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Scientific research into the human mind and human behavior is as much feared as welcomed by laypeople. Many people see something profoundly threatening in the new knowledge this research will likely bring. Those of us who work in the broadly naturalistic stream of philosophy are often tempted to dismiss these fears contemptuously, but this is a temptation we ought to resist. After all, there is inductive evidence that scientific discoveries can cause enormous disruptions in our shared conception of ourselves – think of the Darwinian revolution, and the way it is plausibly taken to have caused us to adopt a somewhat less exalted
view of ourselves and our place in the universe. The discovery of the unconscious arguably had similar kinds of effects. It is surely not inconceivable
that new discoveries might have an even more far-reaching implications, and that those implications could be profoundly unwelcome. Knowledge is, of
course, valuable for its own sake. But anyone who believes that it can never be on balance undesirable seems to have an over-optimistic view of the world.
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