De vieilles obsessions sous des habits neufs ?

• Main Author: Louis Quéré
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française 2011-10-01
• Series: Sociologies
• Subjects: social naturalism; neurobiology; sociological thinking; social relations
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sociologies/3744

This paper tries to sift out the plausible in what Laurence Kaufmann and Laurent Cordonier tell in their article. It specifies some conditions for the acceptation of their surmise about the « social brain ». It criticizes much more their speculations about a « neuroendocrinous regulation of the social bond ». It argues that the authors don't estimate properly the capacities and the limits of the neuroscientific explanations of human conduct and social relations. Finally, it compares the version of social naturalism assumed by the authors with the pragmatist tradition's one (John Dewey and George Herbert Mead) and uses this last to show the problematic character of the first.