of this beneficent and mutually reinforcing dynamic interaction, through which, for Calvinists, hard work and the resultant capital accumulation represented evidence of one’s salvation and membership in the Elect. Delacroix and Nielsen (2001) note the lack of empirical evidence for Weber’s “common interpretation” that Protestantism’s presence positively correlated with a country’s early development of industrial capitalism.
- 2.
Weber (1921) saw the individual actor as the fundamental “atom” in all social and civilizational processes. Social collective entities such as states, businesses, neighborhoods, and families are not themselves capable of social action but exist simple as a result of the actions of individual persons.
- 3.
The law of noncontradiction states: It cannot be the case that something is both the case and not the case (Fogelin 2003, Chap. 1). To abandon this principle is to abandon reason itself, which is the very feature that sets human beings apart from all other animals. It is irrational to accept a proposition that is inconsistent within itself or with other propositions in an axiomatic system. Yet this assertion need not be followed at all cost. As a well-known example, it was not irrational for Gottlob Frege to accept the axioms of naïve set theory, even though they harbor Russell’s paradox. For informal purposes, naïve set theory is easier to use than later, more complex formulations devised to avoid this paradox. Such local irrationality can be justified if it facilitates a computationally efficient or globally rational strategy, and can avoid “cognitive paralysis” of the kind that would result from taking Descartes’ skeptical model of universal doubt serious (Cherniak 1986: 100–4). Descartes’ rationalism was opposed to sense-based empiricism, as he rather advocated a rationalism in which truths could be discovered about the world by means of pure intellect, independent of the senses.
- 4.
Neuroscientific evidence shows that right ventromedial prefrontal (VMPFC) damage impairs reasoning, decision-making, emotion, and feeling (Damasio 1994). This right-frontal area helps put the mind on a “logical track.” The VMPFC is involved in emotional processes that involve moral judgments (Koenigs et al. 2007). It also integrates emotional feelings concerning costs and benefits, whether one’s choices involve economic goods or “noneconomic” social preferences such as showing concern for the welfare of those worse off, acting altruistically and with fairness, a desire for social equality, and kindness, or engaging in reciprocally cooperative behavior (see Fehr 2009: 216–7). Thus, the right side of the prefrontal cortex can be expected to become involved in the (substantive) rationality of decision-making and action where values, beliefs, and ethical standards are involved.
- 5.
A circuit involving dorsolateral frontal cortex, caudate nucleus, and thalamus has been linked to working memory- and rule-based learning (Cummings 1993). Both the basal ganglia, a “reptilian” structure, and the cerebellum play a critical role in high-level cognition activities, including timekeeping with respect to sequences of bodily movements (Rao et al. 1997).
- 6.
In addition to its internal “number line,” a left angular gyrus area, in conjunction with other left-hemisphere perisylvian areas, supports the manipulation of numbers in verbal form. Also, a bilateral posterior superior parietal system supports attentional orientation of the mental number line, just like any other spatial dimension.
- 7.
It was also found that the positive (but not the negative) experiences of equality matching, communal sharing, and authority ranking, as hypothesized, were predictive, on the basis of lexical-level indicators of immediate–participatory, patterned–cyclical, and episodic–futural kinds of time consciousness, respectively (TenHouten 2005: 58, Ch. 3). Patterned–cyclical time consciousness was conceptualized as the opposite of ordinary–linear time, as it (1) is dualistic; (2) fuses past, present, and, to a lesser extent, future; (3) is irregular, discontinuous, and heterogeneous; (4) is event-oriented; (5) is synchronic in the ordering of events, cyclical, patterned, and oscillatory; (6) is qualitative (now the anchor point); and (7) emphasizes the experience of long duration.
- 8.
- 9.
We have seen that beliefs are important to rationality, and they are also important to personhood, which is in turn central to choosing and pursuing our ends and goals. The human brain, Harris et al. (2008: 146) note, “is a prolific generator of beliefs. Indeed, personhood is largely the result of the capacity of a brain to evaluate new statements of propositional truth in light of other that it already accepts.” Moreover, by evaluating truth, falsity, uncertainty, logical necessity, and contradiction, it becomes possible to cobble together coherent views and models of the world and one’s place in the world as a social being.
- 10.
Rabbitt’s (1997: 2) statement on this matter merits citation:
Contemporary catalogues of the functions of the hypothetical “central executive” are strikingly similar to the formal criteria for commission of mortal sin given by Roman Catholic theologians…. The minimal functional processes involved in the commission of a mortal sin are awareness of the self as the intending perpetrator of the act; recognition of unpleasant implications of the act for others by possession of a theory of mind; recognition of its moral repulsiveness by possession of a theory of the mind of God; an ability simultaneously to represent alternative acts and their possible outcomes in working memory in order to efficiently to choose between them; conscious formulation of a well-articulated plan to perform the act successfully; self-initiative and execution of sequences of appropriate actions to consummate this plan during which recognition of personal culpability is maintained by continuous monitoring; recognition of attainment of the vile goal state as an intention to use what has been learned in its pursuit to perform it again if opportunity occurs.
- 11.
Executive functioning, as an essential component of instrumental rationality, is not universal in human society but is rather a concomitant of modern, industrial society. For tribal-living Australian Aborigines, decision-making typically does not involve choosing between multiple courses of action but rather focuses on a single action, which is taken if and only if a full, and congenial, consensus is reached (see TenHouten 2005: 55–6).
- 12.
It is not measure of intelligence, the “intelligence quotient” (IQ), but personhood that depends on the frontal lobes. That frontal-lobe-damaged patients behave in inappropriate and bizarre ways in testing situations, which contribute to their poor test performances, which in turn, unfortunately, contribute to the mistaken view that IQ centrally depends on the frontal lobes. It is not that the patients cannot solve problems in which analytic reasoning is required, but they are not seriously motivated to do so.
- 13.
This theory has been subjected to some rather harsh, even extreme, criticism, especially by Efron (1990) and Corballis (1991). I (1992) have presented an extensive critique of their and others’ criticisms of this theory, which was developed out of several long conversations with neurosurgeon and theorist Joe Bogen.
References
Adam, B. (1995). Timewatch: The social analysis of time. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Alexander, M. P., Benson, D. F., & Stuss, D. T. (1989). Frontal lobes and language. Brain and Language, 37, 656–691.
Ardila, A., Surloff, C., & Mark, V. W. (2007). Dysexecutive syndromes. San Diego: Medlink Neurology.
Bailey, C. E. (2007). Cognitive accuracy and intelligent executive function in the brain and in business. In C. Senior & M. J. R. Butler (Eds.), The social cognitive neuroscience of organizations (pp. 122–141). Boston: Blackwell.
Bechara, A., Damasio, A. R., Damasio, H., & Anderson, S. W. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50, 7–15.
Bentham, J. ([1776] 1969). In M. P. Mack (ed.). A Bentham reader. New York: Pegasus.
Bentham, J. (1825). The rationale of reward. London: John and H. L. Hunt.
Bogen, J. E. (1969a). The other side of the brain. I. Dysgraphia and dyscopia following cerebral commissurotomy. Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Society, 34, 73–105.
Bogen, J. E. (1969b). The other side of the brain. II. An appositional mind. Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Society, 34, 135–162.
Bogen, J. E. (1977). Some educational implications of hemispheric specialization. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), The human brain (pp. 135–152). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Bogen, J. E. (1985). The dual brain: Some historical and methodological aspects. In D. F. Benson & E. Zaidel (Eds.), The dual brain: Hemispheric specialization in humans (pp. 133–152). New York: Guilford Press.
Bogen, J. E. (1995a). On the neurophysiology of consciousness: I. An overview. Consciousness and Cognition, 4, 52–62.
Bogen, J. E. (1995b). On the neurophysiology of consciousness: II. Constraining the semantic problem. Consciousness and Cognition, 4, 137–158.
Boyle, R. P. (1985). The dark side of mead: Neuropsychological foundations for immediate experience and mystical consciousness. In N. K. Denzin (Ed.), Studies in symbolic interaction: A research annual (Vol. 6, pp. 59–78). Greenwich: JAI Press.
Bradshaw, J. L., & Nettleton, N. C. (1983). Human cerebral asymmetry. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Braine, M. D. S. (1978). On the relation between the natural logic of reasoning and standard logic. Psychological Review, 85, 1–21.
Brancucci, A., D’Anselmo, A., Martello, F., & Tommasi, L. (2008). Left hemisphere specialization for duration discrimination of musical and speech sounds. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2013–2019.
Brown, J. W. (1982). Hierarchy and evolution in neurolinguistics. In M. A. Arbib, D. Caplan, & J. C. Marshall (Eds.), Neural models of language processes (pp. 447–467). New York: Academic.
Brubaker, R. (1984). The limits of rationality: An essay on the social and moral thought of Max Weber. London: Allen & Unwin.
Burgess, P. W. (1997). Theory and methodology in executive function research. In P. Rabbitt (Ed.), Methodology of frontal and executive function (pp. 81–116). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Byrne, R. M. J., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1991). Deduction. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Cabanac, M. (1992). Pleasure: The common currency. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 155, 173–200.
Cherniak, C. (1986). Minimal rationality. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Contreras, C. M., Mayagoitia, L., & Mexicano, G. (1985). Interhemispheric changes in alpha rhythm related to time perception. Physiology & Behavior, 34, 525–529.
Corballis, M. C. (1991). The lopsided ape: Evolution of the generative mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cummings, J. L. (1993). Frontal-subcortical circuits and human behavior. Archives of Neurology, 50, 873–880.
D’Esposito, M., & Postle, B. R. (2002). The organization of working memory function in lateral prefrontal cortex: Evidence from event-related functional MRI. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function (pp. 168–187). New York: Oxford University Press.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York: Putnam.
de Hevia, M., Dolores, G. V., & Girelli, L. (2008). Visualizing numbers in the mind’s eye: The role of visuo-spatial processes in numerical abilities. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 32, 1361–1372.
de Spinoza, B. ([1677] 1982). In S. Feldman, & S. Shirley (Eds.). The ethics and selected letters. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Deaner, R. O., Khera, A. V., & Platt, M. L. (2005). Monkey pay per view: Adaptive valuation of social images by rhesus macaques. Current Biology, 15, 543–548.
Dehaene, S. (1997). The number sense: How the mind creates mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dehaene, S. (2003). The neural basis of the Weber-Fechner law: A logarithmic mental number line. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 145–147.
Dehaene, S., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., & Cohen, L. (1998). Abstract representations of numbers in the animal and human brain. Trends in Neuroscience, 21, 355–361.
Dehaene, S., Spelke, E., Pinel, P., Stanescu, R., & Tsivkin, S. (1999). Sources of mathematical thinking: Behavioral and brain-imaging evidence. Science, 284, 970–974.
Dehaene, S., Piazza, M., Pinel, P., & Cohen, L. (2003). Three parietal circuits for number processing. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20, 487–506.
Delacroix, J., & Nielsen, F. (2001). The beloved myth: Protestantism and the rise of industrial capitalism in nineteenth-century Europe. Social Forces, 80, 509–553.
Doya, K., & Kimura, M. (2009). The basal ganglia and the encoding of value. In P. W. Glimcher, C. F. Camerer, E. Fehr, & R. A. Poldrack (Eds.), Neuroeconomics: Decision making and the brain (pp. 407–416). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Duncan, J. D. (2005). Frontal lobe function and general intelligence: Why it matters. Cortex, 41, 215–217.
Efron, R. (1990). The decline and fall of hemispheric specialization. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Eisen, A. (1978). Meanings and confusions of weberian rationality. The British Journal of Sociology, 29, 57–70.
Evans, J. St. B. T. (1989). Bias in human reasoning: Causes and consequences. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Evans, J. St. B. T. (1998). Matching bias in conditional reasoning: Do we understand it after 25 years? Thinking and Reasoning, 4, 45–82.
Fehr, E. (2009). Social preferences and the brain. In P. W. Glimcher, C. F. Camerer, E. Fehr, & R. A. Poldrack (Eds.), Neuroeconomics: Decision making and the brain (pp. 215–232). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2000). Fairness and retaliation: The economics of reciprocity. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14, 159–181.
Fiske, A. P. (1991). Structures of social life: The four elementary forms of human relations: Communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, market pricing. New York: The Free Press.
Fodor, J. (1983). The modularity of mind: An essay on faculty psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fogelin, R. (2003). Walking the tightrope of reason: The precarious life of a rational animal. New York: Oxford University Press.
Frith, C. D., Friston, K. J., Liddle, P. F., & Frackowiak, R. S. (1991). A PET study of word finding. Neuropsychologia, 29, 1137–1148.
Fuster, J. M. (1997). The prefrontal cortex: Anatomy, physiology, and neuropsychology of the frontal lobe (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott-Raven.
Gallistel, C. R., & Gelman, R. (2000). Non-verbal numerical cognition: From reals to integers. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 59–65.
Galton, F. (1880). Visualized numerals. Nature, 21, 59–65.
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gilhooly, K. J., Logie, R. H., Wetherick, N. E., & Wynn, V. (1993). Working memory and strategies in syllogistic-reasoning tasks. Memory and Cognition, 21, 115–124.
Göbel, S. M., Calabria, M., Farnè, A., & Rossetti, Y. (2006). Parietal rTMS distorts the mental number line: Simulating ‘Spatial’ neglect in healthy subjects. Neuropsychologia, 44, 860–868.
Goel, V., & Dolan, R. J. (2003). Explaining modulation of reasoning by belief. Cognition, 87, B11–B22.
Goel, V., & Dolan, R. J. (2004). Differential involvement of left prefrontal cortex in inductive and deductive reasoning. Cognition, 93, B109–B121.
Goel, V., Gold, B., Kapur, S., & Houle, S. (1998). Neuroanatomical correlates of human reasoning. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10, 293–302.
Goel, V., Buchel, C., Frith, C., & Dolan, R. J. (2000). Dissociation of mechanisms underlying syllogistic reasoning. NeuroImage, 12, 504–514.
Goldberg, E. (2001). The executive brain: Frontal lobes and the civilized mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gosden, C. (1994). Social being and time. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Grafman, J. (2002). The structured event complex and the human prefrontal cortex. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), The frontal lobes (pp. 292–310). New York: Oxford University Press.
Green, D. P., & Shapiro, I. (1994). Pathologies of rational choice theory: A critique of applications in political science. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Harris, S., Sheth, S. A., & Cohen, M. S. (2008). Functional neuroimaging of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. Annals of Neurology, 63, 141–147.
Hayden, B. Y., Parikh, P. C., Deaner, R. O., & Platt, M. L. (2007). Economic principles motivating social attention in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, Series B, 274(1619), 1751–1756.
Houdé, O., Zago, L., Mellet, E., Moutier, S., Pineau, A., Mazoyer, B., & Tzourio-Mazoyer, N. (2000). Shifting from the perceptual brain to the logical brain: The neural impact of cognitive inhibition training. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 721–728.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models: Toward a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness. New York: Harvard University Press.
Kalberg, S. (1980). Max Weber’s types of rationality: Cornerstones for the analysis of rationalization processes in history. The American Journal of Sociology, 85, 1145–1179.
Knauff, M., Mulack, T., Kassubek, J., Salih, H. R., & Greenlee, M. W. (2002). Spatial imagery in deductive reasoning: A functional MRI study. Cognitive Brain Research, 13, 203–212.
Knutson, B., Delgado, M. R., & Phillips, P. E. M. (2009). Representation of subjective value in the striatum. In P. W. Glimcher, C. F. Camerer, E. Fehr, & R. A. Poldrack (Eds.), Neuroeconomics: Decision making and the brain (pp. 389–406). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., & Damasio, A. (2007). Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908–911.
Kroger, J. K., Sabb, F. W., Fales, C. L., Bookheimer, S. Y., Cohen, M. S., & Holyoak, K. J. (2002). Recruitment of anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in human reasoning: A parametric study of relational complexity. Cerebral Cortex, 12, 477–485.
Kronman, A. T. (1983). Max Weber. London: Edward Arnold.
Kunzig, R. (1997). A head for numbers. Discover Magazine, 18, 108–115.
Laeng, B. (1994). Lateralization of categories and coordinate spatial functions. A study of unilateral stroke patients. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 6, 189–203.
Levi-Agresti, J., & Sperry, R. W. (1968). Differential perceptual capacities in major and minor hemispheres. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 61, 1151.
Loewenstein, G. (2007). Exotic preferences: Behavioral economics and human motivation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lowe, C., & Rabbitt, P. (1997). Cognitive models of ageing and frontal lobe deficits. In P. Rabbitt (Ed.), Methodology of frontal and executive function (pp. 39–59). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Luhmann, N. (1982). The differentiation of society (S. Holmes & C. Larmore, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Lukes, S. (1967). Some problems about rationality. Archives Européennes de Sociologie, VIII, 247–264.
McAndrews, M. P., & Milner, B. (1991). The frontal cortex and memory for temporal order. Neuropsychologia, 29, 849–859.
Miller, E. K., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24, 167–202.
Montague, P. R., Berns, G. S., Cohen, J. D., et al. (2002). Hyperscanning: Simultaneous fMRI during linked social interactions. NeuroImage, 16, 1159–1164.
Nakamura, K., & Hikosaka, O. (2006). Facilitation of saccadic eye movements by postsaccadic electrical stimulation in the primate caudate. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 12885–12895.
Nicholls, M. E. R., & Whelan, R. R. E. (1998). Hemispheric asymmetry for the temporal resolution of brief tactile stimuli. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 4, 445–456.
Northoff, G., Heinzel, A., Bermpohl, F., Niese, R., Pfennig, A., Pascual-Leone, A., & Schlaug, G. (2004). Reciprocal modulation and attenuation in the prefrontal cortex: An fMRI study on emotional-cognitive interaction. Human Brain Mapping, 21, 202–212.
Noveck, I. A., Goel, V., & Smith, K. W. (2004). The neural basis of conditional reasoning with arbitrary content. Cortex, 40, 613–622.
Nowotny, H. (1975). Time structuring and time measurement: On the interrelations between timekeeping and social time. In J. T. Fraser & N. M. Lawrence (Eds.), The study of time (Vol. 2, pp. 325–361). New York: Springer.
Padoa-Schioppa, C., & Assad, J. A. (2006). Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value. Nature, 441, 223–226.
Parkin, A. J. (1997). Normal age-related memory loss and its relation to frontal lobe dysfunction. In P. Rabbitt (Ed.), Methodology of frontal and executive function (pp. 177–190). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Parsons, L. M., & Osherson, D. (2001). New evidence for distinct right and left brain system for deductive versus probabilistic reasoning. Cerebral Cortex, 11, 954–965.
Passingham, R. E. (1973). Anatomical differences between the neocortex of man and other primates. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 7, 337–359.
Platt, M., & Padoa-Schioppa, C. (2009). Neuronal representation of value. In P. W. Glimcher, C. F. Camerer, E. Fehr, & R. A. Poldrack (Eds.), Neuroeconomics: Decision making and the brain (pp. 44–62). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Plutchik, R. ([1962] 1991). The emotions (Rev. ed.). Lanham: University Press of America.
Pribram, K. H. (1981). Emotions. In S. B. Filskov & T. J. Boll (Eds.), Handbook of clinical neuropsychology (Vol. 1, pp. 102–134). New York: Wiley.
Rabbitt, P. (1997). Introduction: Methodologies and models in the study of executive function. In P. Rabbitt (Ed.), Methodology of frontal and executive function (pp. 1–38). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Rao, S. M., Bobholz, J. A., Hammeke, T. A., Rosen, A. C., Woodley, S. J., Cunningham, J. M., Cox, R. W., Stein, E. A., & Binder, J. R. (1997). Functional MRI evidence for subcortical participation in conceptual reasoning skills. Neuroreport, 8, 1987–1993.
Reitan, R. M., & Wolfson, D. (2000). Conation: A neglected aspect of neuropsychological functioning. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 15, 443–453.
Rips, L. (1994). The psychology of proof: Deductive reasoning in human thinking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rotenberg, V. S. (1995). Right hemisphere insufficiency and illness in the context of search activity. Dynamic Psychiatry, 150, 54–63.
Rueschemeyer, D. (1986). Power and the division of labour. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Schlucter, W. (1981). The rise of western rationalism: Max Weber’s developmental history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schore, A. N. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Schore, A. N. (1997). Early organization of the nonlinear right brain and development of a predisposition to psychiatric disorders. Developmental Psychopathology, 9, 595–631.
Schultz, W., Tremblay, L., & Hollerman, J. L. (1998). Reward prediction in primate basal ganglia and frontal cortex. Neuropharmacology, 37, 421–429.
Shallice, T., & Evans, M. E. (1978). The involvement of the frontal lobes in cognitive estimation. Cortex, 14, 294–303.
Shizgal, P. (1997). Neural basis of utility estimation. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 7, 198–208.
Shizgal, P., & Murray, B. (1989). Neuronal basis of intracranial self-stimulation. In J. M. Liebman & S. J. Cooper (Eds.), The neuropharmacological basis of reward (pp. 106–163). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Singer, T. (2009). Understanding others: Brain mechanisms of theory of mind and empathy. In P. W. Glimcher, C. F. Camerer, E. Fehr, & R1. A. Poldrack (Eds.), Neuroeconomics: Decision making and the brain (pp. 251–268). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Sperry, R. W. (1984). Consciousness, personal identity and the divided brain. Neuropsychologia, 22, 661–673.
TenHouten, W. D. (1992). “Cerebral lateralization: A scientific paradigm in crisis?” Critique of Efron and Corballis. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 15, 319–326.
TenHouten, W. D. (1997). Neurosociology. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 20, 7–37.
TenHouten, W. D. (1999a). Explorations in neurosociological theory: From the spectrum of affect to time-consciousness. In D. D. Franks & T. S. Smith (Eds.), Mind, brain, and society: Toward a neurosociology of emotion (pp. 41–80). Stamford: JAI Press.
TenHouten, W. D. (1999b). The four elementary forms of sociality, their biological bases, and their implications for affect and cognition. In L. Freese (Ed.), Advances in human ecology (Vol. 8, pp. 253–284). Stamford: JAI Press.
TenHouten, W. D. (2005). Time and society. Albany: State University of New York Press.
TenHouten, W. D. (2006). From alexithymia, borne of trauma and oppression, to symbolic elaboration, the creative expression of emotion, and rationality. In J. C. Kaufman & J. Baer (Eds.), Creativity and reason in cognitive development (pp. 177–201). New York: Cambridge University Press.
TenHouten, W. D. (2007). A general theory of emotions and social life. London: Routledge.
TenHouten, W. D. (in press). Emotion & reason: Mind, brain, and the social domains of work and love. London: Routledge.
Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism. Past & Present, 38, 56–97.
von Steinbüchel, N., Wittman, M., Strasburger, H., & Szelag, E. (1999). Auditory temporal-order judgment is impaired in patients with cortical lesions in posterior regions of the left hemisphere. Neuroscience Letters, 264, 168–171.
Weber, M. ([1904–1905] 1958). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Weber, M. ([1905] 1975). Knies and the problem of irrationality. In G. Oakes (Ed.), Roscher and knies: The logical problems of historical economics (pp. 97–205). New York: Free Press.
Weber, M. ([1918] 1970). Politics as a vocation. In H. H. Gerth & C. W. Mills (Ed. & Trans.). From max weber: Essays in sociology (pp. 77–128). New York: Oxford University Press.
Weber, M. ([1919] 1970). Science as a vocation. In H. H. Gertz & C. W. Mills (Eds. and Trans.) From max Weber: Essays in sociology (pp. 129–179). New York: Oxford University Press.
Weber, M. ([1921] 1978). In G. Roth & C. Wittich (Ed. & Trans.). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology (2 vols.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Zimmer, C. (2004). Soul made flesh: The discovery of the brain –– And how it changed the world. New York: Free Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
TenHouten, W.D. (2013). A Neurosociological Model of Weberian, Instrumental Rationality: Its Cognitive, Conative, and Neurobiological Foundations. In: Franks, D.D., Turner, J.H. (eds) Handbook of Neurosociology. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4473-8_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4473-8_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4472-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4473-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)