The Ideologucal Brain Flashcards
What is the thesis here?
The thesis is that ideology is not something we have it is linked to our brains. She is looking at ideology not through history or sociology but through neuropsychology. What brains will be attracted to absolutist ideology and which less so. What do effect do those ideologies have on the brains and not just political thoughts.
What experiment can be shown to link to ideology?
People matching colours and shapes. The people who accept a change ina. Repeating pattern more cognitively flexible than those that want to go back to the original pattern. Follows likelihood of ideological vulnerability.
Where does
Metaphor come in?
Metaphor is what we live by. We look for metaphor and they become self fulfilling. They matter in how we look at things. Eg brain washed and zombie. Tend to diminish personal responsibility .
What did Arendt say?
Eichmann. She saw people as being basically brainless and following orders. Changing from nazi to stalin without missing a beat. She saw situations. Diminished personal responsibility. Unethical experiments in 1960s loved this.
Culture v ideology
Culture can be flexible. Ideology is all or nothing.
What does she want to trouble?
She wants to trouble the idea of mind brain biology. She wants doesn’t any to stop language we use but make clear that our mental contents have a biological basis.
When ideologue invented?
The study of ideology was first systematically developed by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, an 18th-century French Enlightenment thinker. He coined the term idéologie around 1796 to describe a “science of ideas”—a proposed empirical study of the origin of ideas, rooted in Enlightenment rationalism and sensory experience.
However, the concept and analysis of ideology evolved significantly after him:
•Karl Marx revolutionized the concept by critiquing ideology as a tool of class dominance, framing it as a set of ideas that serve the ruling class and obscure real social relations.
•Louis Althusser later expanded on Marx by analyzing ideology as a system of representations that structure people’s relationship to their social reality through institutions like schools and religion.
So while Destutt de Tracy invented the term and laid the foundation, the modern critical study of ideology owes much to Marx and later Marxist thinkers.
What was napoleons view?
Napoleon initially supportive took against the ideologues with their improving ideas and desire to make world better place based on evidence.
How did it swing back across the Atlantic ?
Despite Jefferson having initially been a supporter it did not take hold in the US. It was Marx eg al who took the baton. By this point ideology had been warped from
Its original meaning as the study of the origin of ideas into something more political.
Did Tracy really add anything to the Enlightmwnt thought of others?
Great question—Tracy’s work was distinct from many of his contemporaries, but whether he added something truly new depends on how you weigh originality versus synthesis.
Here’s how he differed:
- Emphasis on Sensory Experience
Tracy was heavily influenced by Enlightenment empiricism, especially Locke and Condillac. But unlike Locke, who focused on the mind’s passive reception of ideas, Tracy sought to build a systematic “science of ideas” grounded in physiology and sensory data. He believed all knowledge stemmed from physical sensation, and he wanted to treat ideas like natural phenomena—observable and classifiable.
New angle: He was trying to bridge philosophy and biology—a kind of early neuropsychology or cognitive science, in spirit if not in methods.
- Ideology as a Positive Science
Tracy coined the term idéologie with the hope that it would become the foundation for all other sciences—a way to purify thinking and politics by rooting them in empirical truth. This was distinct from other Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau or Voltaire, who were more literary or speculative.
New angle: He envisioned ideology not just as a philosophical topic but as a discipline, much like physics or chemistry.
- Political Application
Tracy was a liberal republican who saw ideology as a tool to defend Enlightenment values against reactionary forces. After the French Revolution, during Napoleon’s rise, he and his circle were mocked as the “Ideologues.” Napoleon twisted the term idéologue into an insult—associating it with out-of-touch idealism.
New angle: Tracy’s ideology was meant to be politically reformist, aiming to structure education and governance scientifically. This set him apart from more conservative or romantic thinkers of the time.
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So, did he add anything new?
Yes and no.
•Yes, in that he was among the first to frame the study of ideas as a systematic, empirical science, and he coined a term that would have a long and controversial afterlife.
•No, in that much of his theory built on prior empiricist traditions, and his work was soon overshadowed—first by Napoleon’s dismissal, and later by Marx’s radical reinterpretation of ideology.
Think of Tracy as a kind of intellectual hinge—he connected Enlightenment empiricism with later, more critical approaches to ideology. His originality lay more in method and ambition than in radically new content.
