"The Ideological Brain" (Or, Why Neuroscience Isn't Very Good at Philosophy)

Let me begin with the acknowledgment that I am launching a grand, ambitious project called "American Ideologue." And yes, I am, ironically, calling myself an ideologue. It’s a term usually spat out with contempt, synonymous with being stubborn, narrow-minded, and generally incapable of rational thought—so naturally, I embraced it with open arms. After all, who wouldn’t want to brand themselves publicly as someone who is utterly impervious to reason?

Imagine my delight, then, upon discovering neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod’s "The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking." It’s the perfect foil. If I’d been tasked with writing a comedic parody of contemporary science, aiming at the absurd overreach of neuroscientists confidently proclaiming profound insights into politics and philosophy, I couldn’t have done better myself. This book is not just an inadvertent satire—it’s a comedic masterpiece of tautological thinking.

Zmigrod's brilliant hypothesis, roughly paraphrased, is this: ideology equals inflexible, rigid thinking. After much rigorous research, using dazzlingly expensive technology such as functional MRI machines (fMRI)—presumably because measuring brainwaves feels inherently more scientific than reading Aristotle—she has uncovered the shocking truth: people who hold ideological beliefs tend to be inflexible and rigid thinkers. Cue gasp.

Let me repeat that in case you missed its brilliance: she defines ideology as inflexibility, then discovers that people she labels ideological tend to be, wait for it, inflexible! She emerges from her lab triumphant, brandishing proof of the obvious as if she had just unearthed King Tut’s tomb. This is a breathtakingly perfect tautology. It’s the scientific equivalent of observing that water is wet or that cats refuse commands out of spite.

Yet, the humor deepens when you realize Zmigrod is a genuine neuroscientist of some repute (from Cambridge, no less). I'm no neuroscientist, of course—I wouldn't dare comment on her ability to dissect grey matter or interpret squiggly lines from brain scans. But I do feel comfortable critiquing her extraordinary misunderstanding of the very subject she attempts to measure—ideology itself.

Zmigrod treats ideology like a malignant brain growth—a calcified lump of stubbornness lodged somewhere between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Ideology, in her conception, is simply something that individuals have, like a gallstone or gout. But here’s the small, almost insignificant problem: ideology doesn’t live in the brain. Shocking, I know. Ideology is fundamentally social. It is shared; it is collective. Ideology is embedded in traditions, rituals, and collective institutions. Measuring ideology by looking at isolated brains is as absurd as trying to locate democracy inside a voter’s hippocampus or checking your spleen for signs of capitalism.

This is called a category error, a philosophical rookie mistake hilariously illustrated by philosopher Gilbert Ryle when he described a visitor touring Oxford, seeing libraries and classrooms, then asking, “But where’s the University?” To paraphrase (for Zmigrod’s benefit): after scanning all these neurons, she’s left asking, “But where’s the ideology?” It's everywhere and nowhere in the neural spaghetti she’s busy photographing.

"Ideologies numb our direct experience of the world. They narrow our capacity to adapt to the world, to understand evidence, to distinguish between credible evidence and not credible evidence. Ideologies are rarely, if ever, good."

To her credit, Zmigrod isn’t alone. The age of neuroscience has convinced many intelligent people that if something exists, it can be found pulsating inside a human skull. Want to explain happiness? Scan the brain. Love? Scan again. Morality? Let’s not kid ourselves—someone is probably scanning it right now. But ideology? Ideology has as much physical reality in the brain as freedom or democracy does: absolutely none.

Ideology, properly understood, is a shared system of beliefs, values, and social meanings. It’s the invisible glue that holds societies together. Sometimes ideology is harmful—like fascism, racism, or extreme nationalism. But often, it’s profoundly beneficial—like liberalism, human rights, and rule of law. Zmigrod, however, lumps them all together as forms of dangerous neural inflexibility. By her standards, believing passionately in democracy or justice would presumably also make one inflexible and rigid.

And here’s where things get darkly comedic: Zmigrod’s dream, articulated with gleaming-eyed optimism, is a world where brains are completely "ideology-free." Imagine the utopia she conjures: millions of perfectly flexible, perfectly blank minds, tabula rasa individuals who wake up every morning prepared to reconsider the very foundation of their existence. Should I believe in justice today? Let me check the data again. Perhaps murder isn't that bad, let's remain open-minded. It’s the ultimate postmodern fantasy dressed in a lab coat—an endless horizon of plastic, gelatinous brains forever free of pesky convictions.

Ironically, this desire for an ideology-free humanity is itself exactly what she claims ideology to be. It’s an inflexible adherence to the virtue of having no stable beliefs at all. Zmigrod inadvertently embodies the ultimate postmodern avatar: someone who seeks to abolish all grand narratives, except her grand narrative that all grand narratives are oppressive. In trying to eradicate ideology, she merely replaces it with a new “ideology”—the ideology of anti-ideology, a marvelously humorous paradox.

Her conception of ideology also implicitly casts religion as just another form of stubborn brain rigidity. I know how easy it is in our modern world to overlook how religious traditions—Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu—are nuanced, flexible, dynamic cultural traditions, evolving over centuries, often fostering compassion, charity, and peace. To dismiss religion and ideology is akin to blaming Shakespeare for rigidly adhering to poetic meter or accusing Beethoven of inflexibly composing symphonies. Some things have structure, coherence, and integrity. This isn't rigidity; it's called meaning.

But Zmigrod insists on measuring "ideology" through arbitrary cognitive tests. Imagine judging Thomas Jefferson’s commitment to liberty by testing his puzzle-solving speed or diagnosing the rigidity of Gandhi’s nonviolent philosophy by timing how quickly he sorted shapes. Ideologies are systems of meaning, culture, and tradition, not cognitive flexibility tests. Her approach reduces the entire intellectual and cultural heritage of humanity into psychometric simplicity.

I can't help but wonder how she'd score someone like Martin Luther King Jr. Would she place electrodes on his scalp, measure his flexibility as he stood stubbornly against racism? Would his passion for justice render his neurons embarrassingly rigid? Would she gently suggest he ease up a little, maybe consider Jim Crow's good points to remain cognitively flexible?

To Zmigrod, the ideal human mind would presumably resemble a perfectly empty whiteboard, forever awaiting new scribbles, incapable of forming lasting commitments. But civilizations are not built by perpetual waverers. Moral courage requires commitments. Great achievements we often call “progress” demand conviction—not rigid inflexibility, but conviction that is open to challenge, dialogue, and reform.

As I embark on my project proudly called "American Ideologue," I do so fully aware of this humorous, paradoxical tension. Unlike Zmigrod, I openly acknowledge that ideologies are necessary. They offer guidance, shared meaning, and moral vision. The question isn’t how to abolish them but how to make them thoughtful, reflective, adaptable, and, yes, even flexible. But not so flexible that we cease believing in anything at all.

After all, the true humor of Zmigrod’s "Ideological Brain" is its complete lack of self-awareness—its profound rigidity masquerading as scientific objectivity. So here’s to ideology—the stubborn human belief that some ideas are worth believing.