Books I'm Reading - March-April 2014

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Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011)

Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away by Rebecca Goldstein (2014)

Of Africa by Wole Soyinka (2012)

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Eric Hofstadter (1963)

Controlling Anger: The Anthropology of Gisu Violence by Suzette Heald (1989)

The Best Things in Life: A Contemporary Socrates Looks at Power, Pleasure, Truth and the Good Life by Peter Kreeft (1984)

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (2003)

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Between Global Tyranny And Anarchy - Where Do You Stand?

Cultural Production of Ignorance Provides Rich Field for Study

by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2014

There are many rich and powerful people throughout the world, especially in the fields of politics, business, and religion, who work very hard to undermine Humankind's ability to think clearly and independently. Being skeptical, using reason and logic, and placing high value on scientific knowledge are portrayed as threats to the well-being of members of the working class, whose votes and support they need, to the nation, to the national culture, and sometimes to the whole of civilization. What they fear most, however, is the harm critical independent thinking may do to their maintaining and increasing their power and wealth. Conservative political, economic, and religious leaders in the US and elsewhere have developed and perfected a way of undermining such freethinking - plant seeds of doubt about science and couple this with their peculiar notions of patriotism and freedom, as explained in the above article.

This is not a new approach. That is, the use of governmental and economic power (including the use and threat of military force) combined with religious indoctrination to subdue and exploit people and their resources has many historical precedents. In the West, for example, a version of it was adopted as the 19th century strategy for the European colonization of Africa. Those who governed, owned the deep coffers of commerce, and purveyed the Christian religion in Europe, pushed their way into Africa, justified and emboldened by their conviction of the superiority of their values, beliefs, behaviors, and technology.

The Ownership And Immortality Of The Self

The following recently-published articles display some of our current misconceptions, fantasies, and worries about the brain, mind, and self. Such essays by learned experts help define who we are, how we treat others, and what our future might be. They therefore merit our attention and their arguments should not be accepted based on an implied argument from authority. What are they trying to tell us about these important matters and why?

“Possessive Individualism:  Can We Really Own Ourselves?” by John Médaille, The Imaginative Conservative, December 2013

 “The Closing of the Scientific Mind” by David Gelernter, Commentary, January 1, 2014

“Endless fun:  The question is not whether we can upload our brains onto a computer, but what will become of us when we do” by Michael Graziano, Aeon Magazine, December 18, 2013

Notice that all three articles are not published in professional, peer-reviewed scientific or philosophical journals, rather in periodicals intended for widespread public consumption.  What they write in science and philosophy journals has less impact because the circle of readership is smaller.  Therefore, all of us should be concerned about the impact of their ideas on the global public through articles such as those above.  Why?  Because how we as everyday people treat ourselves and others is largely influenced by such public-targeted articles and books.  If our concepts of our selves and the selves of others are given inaccurate meanings, touted as something that scientists want to prove are of lesser significance compared to the functioning of our genes and brains, or when our selves are wistfully portrayed as virtual commodities that might one day live forever embedded in computers, our lives and treatment of each other may easily become adversely affected.  The facts and argumentation in all such for-public-consumption writings should be treated with skepticism and subjected to scrutiny.

The Righteous Mind By Jonathon Haidt: Critique Postscript

There’s so much to be said about moral psychologist Jonathon Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012). I have had my time upon the stage in my critique of the book and am grateful to those who read my post. Let me take things a bit further, however, and discuss one other matter that puts me off about Haidt's work, something I did not address in my critique.  That is, his interpretation of his data on the Left and why members of the Left score as they do on his tests.

Haidt’s portrayal of the Left is incomplete. His claim may be supported by his moral foundation questionnaire but he fails to explain why those on the Left hold the moral positions they do. For example, Haidt claims that members of the Left do not value loyalty as much as members of the Right. Yes, that is true. But the facts of his test result are not sufficient. The matter doesn’t end there. The reasons members of the Left score lower on the loyalty foundation is crucial to understanding the difference between the Left and the Right, and the nature of morality generally.

Good And Evil: Hardwired, Learned, Or Both?

“The Psychological Power of Satan”

by Piercarlo Valdesolo

Scientific American, October 29, 2013

"The longer we cling to strong beliefs about the existence of pure evil, the more aggressive and antisocial we become.  And we may be aggressing towards individuals who are, in fact, 'redeemable.'  Individuals who are not intrinsically and immutably motivated by the desire to intentionally cause harm to others."

What if our strong reductionistic, deterministic scientists some day establish an irrefutable gene, gene complex, and/or a neural basis for evil? Would redemption, atonement, and rehabilitation still be possible? Why bother? What would become of societal values, moral codes and laws, of individual deliberative judgment?  Would we regard them simply as post hoc rationalizations of what our genes and brains direct us to do? Would the social sciences become mere descriptions of artifacts and a cataloguing of individual, societal, and global events that genes and brains have dictated?

Culture As Superorganism - Neurobiologist's Speculation Is Misleading

"Bursting the Bubble of Human Intelligence" by Mark Changizi

I don't mind when I read an occasional knocking us humans down a peg or two, or the elevation of other creatures in our estimation.  In fact I also find it useful and enjoyable to occasionally point out our sweaty, butt-scratching animalness.  I have not read evolutionary neurobiologist Mark Changizi's book Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man but his essay linked above, which explains the main theses of his book, shows a most glaring misunderstanding of culture and cultural evolution on his part.

Something From Nothing?!

From this, the empty set, nothing:

{   }

to this, a lot of something:

(Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California,

Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team)

Levels of Nothing: There Are Multiple Answers as to Why the Universe Exists

by Robert Lawrence Kuhn

eSkeptic, August 28, 2013

I have read this essay twice. The following excerpts make very little sense to me and seem like woo. The only way I can understand what is being said is if I substitute a different word for "nothing," such as "reality." Even then I have difficulty understanding or accepting what the author is trying to communicate. I have put my specific reactions in brackets after each excerpt.

What the author is calling "nothing" really isn't a space, state of existence, or condition with no thing. In his purported nine levels of nothing, for example, only the ninth can truly be said to have no thing. The other eight have things and therefore are really not nothing.

Secular Truth And Morality: Being Virtuous, Happy, And At Peace Without God and Religion

Proceeds from the sale of this book go toward paying school fees and living expenses of children in Uganda.

To buy this book, click here.

From the Amazon.com description:

In this book, his first, American anthropologist James E Lassiter offers an alternative to the absolute truths of the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – for understanding our place in Nature, and how we might behave more humanely and responsibly toward each other and the planet. He describes scientific truth, upon which secularism is founded, in comparison to religion, as a far more apt corollary to and explanation of the evolution of the Universe and Life itself.

Life In America Can Drive You Insane, Literally

Cropped from “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time” [Allegory of the Triumph of Venus] by Angelo Bronzino (1503-1572)

Why Life In America Can Literally Drive You Insane

by Bruce E. Levine, The Alternet, July 30, 2013

“The reality is that with enough helplessness, hopelessness, passivity, boredom, fear, isolation, and dehumanization, we rebel and refuse to comply. Some of us rebel by becoming inattentive. Others become aggressive. In large numbers we eat, drink and gamble too much. Still others become addicted to drugs, illicit and prescription. Millions work slavishly at dissatisfying jobs, become depressed and passive aggressive, while no small number of us can’t cut it and become homeless and appear crazy. Feeling misunderstood and uncared about, millions of us ultimately rebel against societal demands, however, given our wherewithal, our rebellions are often passive and disorganized, and routinely futile and self-destructive.”

"At Eternity's Gate, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting - New UN Report

Female Genital Mutilation: 30 Million Girls "At Risk" BBC Report, July 22, 2013

New UNICEF report on female genital mutilation/cutting: Turning opposition into action UNICEF Report on Child Protection from Violence, Exploitation and Abuse, July 22, 2013

The UN Report:  Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Statistical Overview and Exploration of the Dynamics of Change, July 2013

“FGM/C is a violation of a girl’s rights to health, well-being and self-determination,” says UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Geeta Rao Gupta. “What is clear from this report is that legislation alone is not enough. The challenge now is to let girls and women, boys and men speak out loudly and clearly and announce they want this harmful practice abandoned.”

"UNICEF published its first statistical exploration of FGM/C in 2005, helping to increase awareness of the magnitude and persistence of the practice. This report, published eight years later, casts additional light on how the practice is changing and on the progress being made. The analyses contained on the following pages show that social dynamics favouring the elimination of the practice may exist even in countries where the practice is universal and provide clues on how they might be harnessed. The report also makes clear that, in some countries, little or no change is apparent yet and further programmatic investments are needed.

"As many as 30 million girls are at risk of being cut over the next decade if current trends persist. UNICEF will continue to engage with governments and civil society, together with other  partners, to advance efforts to eliminate FGM/C worldwide. If, in the next decade, we work together to apply the wealth of evidence at our disposal, we will see major progress. That means a better life and more hopeful prospects for millions of girls and women, their families and entire communities.

Geeta Rao Gupta

Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF

What you can do, now:  StopFGMNow.com

Facebook:  STOP FGM NOW!

"Humanities Crisis?"

 Makonde carving, East Africa

UPDATE 
The Decline of the Humanities - and Civilization by Rosanna Warren, The New Republic, July 17, 2013

Who Ruined the Humanities? by Lee Siegel, The Wall Street Journal, The Saturday Essay, July 12, 2013

"A digital environment also stresses quantitative thinking, and perhaps that helps explain why the most exciting cultural advances are now in science and medicine.

"It is hardly a surprise that in this atmosphere, college students choose to major in fields that are most relevant to the life around them. What a blessing that is on literature. Slipping out from behind ivied prison doors, where they have been forced to labor as evaluative "texts," the great thoughts and feelings made permanent by art can resume their rightful place as a unique phase of ordinary experience."

ORIGINAL POST

Humanist: Heal Thyself

by Russell A. Berman

The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 10, 2013

I don't see a humanities crisis as this and other recent essays* try to argue. Fewer humanities majors than in the past? Such can only be a problem of staffing and salaries at universities, or a problem of society where there ostensibly needs to be a certain critical mass of humanities educated US citizens. 

The first problem is really not one for the academy. Declining humanities majors and attendant faculty positions are accompanied by increases in science and other areas. The academy is neither in crisis nor endangered by this.

The second problem, harm to society, is likewise not significant. That a society might become less able to appreciate art, music, literature, and history and therefore become less humanistic and less humane due to the lack of university-educated humanists flies in the face of what we know of the nature of Humankind. 

Humans direct and shape culture to suit their perceived needs, usually for the short term. Regardless of what majors US college students choose, the future of Humankind's thinking and behaving humanistically and humanely is not something to be worried about. Currently, the global trend is for societies to fashion and support cultures that have beliefs, values, and behaviors that are predominantly secular-scientific. Implicit in worries over the future of university humanities is a fear that ever-growing scientific-secularism and materialism are increasingly harmful to Humankind. There is no historical or anthropological evidence to justify such fear. The most atrocious behaviors of all time have been derived from quests for power, wealth, and religious hegemony - not a lack of knowledge about the humanities.  Humaneness will not decline because fewer humanities degrees are awarded in the US and elsewhere. In fact, a strong argument could be made that far more acts of humaneness have been committed, historically and currently, by illiterate humans than by all the world's humanities graduates combined.    

New Freethinkers

Owl & Ibis – A Confluence of Minds represents one among many new approaches being tried alongside contemporary and more popular freethinker groups. This new direction derives from and has its precursors in the humanistic thinking of John Dewey, Paul Kurtz, Isaiah Berlin, and many others. Owl & Ibis, as a learning endeavor, is interested in and respectful of all civilizations, societies, cultural traditions, and belief systems but professes to none. It holds in high esteem secular-scientific thinking yet is committed to pluralism and tolerance regarding all other modes of thought. At the same time, it will critically assess and when necessary vigorously challenge the beliefs and values of persons and groups that advocate and carry out harm* against persons, peoples, and Humankind as a whole. This includes challenging efforts to place religious beliefs in the curricula of public-funded science classrooms, and in legislation drafted by otherwise secular governments. Both actions, when successful, are regarded as harmful to Humankind. 

Many freethinkers often become zealous about their views regarding science and atheism, and descend into "scientism" and religion- and believer-bashing. When this occurs freethinker understandings of science’s methods become dogmatic and science’s provisional knowledge becomes misconstrued as absolute. Such a freethinker worldview becomes similar to that of the very religious fundamentalists they most abhor such that both defend their respective beliefs as absolute truth and their methods for arriving at them as superior to all others.

Ultimate Knowledge

Philosopher in Meditation by Rembrandt

Some Modern Perspectives on the Quest for Ultimate Knowledge (2013)

by Stephen Wolfram

The importance of this article is its accurate description of the great promise of applying the natural sciences and mathematics to human behavior, AND their limitations. Wolfram's comment toward the end on taking a certain comfort that there will most likely never be an ultimate, totally predictive knowledge of human behavior and the processes of the universe should not cause discouragement. Nor should the unlikely attainment of such a perfect knowledge cause us to abandon the focusing of the natural sciences on Humankind. Acceptance of the unlikely emergence of a complete, deterministic natural science of man is an acceptance of the reality of the complexity of the universe and in turn the complexities of the affairs of Humankind. I am comforted by the provisional scientific knowledge we continue to build, not by a desire or need for an absolute knowledge. The former seems a better fit for the provisional, evolving universe we are in.

Natural Science, Certainty, And Widget Factories

The Problem of the Neuroscience Backlash

by Gary Marcus

My posts against scientism are cautionary comments motivated by my love of and respect for science and Humankind. It is disheartening that so many of my fellow humans, such as Donald Brooks mentioned in the essay linked above, take criticism of neuroscientism as a justification for condemning and ignoring the important work and findings of the brain sciences.

It is becoming more and more apparent that we in the West, and most acutely those of us in the US, have sunken into an age of reactionary extremes where certainty, bombast, and outrage are our favored and most often only modes of expressing our views and reacting to the views of others. Umbrage, indignation, and knee-jerk conclusion jumping, such as that of Mr Brooks and others such as politicians, are in vogue and too often taken as signs of the correctness of the position taken by such persons regardless of whether they have any expertise in the matter they speak of or not. Fortunately, discerning minds easily recognize cautionary comments for what they are and can look beyond the bluster and fury of self-appointed experts and windbags.

All will eventually be well and this age of certainty, determinism, and absolutism - among the believers AND secular-scientific thinkers, and among the left AND right - will pass into another age. Hopefully, it will be an age of tolerant pluralism where we must work harder at finding common ground and ways forward for Humankind and forsake the easier work of expressing certainty, outrage, and intolerance. We will need many more discerning minds to express themselves than are currently doing so to take us toward a new age with a viable and sustainable global morality and civilization at its core. The current age of zero-sum certainty and bombast is divisive, inclined toward conflict, and intellectually sterile. Humankind can and will do better, if we don't self-destruct along the way.

*           *           *

Materialism, reductionism, and determinism are essential to the scientific method. But also essential to scientific methodology is the recognition that complex structures and functions, beyond atoms, molecules, tissues, and organs and what they do, represent and require different and more complex levels of analysis.

The Two Greatest Inventions

Printing Press With Movable Type, Johannes Guterburg, c. 1440

The New York Times Magazine, The Innovations Issue - "If you were trying to name the greatest invention in human history, it would be...,"

The above link takes you to the opening essay of the New York Times Magazine, Innovations Issue of June 9, 2013.  The answer to the Times' rhetorical question about the greatest invention in history shouldn't surprise you.  No, it isn't the printing press with movable type pictured above.  The greatest invention ever was the first stone chopping tools used by our ancestors 2.6 million years ago.

Olduwan Stone Chopping Tools, East Africa

These simple, modified pieces of rock in themselves are not so great to us modern humans when we compare them to subsequent inventions, innovations, and discoveries.  It is true that fire usage, metal tools, the wheel, writing, mathematics, architecture, industrial manufacturing, electricity, the internal combustion engine, airplanes, atomic energy, medical science and technology, electronic computation, and others have been greater in terms of their power to manipulate the environment and their ability to improve human living conditions.

The greatness of these first hominin (humans and their close extinct relatives) tools is in what they contributed to if not on their own precipitated - a new type of survival strategy in the natural history of animals commonly known today as "human cultural adaptation."  These rudimentary tools our ancestors made, used, became dependent on, and gradually improved upon stand as our most important invention, ever.  The subsequent impact of this new hominin way of life of which tool use was inseparable is still being powerfully applied to Earth, its environment, and all its life forms.

Stone chopping tools, used for butchering scavenged carcasses in East Africa 2.6 million years ago, are the oldest of our ancestors' tools to be preserved and later discovered in the archaeological record.  Stone tool manufacture and usage helped initiate an unprecedented evolutionary adaptation in the natural history of animals.  Hominin cultural adaptation did not emerge suddenly or fully formed.  It is a set of innovations in hominin evolution comprised of the following:  tool manufacture and reliance, upright walking, high protein consumption, social group innovations, increased brain size, and language.  It is this adaptation complex - an ecological-behavioral niche that we gradually created and continue build upon - that allowed us to survive and upon which we still depend today.

This complex is an emergent baseline bio-cultural foundation that made possible and sped up the emergence of all subsequent human inventions, innovations, and discoveries.  Without the advent of this tool-centered adaptation complex the subsequent social, technological, and scientific advances humans have made would have been unlikely if not impossible.  For further reading on how Phase I, the human cultural adaptation complex, came about and what it has led to see The Driving Forces Of Human Evolution - A Reading List and The Case For Human Evolution, Science And Reason - A Reading List.

Scientism And The Humanities

Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture - A Defense of the Humanities by Leon Wieseltier

EXCERPT:

"Our glittering age of technologism is also a glittering age of scientism. Scientism is not the same thing as science. Science is a blessing, but scientism is a curse. Science, I mean what practicing scientists actually do, is acutely and admirably aware of its limits, and humbly admits to the provisional character of its conclusions; but scientism is dogmatic, and peddles  certainties. It is always at the ready with the solution to every problem, because it believes that the solution to every problem is a scientific one, and so it gives scientific answers to non-scientific questions. But even the question of the place of science in human existence is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical, which is to say, a humanistic, question.

"Owing to its preference for totalistic explanation, scientism transforms science into an ideology, which is of course a betrayal of the experimental and empirical spirit. There is no perplexity of human emotion or human behavior that these days is not accounted for genetically or in the cocksure terms of evolutionary biology. It is true that the selfish gene has lately been replaced by the altruistic gene, which is lovelier, but it is still the gene that tyrannically rules. Liberal scientism should be no more philosophically attractive to us than conservative scientism, insofar as it, too, arrogantly reduces all the realms that we inhabit to a single realm, and tempts us into the belief that the epistemological eschaton has finally arrived, and at last we know what we need to know to manipulate human affairs wisely. This belief is invariably false and occasionally disastrous. We are becoming ignorant of ignorance."

Science And Morality

Science and Moral Life - The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture

A must read complement to Michael Shermer (The Science of Good and Evil) and Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape) on science and morality.  All three are excellent treatments of this subject.

Am In Uganda, The Pearl of Africa, And Loving It!

Wanale (Nkokonjeru), a major rock prominence in the western

shadow of Masaaba (Mt. Elgon), Bumasaaba, the homeland

of the Masaaba people of eastern Uganda

Have been at my second home in Uganda since February 1.  Been visiting relatives and friends and completing the preliminaries for research for a book I'm writing, The Bamasaaba or Bagisu of Uganda: An Historical Ethnography.  Will resume posting in May.  Cheers!

Brain Creates Self, Self Becomes An Emergent Agent That Connects Brain To World

Art by Mark David Dietz, used with permission

If the self is a delusion, as many tell us, who or what is it that is being deluded? The self is produced by the brain based on inherited biological potentials and the brain's interactions with the environment via the senses. It is maintained and projected socially by the brain throughout our lives. It is that which the brain creates and imposes on the local and global community of minds we are born into, a community that also provides access to the thoughts of minds from the past. It is not a stand-alone dualistic soul, homunculus, or ghost in the machine. Nor is it solely a collection of impulse discharging nerve cells in the brain. It begins at birth and ends at death. Look for the self in what a person says and does in between. ... As for changing or improving one's self, here's a great, somewhat tongue-in-cheek article by journalist Kathryn Schulz on the self-help industry: http://nymag.com/health/self-help/2013/schulz-self-searching/.

Also, there is this:  the archaic mammalian SELF at the sub-cortical level - http://www.academia.edu/1312559/Affective_Neuroscience_and_the_Philosophy_of_Self.  One cannot help after observing the individual and social behavior of reptiles and birds that there must also be a reptilian and avian SELF, and a SELF at work in all sentient beings.  When a bird, for example, flees at the approach of what might be danger to its well-being and continued existence it appears to be doing so as a deliberative response to a remembered experience of one or a number of characteristics the danger possesses.  The bird appears to have "decided" this particular danger is a threat and responded in a manner it believes is in its best interest.  This postulation and its resulting decision is made with reference to its remembered individual experience and its remembered observation of other animals' fleeing or making referent calls in reference to the same danger.  We've all seen birds and other animals respond to danger and non-dangerous others and situations - most times appropriately, sometimes inappropriately, and sometimes in a confused, undecided manner.  The fact that they don't always respond appropriately seems to me to support the idea that their deliberative sometimes breaks down from the lack of full information about the threat or a misinterpretation of full information.  Stealth, camouflage, mimicry, and other traits and tactics on the part of dangerous others, such as predators, are used to confuse the deliberative process in their prey.  Predator animals likewise engage in deliberative processes in their decisions to pursue or not pursue prey, and in what manner they will do so.

In light of the research and thinking presented in the above paper by Stephen T. Asma and Thomas Greif, a synthesis of neuroscience, philosophy, and social science regarding the human self could be expressed as follows:

The self, at the cortical level in humans, is an evolutionary emergent elaboration along the continuum of the mammalian self. What we humans have is a mammalian self at the level of the mid-brain that is augmented and elaborated by the cortex using language. It is this enhanced self we create and use to engage the global community of minds, past and present - a self that is both biological and social.


Perhaps the most important question for which Humankind remains in search of an answer, after why there is something rather than nothing in the universe, is how, exactly, the brain creates a self at the sub-cortical and cortical level?  This will require a detailed accounting of how the neural matter of the brain gives meaning to the sensory experiences of the individual, including the individual's experience of the meanings of others' sensory experiences as found in their speech, writing, and behavior.  Studying the formulation and projection of a self by other sentient animals may help lead to a breakthrough among neuroscientists who are at an impasse in explaining human consciousness.  An explanation my very well lie outside the human brain.  It may be a more common experience than we are at present willing to admit.  A form of consciousness and the continual creation and projection of a self appear to be characteristics of all sentient life on Earth.

Consciousness, to one degree or another, and self creation and projection appear to be far older and more widespread than their manifestations in the human brain and in the relatively brief experience of Humankind.

Is Self Or Personhood Dependent On Memory?

Amnesia and The Self That Remains When Memory is Lost

In response to scientistic (strong reductionistic/deterministic) claims that we have no free will and that the self is a delusion I always argue for the emergent, agent self/person being a real entity and part of the global, prehistoric, and historic community of minds. That a person is defined by him/herself and his fellow humans by his/her connection to this domain of dynamic, remembered ideas.

The article above argues that our self remains when we lose our memory.  However, it doesn't really provide evidence that the man with the brain tumor has a self independent of his memory. In fact, his memory in large part remains intact.  One, he remembers that it is important for him to do work he enjoys. Two, he has not lost that crucial part of his memory that he uses for the various aspects of language he learned during his life, and still remembers.

For me, if he had lost his memory of all the knowledge, beliefs, and values he had acquired during his life, and his memory of all aspects of language/speech comprehension and production, yet remained physiologically vegetatively alive, we could say his self/personness had ceased to exist. Fortunately, we would still respect his humanness and his inclusion as a member of Humankind, as we do a newborn who has yet to learn a language or acquire beliefs and values.

See the following link for a brief discussion of the legal and philosophical understandings of personhood.  Those quoted say little to nothing about memory being an essential part of being a human being. Their emphasis is on consciousness (which is reliant on memory) and biological processes.

Human Exploration: A Look At Our Genetic Capacity To Imagine And Explore

Photo:  Michael Nichols

Restless Genes by Daniel Dobbs, National Geographic, January 2013

Here’s a great article on why humans are exploratory. Note that the author and most of the scientists cited take a pluralistic, multiple level of analysis approach to the question. They, the journalist and most of the scientists, eschew a reductionistic, deterministic, single level approach such that the possession of a single gene or set of genes explains all. This is an example of good science and good science writing. It offers a template for evaluating the explanatory validity of other scientific inquiries and science reporting, especially in the currently popular and highly reductionistic fields of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and genetics.

Crazy Far by Tim Folger, National Geographic, January 2013

Explanatory Pluralism Ignored By Many Neuroscientists And Journalists

Here's a must read for scientific secular thinkers confident that neuroscience is our best hope for developing a comprehensive, ultimate understanding of human behavior: Psychological Concepts and Biological Psychiatry: A Philosophical Analysis (2000) by Peter Zachar.  From the text (128-134):

"The most obvious response to someone who wants to talk about psychology only in terms of neurophysiology is the infinite regress critique; i.e., if psychology is really the activity of the nervous system, then neurophysiology is really the result of biochemical interactions, which in turn are really the activity of subatomic particles.  If sensations are 'really' brain processes, then brain processes are 'really' actualized genetic programs, which are 'really' incredibly complex arrangements of atomic particles.  Ultimate, everything will have to be eliminated in favor of subatomic physics.  Scientistic thinkers (followers of strong scientism) are most vulnerable to this regress because physics is presumably more scientific and therefore more real than biology or psychology.

"The regress is such a ridiculous consequence that eliminativists (deterministic reductionists) have to admit multiple levels of analysis.  They merely want to make separate levels more consistent with each other, their famous unity of science goal.

...

"Endorsing what he calls 'explanatory pluralism,' McCauley (1996) suggests that different levels of analysis make separate explanatory contributions, with each level having its own internally consistent legitimacy.  Part of this legitimacy involves a unique research tradition, with research techniques, and specific kinds of professional problems to solve.

...

"Modern day eliminativists think that higher level neuroscience can move into the level of analysis now occupied by psychology, but still be called neuroscience.  If I am correct, once neuroscience gets to the psychological level, new and complex problems endemic to that level will emerge.  These include perennial problems indigenous to psychology that no comprehensive model at that level of analysis can escape."

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **

 

Therefore, strong deterministic, reductionistic scientism ignores or downplays various levels of analysis of emergent phenomena beyond the nervous system, and descends into an infinite regress to the concepts, theories and methods of subatomic physics that simply cannot explain higher level phenomena.  The problem here does not lie only with journalistic license.  Neuroscience practitioners such as Sam Harris and many others seldom if at all acknowledge the need for explanatory pluralism encompassing numerous levels of analysis above the nervous system.  Neuroscientific reductionism and determinism are not enough.  Research efforts at all levels are needed.  Such a pluralistic approach is discouraged by journalistic and neuroscientific pseudo-comprehensive claims that free will and the self are illusions, intuition and psycho-evolutionary moral foundations in our brains are the real drivers of political behavior, and that there are economic marketplaces and value computing neurons in our brains.

Zachar's book is a good place to start thinking pluralistically about human behavior and skeptically about neuroscientific reductionism-determinism.

Further Reading

The Science of Bad Neuroscience by Dorothy Bishop, Oxford neuroscientist, a video of a 2011 talk
Neuroscience: Under Attack by Alissa Quart, The New York Times, November 23, 2012
Neuroscience Fiction by Gary Marcus, The New Yorker, December 2, 2012
BishopBlog, blog of Dorothy Bishop
Mind Hacks
Neurobonkers
The Neurocritic
Neuroskeptic

Neuroscience And Genetics - Their Potential Impact On Human Cultural Evolution



The Marketplace In Your Brain: Neuroscientists have found brain cells that compute value.  Why are economists ignoring them? by Josh Fischman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, September 24, 2012

Never mind the fallacious language about economic markets existing in your cranium and the neuron-machine comparison in the above linked title and leader.  The article has much that is useful to say about the relationship between neuroscience findings and how they are responded to within the social sciences, in particular, economics.

I have been skeptical for some time about how journalists, writers, reporters, as well as many neuroscientists, academics, and other professionals, too often exaggerate the findings of neuroscience research.  More disturbing is their insistence that the reductionistic and deterministic approaches of neuroscience research will surely give rise to a biology of all human behavior based on genetics and brain structures and functions.  This would be a sociobiology (Wilson) that trumps the social sciences and humanities and makes them obsolete, subordinate, or relatively weak in terms of their explanatory-predictive power regarding human behavior.  See Ray Tallis for an excellent treatment of such exaggerations and misplaced confidence.

Though extremely skeptical, I can't help but wonder what "new world" awaits Humankind if the natural science of human behavior many neuroscientists and geneticists seek is realized.  What will it mean to have a irrefutable sociobiological, neuro-genetic understanding of human nature expressed in terms of laws, theories, and models equivalent to those in physics, chemistry, and biology?

I hope I live long enough to see a synthesis of neuroscience and social science that produces reliably predictive laws and models of human behavior, if in fact such a natural science of Humankind is possible.  If such laws and models are produced an unprecedented upheaval in the cultural evolution of our species must surely ensue.

I have argued elsewhere in this blog that the greatest challenge facing Humankind is successfully making whatever efforts necessary to bring about a binding global morality and civilization, and an effective human stewardship of Earth - Cultural Evolution, Phase II - Establishing a Unified Worldview.  Will a natural science of human behavior as envisioned by many neuroscientists and geneticists, if it comes into being, enhance or hinder our on-going efforts to realize this vital second phase of Humankind's evolution?

Much if not all of what we accept as being our human nature and what we accept as moral behavior is founded on the principle of individual intentionality, agency, and rationality.  If neuroscience and genetics unequivocally establish that we have have no free will, intentionality, or agency, that our behavior is intuitive, instinctive, and pre-determined and/or otherwise controlled by our genes and brains, the life of the individual within a local and global community of minds will no longer be the reference point for what it means to be human.  The structures and functions of our genes and brain cells will become that which "contains" what it means to be human.

New beliefs and values regarding what we are and how we should relate to each other will need to be created. Our notions of the intentionality and agency of the self and person, our personal obligations and responsibilities to each other, our moral and legal culpability, our notions of human freedom and human rights, our humaneness, our understandings of just warfare, and all other personal, social, and global aspects of who and what we are must be changed.

My worry is who or what will make these changes - competing nation-state governments, religious leaders, scientists, global fora such as the UN, or our brains and genes themselves? How will they go about it? What will the new beliefs and values be? How will we use them?

I am skeptical that such predictive theories and models will ever materialize. If they do they will likely be more probabilistic than predictive. Still, such a future neuro-social science dominated paradigm would be fraught with great risks, many of which would have direct implications for Humankind's survival and Earth's continued life sustaining capability.

What are we to do as individuals, as societies? Remain skeptical. Trust, exercise, and vigorously defend individual intentionality, agency, and rationality. Behave compassionately toward all.

Whatever neuroscience and genetics ultimately reveal about human nature, our future will be an unimaginable journey well worth taking - if we and the planet survive it.

Critique - "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt

[The following are notes used by the author for a presentation at a meeting of the Blue Moon Group of freethinkers in Peachtree City, Georgia on September 9, 2012.  The author was invited by the leaders and organizers of the group to give a critique of Haidt’s book. Author's comments after extracts from Haidt are in italics.]

UPDATE 01
March 23, 2019

The Well-Meaning Bad Ideas Spoiling a Generation

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt on politics, morality, and the coddling of the American mind.

Brian Gallagher

Nautilus

March 7, 2019

Above is an interview of Jonathan Haidt. It’s pretty good on some things like his latest book The Coddling of the American Mind. I think he may be better on this topic than “human nature” and things such as the evolutionary emergence of human morality, values he contends we are hard-wired and therefore compelled to express. 

The following excerpted statement of his from the interview caught my attention in that it is revealing in terms of my critique of his book, The Righteous Mind. He’s asked to account for the now Trumpian Republican Party. Haidt’s response raises this question: If his moral foundation theory is as powerful and useful as he leads us to believe in his book, how could one election and one president, Trump, in effect debunk it?

JH: “Trump has shifted a lot of things around. The Republican Party is no longer the social conservative party. I believe, in other research I’ve published with Karen Stenner, a political scientist in Australia, Trump is appealing to more authoritarian tendencies. It’s very hard to see how Donald Trump is a conservative. So the psychology that I just described a moment ago [moral foundation theory] no longer quite applies. [Italics mine.] The Republican Party, I don’t know what’s happening to it [shouldn’t his moral foundation theory provide some answers?], but it is bringing in elements that are overtly racist. It is bringing in desires for rapid change, which is not a conservative virtue, generally.”

Haidt hitching his moral foundation theory to evolutionary human nature remains a problem for me. 

Equally unsatisfactory is his claim in his The Righteous Mind that Democrats are less loyal and less patriotic than Republicans just doesn’t hold water. Since Trump’s election who, really, is proving to be the greater patriot, Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell?

I think a good theory of cultural evolution, one I’m working on, would tell us a lot more about how humans became what we are and why we behave as we do than Haidt’s moral foundation theory.

ADDENDUM TO ORIGINAL POST

The Righteous Mind by Jonathon Haidt: Critique Postscript, November 21, 2013

ORIGINAL POST:

Professor Jonathan Haidt is a self-described moral psychologist.  I am neither a psychologist nor a neuroscientist.  As for being a moralist, no, I don’t teach morality but I am, regrettably, prone to moralizing.

Professor Haidt took approximately five years to research and write The Righteous Mind.  To conduct a thorough analysis of his work and the references he cites would take at least half that long.  I haven’t done that.  I have read the book twice and found certain methods and conclusions he has come to objectionable either due to his failure to use the best or most appropriate way to understand human behavior, or because of the language and argumentation he employs is a misleading or incorrect portrayal of Humankind.

Before I turn to that, let me say up front that I am a strong agnostic.  That is to say, if you drew a line in the sand and told me I had to stand on one side or the other, with either the religious believers or the atheists, I would unhesitatingly place myself among the latter.  I am also a secular humanist. 

I am not a Cartesian dualist.  Although I consider consciousness, mind, and self to be emergent properties of the various processes of the brain interacting with the environment via the five senses, I feel reasonably certain that when the body/brain dies, consciousness, mind, and person cease to directly exist.  I will address matters of the self, free will, and person later, in more detail.

As for science, it is not perfect in its knowledge or methods, nor is it immune from political manipulation or inhumane use.  Science produces a provisional truth that encourages skepticism and invites challenge.  A full, over-arching, grand theory or understanding of Life and Humankind cannot be derived from reducing all human behavior to physical and chemical determinism.  Given the complexity of human social and cultural life, past and present, perhaps the best that can be hoped for is a theory of human behavior based on our history, and expressed in terms of future probabilities, not certainties or laws.  I’m reminded of the science fiction notion of “psychohistory” developed by Isaac Asimov’s character, Hari Seldon, in the Foundation novels.  Maybe we’ll live long enough to see such a theory and methodology become a reality.  Maybe.

Human language-based cultural behavior is an emergent property of mammalian, primate evolutionary history.   Our high symbolic communication and cumulative culture provide a domain of human expression that transcends (goes beyond) our genes, neural wiring and brain chemistry.  I am therefore fairly certain that the social and behavioral sciences of anthropology, psychology and sociology, or philosophy, will not be replaced by a science of humankind based exclusively on physics, chemistry and neurology.

Finally, I do not regard reductionism and determinism, that is, in the strict materialistic sense that is practiced in most quarters of the natural sciences, as the only valid and therefore best approach for understanding and explaining human behavior.  The nature of Humankind, that which unequivocally distinguishes us as Homo sapiens among all other animals, is most apparent from and best understood by examining and considering the interaction between the conscious, language and culture-bearing human person, and the social and physical worlds.

The work of neuroscience and evolutionary biology is providing important insights.  However, a complete understanding of the nature of Humankind is not solely or ultimately to be found in the brain, its circuits or nerve cells, or in our genome.  To argue that it is or will be, is scientism.  Strong scientism produces dogma.  Dogma is an absolute, inviolable truth and is often associated with supernaturalism and totalitarianism.  It is the antithesis of the provisional truth of science.

Among the numerous unequivocally distinguishing characteristics of our species is human morality.  Let me now turn to Haidt’s book where morality is the major topic.

My goal in this critique is to persuade you to consider that a biologistic, reductionistic, and deterministic approach to morality and other complex human beliefs and behaviors, as Haidt offers, is not, by itself, sufficient.  Haidt believes it is.

I hope to persuade you that insisting on the primacy of such an approach, one that minimizes the influence of self, agency, free will, and the local and global community of minds, past and present, is inappropriate, dehumanizing, and dangerous.

I want to talk about four areas of method and findings in Haidt’s book that are inappropriate or unproductive ways for understanding and explaining human behavior.  These areas are:

I.          The Nature of Humankind

II.         The Biologism of Intuition and Reason

III.       Moral Foundations Theory

IV.       A Better Approach For Understanding Mind And Humankind