Abstract

In this study, the genealogy of the quantitative and measurementist paradigm of brain sciences will be reconstructed to emphasise the determinism as well as the predictive element that characterises and legitimises neurosciences. Two recent cases of the application of this paradigm will be then presented to show that, despite the technological progress of the last 150 years and the “dematerialisationµ of its object, the notion of “measureµ persists. My hypothesis is that one of the implications of the measurement of the human mind on a quantitative basis is the pathologisation of individuals and groups who are already subject to discrimination. This approach has the effect of locking them into a dimension of existence in which any reaction to a state of social subordination loses all ethical-political character to become merely the symptom of an individual’s disease.