Philosophy On The Mesa

I think a show devoted to discovering “Australia’s Next Top Model” needs a different format than the American version. Does Tyra know quantum mechanics?

And a physicist claims he has been plagiarized.

Renowned scientist James Watson got himself into hot water recently with his remarks about the intelligence of Africans. Watson, who won the Nobel prize for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, was quoted in an interview saying he was:

“inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”… His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

Are Watson’s comments speaking truth to political correctness and the all-to-human tendency to believe bad things will go away if we don’t think about them; or were they just another racist rant misusing science to justify bigotry.

I think a little of both.

Had Watson simply stated that there was reason to believe there are genetic differences between geographically separated populations and that these genetic differences might extend to cognitive abilities, his comments would have been scientifically controversial but not necessarily racist.

It is not unreasonable to expect specific cognitive abilities to vary across populations just as other physical characteristics vary, and IQ tests show some variation although there is enormous controversy over what IQ is really testing.

But to suggest, using something as crude as an IQ test, that there is some generalized superiority of one race over another is racist and the idea that these differences would be significant enough to be obvious in the workplace is deeply offensive. This is not science but bigotry masquerading as science. Clearly, Watson’s best years are behind him.

This controversy over Watson’s remarks raises a more general concern that cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker raises in this essay. Pinker argues that:

“In every age, taboo questions raise our blood pressure and threaten moral panic. But we can’t be afraid to answer them.”

Among the questions Pinker thinks we should try to answer are: Do Most victims of sexual abuse suffer no lifelong damage? Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized? Is Homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease? Is the average intelligence of Western nations declining because duller people are having more children than smarter people? Etc.

Pinker is a sophisticated thinker and he provides a thoughtful and compelling case for allowing science to pursue unpopular ideas. I certainly agree with him in general.

However, I think Pinker’s essay fails to adequately discuss a crucial issue that the Watson case raises. For all of these questions that Pinker wants science to pursue, they are likely to be difficult to answer and subject to a good deal of uncertainty. We may in the end discover the truth, but the process will be full of false starts, blind alleys, misjudgments, and flawed research. Science is like that because it is hard to do, especially when the subject of inquiry is a complex animal like human beings. 

Because many of these topics have social and political implications, the false starts and blind alleys are likely to be reported and acted on long before we achieve a settled scientific consensus about them.

Thus, we run the risk that people will be harmed not by us acting on true beliefs but because we act prematurely on poorly supported beliefs. This is one of the problems with Watson’s remarks. They include a kernel of sound science and a lot of unsubstantiated and unwarranted speculation.

The issue is not whether some topics should be off limits. Instead, the question is how we limit the damage from the premature ejaculations of moral cretins with scientific credentials.

Philosophy has a difficult relationship with popular culture. According to Stephen Asma, that is not because of a cultural bias toward old, dead, white guys or an elitist disdain for matters that ordinary people find interesting. Instead, it is because philosophy:

“is in an extremely self-reflexive relationship with its own history, and it requires highly disciplined, systematic, abstract conceptualization, a skill that does not come easily to most people.”

He argues that books such as those in Open Court’s series on popular culture and philosophy (e.g. The Simpsons and Philosophy) do not really enlighten the reader about pop culture, but provide enjoyable access to perennial philosophical issues. Pop culture is in service to philosophy, making the medicine go down easily, rather than philosophy in service to pop culture.

His snarkish (and I think mistaken) comments about Cultural Studies suggest that he thinks there is something superior about philosophers rigorously sticking to core philosophical issues and analysis even when rooting around in the sediments of popular taste.

But why cannot disciplined, systematic philosophical thought help make sense of ordinary life? After all, science requires disciplined, systematic thought but there are lots of examples of bestselling books on science that illuminate some dimension of our lives. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Stephen J. Gould’s books on evolution, Chaos by James Glieck, Oliver Saks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat are among the many popular books on science that immediately come to mind.

Why is their no similar list in philosophy? (Harry Frankfurt’s Bullshit is an exception, but the title sells itself.)

I suspect it is because popular science books do not try to get readers to do science–they report and tell stories. Why is there no parallel in philosophy? Is it because philosophers don’t like to report and tell stories?

When will people stop making arguments like this?

“But the materialists have two problems. Their certainty of victory is, for the moment, a leap of faith. There is no clear scientific consensus on how the brain produces the higher functions we call being human. And, second, the great mystery, the ultimate hard question, remains: How does matter produce mind, how can it? Irrespective of religious belief, immaterialism cannot easily be dismissed. What is the nature of what I am thinking and feeling now? To tell me that it is all a by-product of my brain is to tell me nothing. What I am is at least as real as the chair I am sitting on, and what I am seems to be immaterial.”

This is simple nonsense. The fact that a research program is relatively new and incomplete is not evidence that some alternative hypothesis must be true–especially when there is substantial evidence supporting the research program and no evidence supporting the alternative hypothesis.

Cognitive science and neuroscience continue to make empirically testable hypotheses and have explained a variety of complex mental functions, though a complete explanation of consciousness is still elusive. The alternative, that there is some sort of “soul” that explains mental functioning, has generated few empirically-testable hypotheses, those that have been tested have failed the test, and the hypothesis itself borders on the incoherent. No one has ever suggested a remotely plausible answer to the question of how a non-physical substance can causally interact with a physical substance.

Confidence in materialism (or physicalism) is not based on faith but on evidence. It is a plain fact that mental states are exactly correlated with a range of specific brain events. Although a correlation between mind and body does not guarantee a causal relationship, if physicalism were false, this correlation would be an utter mystery. Furthermore, the causal relationship has been established with regard to a variety of mental functions.

Give it up already.

It is irritating and sad that in the 21st Century professors have to spend time in the college classroom explaining that snakes can’t talk. It is frightening that a professor can be fired for it. 

That is apparently what happened to a community college instructor in Iowa, who claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted. The story is here. (And check out the update at the bottom. The video is hilarious.)

Stories like this make research like this important. There is some evidence that rigid adherence to dogma can be explained by underdevelopment of the frontal lobes of the brain.

“Do extremism and an unconditional adherence to religious dogma result from a failure of a portion of the frontal lobe to fully develop or, if fully developed, to activate? Studies suggest that faithful adherence to a single reasoning strategy on tests such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test means that parts of the frontal lobes are inactive, have failed to fully develop, or have even been damaged. Thus, unqualified disdain for divergent beliefs,for personal interpretation, and for creative theories like Darwin’s theory of evolution, may indeed have, at least a partial, biological explanation: a reduced utilization of that section of the brain which has played such a vital role in humanity’s creative advances—the frontal lobes.”

Of course it took a lot of imagination for people to come up with stories about talking snakes. But wouldn’t it be interesting to update it a bit?

We used to call people who were egregiously deficient in mental acuity a “bird brain.” But recent research suggests this epithet is no longer appropriate.

“A nutcracker can remember the precise location of hundreds of different food storage spots. And crows in Japan have learned how to get people to crack walnuts for them: They drop them near busy intersections, then retrieve the smashed nuts when the traffic light turns red.”

The article calls this “part of a growing recognition of the genius of birds.” I don’t know if this qualifies as genius but it is not bad for a bird.

At any rate, we need a new epithet. I guess “dumb as a tree” still works. Is there any research on the intelligence of trees?

Dystopian visions of the future in films such as Blade Runner and Gattaca confront us with a future fully arrived. They instantaneously transport us to a new and frightening world for which our mundane existence leaves us unprepared. And the angst we experience at not knowing how to live in such a world heightens the dramatic appeal of the these films.

 A good deal of intellectual discussion of our technological future perform the same cheap trick. Prognosticators such as Francis Fukuyama and Michael Sandel write, in portentous tones, that advances in biotechnology or artificial intelligence will fundamentally threaten what it means to be human. They regale us with visions of parents creating designer babies in a search for perfection that undermines sympathy for the less well-endowed, a future of mutants and superbeings who obviate the need for compassion, solidarity, etc.

But these warnings miss a fundamental fact about all technological advance. It doesn’t arrive all at once. As Ray Tallis points out in this insighful essay:

 ”Of course, people are worried about more invasive innovations; in particular, the direct transformation of the human body. And this is where the gradualness of change is important, because as individuals we have a track record of coping with such changes without falling apart or losing our sense of self entirely. After all, we have all been engaged all our lives in creating a stable sense of our identity out of whatever is thrown at us.”

We should think carefully about technological advance, but leave the scare tactics behind, and give some credit for future generations and their ability to cope as past generations have.

Another break-through by neuroscientists concerning ethics and the brain: Marcel Brass from Germany’s Max Planck Institute and Patrick Haggard from University College of London (yes, the place where Jeremy Bentham is still sitting in his mahogany closet) have just published their findings that a center in the brain acts as a “second thought” or self-control mechanism that allows us to stop what we were doing or intended to do. This looks like evidence that we have freedom to choose, as a scientific fact! This area is in the dorsal fronto-median cortex—the area just above and between your eyes—and has been documented through a series of brain scans of 15 young healthy adults.

            Now whether localized brain activity actually proves free will, or a “free won’t” (like it is being dubbed), is a matter for philosophers to decide, not neuroscientists, because it is a philosophical question whether what feels like a free decision is, in the final end, exclusively a result of environmental and hereditary causes. But it seems to me that now we have at least clear evidence that we are not automata, and that if our actions are determined by environmental and hereditary factors, these factors are so complex that we are justified in assuming that our decision process is real. In other words, soft determinism is looking better all the time.

            But that is not the only fun stuff coming out of this research. For one thing, we should compare it with that other ground-breaking announcement last spring by Michael Koenigs, Antonio Damasio and others (see previous blogs) that our natural tendency goes toward not hurting other human beings. Their findings pretty much stated that if you’re capable of overriding your natural empathy, there must be something wrong with you (in other words, people who choose to hurt a few to save the many must be morally deficient. This upset a lot of utilitarians, including Peter Singer. Even I, who only consider myself a part-time utilitarian, was disturbed). But now compare this to the newly discovered stop-mechanism: Neuroscientists can tell us we have a natural tendency to act out of empathy, and now that we also have a built-in self-control mechanism. At first glance it looks like they go hand in hand: If we happen to be about to act in a way that may harm others, something between our eyes makes us stop! Or we’re about to do something that may harm ourselves, such as smoking after we’ve tried to stop, and the self-control kicks in, so we stop—sometimes. That’s the reason researchers call this mechanism our conscience, and it’s certainly fascinating all by itself.

But wait a minute—what if it is the other way around? What if we are about to act with empathy, as our instinct bids us—and all of a sudden the self-control mechanism makes us stop? Two answers here: (1) it could be because we’re selfish, and realize the risk we may be exposing ourselves to, so we don’t run into the burning building to save the child after all, but call 9-1-1 instead. But that assumes that it is the selfish act that make us feel fulfilled, and Koenigs and Damasio have showed that our brain actually enjoys helping others! Let’s look at (2) which is even more interesting: Perhaps we realize that as much as it may make us feel good to act with empathy, instinctively, sometimes it may be the wrong thing to do (because we’re mistaken, or because acting with empathy now will create a greater risk later—remember the Nazi sniper they let live in Saving Private Ryan?), and our self-control mechanism makes us stop. And what is really interesting, the “stop” act makes us feel frustrated, not good, according to the scientists—but we do it, anyway. Now that’s the real revelation: We have a brain mechanism that does not make us feel good, but it is highly active in the brain even so. So sometimes we may stop a harmful act because we realize it is wrong. Fine. And sometimes we may stop doing a benevolent act because we, in the last moment, just don’t want to. Okay. But sometimes we may stop ourselves from doing a benevolent act because, in the greater scheme of things, it will have undesirable consequences (utilitarianism), or possibly because we can’t universalize the act (deontology). And it doesn’t make us feel good to make that decision, at least not right then and there. My preliminary conclusion? We may have found Socrates’ little Daimon who told him what to do…The seat of morality may well be this stop mechanism rather than the warm and fuzzy empathy. But that of course leads to other classical questions such as, are there universally right reasons for the stop-mechanism to be engaged?

Besides, I got a real kick out of reading that the key brain area is above and between our eyes. Asian mysticism, anyone? The “Third Eye”? The Little Golden Egg? Hmmm……

Thanks to my student Tiffany for telling me about this research and e-mailing me the article!

Physicist Michael J. Disney thinks modern cosmology is in trouble. Essentially his argument is that, in a maturing science, the number of purely theoretical constructions invented to explain observed phenomena should be less than the number of independent observations that confirm the theory.

Apparently, given the proliferation of theoretical constructions such as dark matter, dark energy, etc. and the paucity of independent observatations confirming them, cosmology doesn’t qualify as a maturing science.

Is this a good standard for evaluating a science? We humanistically-trained scholars would like to know.

 The most e-mailed article today in the New York Times was, to my delight, this one: “This is Your Life (and How You Tell It).”  Narrative psychologists have, after years of making assumptions, finally got it down: (1) We actually do tell our own story, and (2) it actually matters to us. Studies, described in detail in the article, show that similar personalities tend to tell similar stories, and our stories often involve a learning experience, projecting us into the future. The narrative capacity is a fundamental human feature. Why am I delighted? For one thing, I’m glad psychologists have done the legwork here, substantiating claims that otherwise belonged to the realm of speculation, and I’m also glad that readers find it interesting. But what I hope we philosophers will point out to the narrative psychologists is that narrative philosophy has been doing the speculative work for years, coming to the same conclusions by way of analysis and observation. Alasdair MacIntyre, Wayne Booth, Paul Ricoeur and Martha Nussbaum, among others, have, each with their own perspective, weighed in on the importance of story-telling. In particular Paul Ricoeur, in his book Oneself as Another, has focused on the morally fortifying and even liberating capacity of humans to mold their lives by treating their life events as elements of a story they are co-authoring. Two directions in narrative philosophy come together in Ricoeur’s work: The ontological and the ethical: We understand ourselves existentially through stories, but it also becomes a moral imperative to do so, in order to give our life direction, to rectify what we may have done wrong, and to gain a perspective on our lives. In addition, we change the story as we change, and we even tell different stories, depending on the context. When, on a first date, the moment comes when you are asked to “tell something about yourself,” you’d better have a story to tell, or the date is a wash-out right there…but it isn’t the same story that you would tell in a job interview, is it? This is why Ricoeur talks about narrative unity, striving not only to be able to tell our own story, but also to make sure the story fragments we tell are somehow all reflecting our true self, even the ones where we embellish somewhat. (It is a separate but interesting question how much lying to oneself, about oneself, matters to one’s sense of identity…the movie Memento comes to mind…) Philosophers and psychologists don’t necessarily converse a lot these days, but I find it encouraging that these studies converge: From narrative psychology we now have the stats—from narrative ethics we already have the normative perspective. So let’s all practice telling our own story from time to time, even in the third person. Do it too much, and you’re a narcissist…do it once in a while, and you’ll learn things about yourself that you never knew…