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Interesting post at Left2Right on embryo donation. J David Velleman argues that the practise of passing on excess embryos from IVF to other infertile couples is morally problematic. In essence, adoption entails some distressful impact upon life of the child (identity crises and so on) and should the number of kids being adopted should be kept low; creating a new child to be adopted rather than taking one that already needs to be conflicts with this premise. Of course, all sorts of (highbrow) tonguelashing ensues in the comments. Velleman’s later expansion is interesting:

An important piece of background to my argument is what moral philosophers call the “non-identity problem”, which is a problem in the ethics of procreation. Here is how the non-identity problem arises.

Suppose that a woman is taking a medication that is known to cause birth defects: if she becomes pregnant while taking the medication, her child will be born disabled. We ordinarily think that this woman is under an obligation not to become pregnant until she has finished taking the medication and the danger has passed. If she is careless and becomes pregnant with a disabled child, we will think that she is blameworthy. And if the woman positively tries to become pregnant while taking the medication, and does so for the express purpose of bearing a disabled child — why, we would consider her a monster.

Now consider what this latter woman — this supposed monster — might say in her own defense:

Yes, I have purposely conceived a child who will be born disabled. But the vast majority of people who are born disabled go on to live happy and rewarding lives. There are people far more seriously disabled than my child will be, and they are still grateful for having been born. What’s more, my child will not have any grievance against me for conceiving him while I was taking the medication. If I had waited until the following month, when I was no longer taking the medication, I would have conceived a different child — and this child would never have been born at all! There is no way that I could have conceived this same child without conceiving him disabled. So I have done nothing wrong: I am giving the gift of life to a child who will be grateful to have received it, and my child will not wish that I had given that gift to a different, able-bodied child instead. If my child will have no grievance against me, how can you?

Should we be persuaded by this woman’s argument? Of course not.

Read it all y’all.

Reposting some stuff I put up as a comment at Harry’s Place in response for requests for books to make one an intellectual. Further to lists of books (so help me, I’m not writing ‘The Canon’..look what you made me do) that everyone simply has to read, spanning three millenia and hundreds of thousands of pages, I demurred:

I worry that the goal of reading the ‘greats’ is never going to be achieved through a sense of obligation. I’ve embarked upon Proust twice, because I’m doing a PhD on memory and time and it seemed like I simply had to be familiar with his work. Don’t get me wrong, Proust was immensely rewarding; paragraph upon paragraph of precise articulation of what the relationship is between ourselves, our lives and our past. Even the few hundred pages I read changed the way I think about the world. But I lost the pace, and then lost the thread entirely, I think in part because I began thinking “I ought to read Proust” rather than “I want to read Proust”. (I’ve read some people saying you only totally get him once you’re at the age he was when writing À la recherche du temps perdu.) My take on it would be to read thought-provoking books that you want to read – stuff that is written well and engaging, and can be enjoyed on multiple levels. Once in a while, when motivation grasps you, you can go for the less forgiving stuff; I managed to swallow a book on Rawls and Theory of Justice (by Crooked Timber’s infrequent Jon Mandle, actually) last year without it sticking in my throat, mainly because I was on a roll from all the other stuff (it’s an engaging book by the way, also serving as a good introduction to communitarian and post-modern critiques of liberalism, and responses to those).

As such I would second Huck Finn (and Connecticut Yankee, a stunning book) by Mark Twain and the Periodic Table – Primo Levi, as totally engaging works that arrest the mind as well. Moreover

Bleak House – Dickens. It is humongous. But from the very beginning it’s laced with this bitter energy that crackles and sparks. It’s split between chapters from the POV of the heroine, using a bit of an ‘unreliable narrator’ approach, and other chapters from a truly 3rd person perspective that nonetheless stabs out emotion in every description (just read the opening chapter describing the fogs around the law courts and comparing it to the lawyers themselves). Can do with being taken on holiday, but works ok serial-like too.

Graham Greene – most anything I’ve read by him, but The Comedians is tremendous and the totalitarian angle (Haiti) might particuarly interest. He’s an uncomplicated writer but his prose is breathtaking anyway.

Chekov – haven’t read since I was a kid, but I remember the Cherry Orchard and the Seagull as being pretty great.

I’d recommend reading some (fun) science. Fun science for me takes a few forms, most seemingly on evolution:
Pinker. Any of his books. Given the political angle and its tendency towards stoking feuds and taking the scalps of opponents, The Blank Slate might be a good read for any HP member. For me it was riveting when read but on re-examination just too onesided, cheap and polemical to be a really great book. The Language Instinct is the most playful in some senses (but pretty focused); How the Mind Works is perhaps the most useful book of his, for its efforts in getting to grips with Cognitive Neuroscience.
Dennett. Mentioned above, he is a real heavyweight but writes too well for you to notice at times. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea is a great intro to the implications of selection processes, and its transformative influence on the world we live in. Other stuff of his seems heavier, but I haven’t tackled his new book, freedom evolves.
Dawkins. Getting tired of the names yet? Obviously known for the selfish gene, I think he continued to develop his metaphor and would recommend Climbing Mount Improbable for carefully employing metaphor that invigors how we understand evolution.
Paul Broks – Into the Silent Land. A wonderful book about brain damage and implications for how we understand ourselves; also deeply personal and inventive. He writes about whether Robert Louis Stevenson could be right that little people in his head wrote his stories in his sleep (answer: possibly), imagines himself at a kangaroo court of Hardline Materialists, and describes all his cases with vigour and humanity. Think Oliver Sacks, I suppose, but more playful and provoking.

Part of the reason I recommend these folks is because (Broks aside) I disagree with all of them on some issues: their privilaging of evolutionary psychology over other (evolutionary-friendly) forms of neuroscience, their preoccupation with rebranding atheism etc. I get the sense that being an intellectual, whatever that means, involves having some critical perspective to what you are reading or watching or listening to. I find it easier to step into that mode by reading those I don’t fully agree with. Further to this are

C.S. Lewis – He comes generally recommended, but I’ve only read The Screwtape Letters, which is an exposition on Christianity livened up by being told from a devil’s POV. As a quick and demonically funny introduction to Christian Theology you’d be pressed to do better.

and, more Scholarly than Intellectual – please don’t ask me to justify this, merely a sense I get- Samuel P Huntingdon’s Who are we? about American identity. There is much there, mainly factual, to make you think, and although I’m resistant to his central premise, that America should formally embrace its Anglo-Protestant culture, there’s enough there to force you to reassess your arguments. But I’m not sure if it really counts as it’s chiefly a historical work, dealing with particular contingencies, and I often get the sense that intellectual works grapple with eternal truths and whatnot.

I learned a lot from these kind of books (and others) to challenge myself and attempt to criticise the work of my betters.

Oh, and a modern intellectual I can half recommend is Geoff Dyer. I read his In Pure Rage and he has a special grip on the world, thought and language – so many paragraphs where I went ‘wow’. Then again, he comes across as extremely unlikable (the book is in the main a record of him traipsing about various locations writing a book about T.S. Elliott and moaning ‘oh no! I’m fed up with Sicily. Oh no! I’m fed up with Mexico) so much so you want to hit him.
—-
I forgot Abelson’s Statistics as Principled Argument which I’ve blogged about before – a wonderful introduction to statistical thinking. But more importantly, what do others think about this? Firstly, is every book that makes you think an intellectual or intellectualising book? See my reluctance to put Huntingdons book on that shelf, although he’s personally surely as smart as the other authors, and his book is authoratative and thought-provoking. I see that history or biology or computer science can be mind-expanding, but fall short of being intellectual. Am I wrong?

Moreover, what books do you recommend? Either to pad out that cortex in the proper way, or just because they’ve been floating your boat recently> Tell, tell, tell.

[A great source of second hand books here. ]

Yes I know the system has failed. What? I have a thesis to write! But in my tea-break I feel I can briefly update you on some things:

The illustrious Roger Ebert, king of US film critics, brings us the
best review ever.

Amanda Marcotte’s heartfelt paean to the mix tape generation.

A band who do Smiths covers in the style of Black Sabbath.

Reflections on our status in a wired world.

a terrific post from Jim Henley on paternalism, its acceptance by liberals and why he thinks it’s a loser.

(Some hat tips needed for Gary at Amygdala, and David T at Harry’s Place.)

Violence is common to our present, history and prehistory. Is there reason to hope that our future will be different? Doubtless we’ll know in the long run, thanks to the grand uncontrolled experiment of life. Meanwhile some argue we can get an early forecast by using the behavioural sciences – investigate our nature to divine our future. But just what do we mean by a violent nature, and would such a nature necessarily force us to be so pessimistic? Such a wide issue needs to be viewed through a narrow prism, so here we shall focus on the neuroscience of violence. Are we wired for violence – is it brain-based, an original sin never to be expelled? Or could it be less indelible than we fear?

While examples of human violence are varied and plentiful, the most chilling are those individuals who seem innately disposed towards causing suffering: the Hannibal Lecters of the world who seem calm and controlled as they torture, scheme and kill. Psychopathy is marked by a total lack of empathy with others, allowing them to act without compunction. The rare cases of acquired sociopathy, where brain damage leads to behavioural patterns that resemble the psychopath, are perhaps even more unsettling. It’s one thing when it’s the other guy – born different. But the acquired case holds the terrifying promise that it could be you.

While we shiver at the horridness of all this, scientists have leapt at the chance to study these individuals in the hope that it may shed some light on whether we have a design for violence. As with much research, the exception helps you find the rule: the differences in the psychopaths’ brains and behaviour give insights into what is shaping the behaviour of normal people. One thesis that has gained broad popular attention (to which popular science writer Steven Pinker devotes a chapter of his recent book The Blank Slate) is that cases of violence running wild illuminate the caged beast inside all of us. This account argues we have inclinations towards violence only barely kept in check by imposed restraints; not dissimilar to a popular religious notion that humanity is fallen from grace -urged to good but drawn to evil.

It seems true that abnormal populations differ from us because they lack some kind of restraint: some failure of an inhibition mechanism which ordinarily screens out or rejects violent actions in healthy individuals. James Blair, a leading researcher in this area, has termed this a Violence Inhibition Mechanism (VIM, see e.g. Blair & Cipolotti 2000): and follows early ethological work showing that some animals in the wild cease their aggression if their victim shows signs of distress (Lorenz, 1966). Evolutionary pressure could promote such a tendency to discourage fighting to the death, switching you off from pursuing a conflict once your opponent caves in.

Other researchers point more generally to the role that the frontal lobes of the brain play in inhibition of inappropriate behaviour, suggesting that problems with these regions lead to the failure to inhibit violent acts. The two explanations may not be exclusive, but the inhibition-frontal lobe thesis is primarily investigated in acquired cases, whilst the VIM is researched in developmental cases. The upshot is that proponents of a deep and negative human nature argue that as we are engaging in suppression, there must be something there to suppress – therefore, there is violence within us. For example, Steven Pinker (2002) states that “direct signs of design for aggression” include the fact that “disruptions of inhibitory systems…can lead to aggressive attacks” (p316).

But this conclusion is premature in principle, and not supported in practice. Firstly, the principle. The argument that we can judge our inclination to violence by observing it in a free situation is flawed because it doesn’t take base rates into account. By base rates, I mean what our level of violence would be if we were `violence blind’: if we had no interest, but no disinterest, in whether our actions caused harm.Science fiction author Isaac Asimov recognised that this rate would not be zero, and made this a key concept in his Robot trilogy, the First Law of Robotics. This was the rule which trumped all others, and commanded that
“A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
The robots are not given this rule to counteract some kind of ‘assassination chip’ placed there by a mischievous designer, but simply to act as a guiding principle to distinguish certain kinds of actions into acceptable and unacceptable. Asimov saw that you would need an inhibition system in place even when there is no tendency to cause harm; without specifications, harm will tend to occur. Without establishing fully what such a base rate would be, it is absurd to look at the harm any individual causes and conclude this is evidence for violence worked into the design.

When we turn to the evidence, violence for its own purpose does give a good account of the actions of these patients. For example, Blair and Cipolotti (2000) describe a patient with frontal lobe damage whose use of violence was goal-directed, for the purpose of excitement (pushing another resisting patient around in a wheelchair at speed) or to protest when frustrated. This does not resemble the sating of a wild hunger for aggression, but is more like a slide towards the base-rate – uncaring that your desires have harmful consequences.

It is difficult to see how someone could seriously advance the perspective that we are innately violent – commit violence far in excess of the base rates. Even considering the bloodiness of human history (and leaving apart the social factors underpinning conquest and genocide), the potential bloodshed from the base rate is equally boggling. Moreover killing for the sake of it would be inefficient, and considering our basis as a social species would be utterly foolish, so it makes good evolutionary sense that we are not drawn to violence.

So let’s retreat a little: perhaps the issue isn’t innate violence, despite the rhetoric; perhaps the argument is that we’re not averse to using violence, that we use it when it pays, much like we would do if we used the base rate. This is an issue that evolutionary psychology often investigates, modeling factors to uncover in which situations it would pay us to commit harmful acts (such as to revenge a slight in a culture of honour (Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, & Schwarz. 1996). All very well, if proving very little about violence in the brain. But however productive this line of research is, even this weak version finds a fairly big stumbling block, in the very phenomena we began with: the existence of systems that work to inhibit violence.

We took aside these inhibition systems (i.e. looked at neurological patients with damage to the areas that they reside in) in order to say “let’s look at what’s really going on.” But whilst this approach can tell us useful things, we need to put it all back together again: what makes us human isn’t just what lies beneath our inhibition systems, but is the fact that we inhibit at all, in such a sophisticated and complex manner. This is what renders the quote from Pinker so empty: the inhibition system itself is a product of design.

Anyone doubting that treating other people as more than instruments is founded in the brain would do well to look into developments in the study of self–other mapping. This has provided stronger and stronger evidence that these relationships are hardwired into us, strikingly with the discovery of mirror neurons that fire in the same way for events that occur to you or to those you observe (Gallese and Goldman 1998). Many argue that empathy is an outcome of these representations (see e.g. Frith and Frith 1999). And recent research demonstrates appreciating someone else’s pain activates many of the same areas as experiencing it (Jackson, Meltzoff, & Decety 2004): good evidence for a VIM-like mechanism, and certainly a rebuttal to those who think our withdrawal from violence is unnatural.

By making psychopaths into poster-boys for innate violence, we risk ignoring crucial aspects of their behaviour. The patients investigated by Blair and Cipolotti were reported as socially inappropriate in a variety of ways, and recent imaging work suggests that the areas crucial for regulating and preventing aggression also keep us within the bounds of socially acceptable behaviour (Berthoz, Armony, Blair, & Dolan, 2002). Rehabilitation would require addressing that big picture.

Designed for violence? Really, the strongest conclusion that this work can give is that we sometimes are violent when it’s in our interests. We are not innately disposed to violence, or even indifferent to violence, we are neurologically bound away from violence. This understanding gives us a solid basis for treatment, and an honest beginning from which to address the continuing problem of violence in society.

References

Berthoz, S., Armony, J.L., Blair, R.J.R., & Dolan, R.J. (2002). An fMRI study of intentional and unintentional (embarrassing) violations of social norms. 125, 1696-1708
Blair, R.J.R. & Cipolotti, L. (2000). Impaired social response reversal: A case of ‘acquired sociopathy’. Brain, 123, 1122-1141
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R.E., Bowdle, B.F., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the Southern culture of honor: an “experimental ethnography.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 945 60
Frith, Chris D., & Frith, Uta Interacting Minds–A Biological Basis Science 1999 286: 1692-1695
Gallese, V., & Goldman, A. Mirror neurons and the stimulation theory of mind-reading. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2: 493-501, 1998.
Jackson, P.L., Meltzoff A., & Decety, J. (2004). How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy. NeuroImage, 24, 771-779.
Lorenz, K. (1966). On aggression. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace and World.
Pinker, S (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Viking Press.

I imagine you are aware of the AUT proposed boycott against two Israeli universities, which is covered in excellent detail at Engage; I hope I need not state that I am (along with many others) utterly opposed to it. I was a signatory of a letter put out by David Hirsh, an academic who has been instrumental combatting the boycott from a reasoned left perspective. Today I attended a meeting organised by the anti-boycott meeting, which is described in brief below.

I was at the Public meeting against the boycott at University of London today; speakers there seemed confident the boycott would be overturned tomorrow with a fairly large majority. The underlying mood was that this was just one battle in a long war, another front being the motion soon being voted on by NATFHE – in this case for a straight boycott of all links between universities in the United Kingdom and those in Israel. There was also a mood of hope that the real left would shake up the ‘pretend left’ and the groupthink which has led a cartoon rendition of the complexities of the Middle East situation. Many speakers expressed solidarity with Palestinians and condemned current Israeli policy – this was truly no Trojan horse for neocon perspective – and to the extent it was raised, a plurality of opinion on Iraq.

What brought them together was opposition to the snaking, repeated attempts to shove through a discriminatory motion that draws a scar across the face of British academia, impedes the pursuit of knowledge, corrodes the good faith of Jews worldwide for causes of the left, and hurts the very institutions that are working their hardest to improve the sitation on the ground. (Who else are, like the lecturer from Bar Ilan, educating the next generation of civics teachers who will make both Israelis and Palestinian aware of the value of democracy?) Finally, as one attendee put astutely, what could more betray the spirit of a trade union than the endorsement of political tests in order to get jobs? If this boycott were a cheque you’d never get it to the Council floor – it wouldn’t stop bouncing.

I have no recent photos, but compare to this , adding hair everywhere, and – well, not everywhere thanks very much – and you have as close to a match as I’ve endured.

Yesterday marked my first visit to the Dana centre with my Audience Panel hat on (not as trendy as it sounds). The topic was nanotechnology with the format supplied by progressive economics foundation nef, in the form of their card game Democs – DEliberative Meeting Of CitizenS, apparently. I’ve been there only once before, for a discussion of measuring brain activity for lie detector purposes (we hit this topic at Mind Hacks); it’s essentially a venue for public engagement with science, much like the presently dormant Cafe Scientifique at the ICA (however, it seems to have found a home at the Dana Centre, though quiet since January; check out your location to see if there is any action) and the nearby Darwin centre. In London you’re well supplied for discussion and debate on science (why, not last month there was an illuminated talk by Messrs Stafford and Webb on cultivated perception at Foyles), but much of this depends on being in the know – the right mailing lists and so on.

This was the Dana centres first use of Democs, which is essentially a structured way to introduce information about a topic and have a discussion, and after the scheduled session those on the Panel were plumped into a focus group. Quick tip – if you’re going to ask people to turn up at 6:20 and then end up keeping them til after 10pm, it would be nice to supply some food beyond olives and nuts, or tell them to eat first. Just sayin. On the focus group turns the future use of the game, so in some sense the future of public engagement with science, making what follows of breathtaking importance.

When we arrived the missus and myself were greeted and seated at a table with a bunch of other people; we were the only two with any priors, which could have been awkward if it were not for this stubborn flu (after 18 days I am entitled to call it that) rendering me impervious to social nicety. Drink orange juice, stare at pretty screens. The centre, which is an outgrowth of the British Science Museum, is a bright, flashy, multimedia bar, wherin organisers strut about in brittany-type headsets (strangely flesh-coloured, strikingly like face huggers in the moments where reality was flickering), but in a fairly accessible manner. It feels a little bit yo sushi, in the way that you could bring your folks there and have them bemused but impressed, rather than bewildered til they crack, clawing at their eyes as they stagger into the conforting outdoors. I know this is true because I have seen two sets of ‘folks’ through the experience without incident. That said, if that robot drinks waiter had appeared on the scene, it would have been touch and go.

The game, introduced at confusing length by the Head Brittany (HB), is all about arming people with knowledge about an issue and allowing them to discuss it in a safe space. The first part turned out fairly well. There was a short introduction to nanotech via HB and the screens, then after a quick riffle shuffle the first set of cards were doled out, each containing a key piece of info on the topic. Everyone at the table picked two cards to read out, and explained why they chose those. The rest went to the graveyard discard pile. It felt like a clever way to orient people to information, by making it interactive (rather than yet more facts over loudspeaker) and giving some direction through demanding selection of the best (by whatever criteria) facts; it also had a parallel role in icebreaking, as the whole group was forced through a process together, increasing cohesion, and had to back up their choices with reasons, revealing where each of us were coming from. For these reasons alone, the game as it stood showed enormous potential in facilitating genuine public engagement with a scientific issue that they could know little or nothing about prior to commencement. However, there were various issues that put the whole thing, well, out of whack.

The game did not lend itself well to discussion; in fact, it severely cramped it. Following the information round was an issues round, where in a similar fashion cards (this time denoting issues such as ‘Who controls the uses of nanotechnology?’ were distributed and each member spoke about two. This seemed to be the section in which debate and discussion ought to flow, yet it flat failed. The biggest issue was pragmatic; each section was on a fixed time regime, and we barely had time to read our choices out before we were cut short. This can be remedied, but for me more frustrating was the ground rules under which discussion must take place. The emphasis on a safe space, where debate (as opposed to consensus-forming) was actively discouraged, seemed to me entirely wrong-headed. It meant that the justifications for cards were weak and general- ‘I think this is something we shouldn’t neglect in this debate’ and were never challenged, which left no obvious mechanism for winnowing down the multitude of perspectives supplied. Now, I think that discussion should have some kind of safe space in which to occur – I’ve written about it before, it underwrites the name of this blog, and some of my favorite sites (e.g. Obsidian Wings, Left2Right) enforce this with a resultant high calibre of discussion. Giving people time to speak, allowing quiet voices to be heard, civility, and the assumption that everyone is arguing in good faith seem to me entirely right and proper. (Of course, not everyone agrees.) But the use of counterfactuals, explicit disagreement, reduction ad absurdo or pointing to internal inconsistency seem to me worthwhile ways of challenging and developing opinion. These were approaches that the game did not give a space to.

To my mind this totally limited the utility of the game. The final stages wherein the cards preserved by the group were ammassed and sorted into different clusters was thought provoking but esperating, as no-one wanted to make too bold a decision yet there was no explicit accord on what was important, as we hadn’t a chance to make a case and stake a claim. When we were then asked to quickly choose the cluster that the group agreed was most important, you could sense the shrug undulate across the table. This process did not yield that product.

So the game (as we played it) was flawed but certainly had its bright moments; I think it was an excellent way to introduce knowledge to a lay group and encourage participation between strangers. Within the focus group, various measures were suggested; one was the allocation of different story cards (expressing the situation and viewpoint of a relevant individual, such as a biomedic or a transhumanist) to different tables, as a starting point for debate; in our session the stories were simply read out back-to-back at the beginning, and didn’t serve as more than a distraction. Another was fewer issue cards and more emphasis on debate from this stage (after the icebreaking), possibly applying these issues to the plight of the hypothetical character and building an argument pro or con. The main one was a lot more time, particularly by extending the game beyond the cluster ratings and final vote on opinions by encouraging people to stay on and debate at their table – in effect, that when the game ends the discussion really begins. Apparently our comments might lead to changes in the way it is used in future, which I would be very happy about. The evening was well worth turning up for (did I mention that, like most Dana Centre events, it’s free?) and should you sit down for a game of Democs and it turns out rather well, just remember to thank me later. You’re welcome!

Currently reading The Screwtape letters while dipping into the works of HP Lovecraft. What with the ongoing and enduring cog-psych reading, I feel like C.S. Lewis is directly admonishing me when he writes [That devils] are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. Quick! Roll against POW! And remember that free will is an epiphenomenon. No good; I’m going to hell, twice.

I am enjoying Screwtape quite a lot, though. Written from the POV of a senior devil corresponding to a naive nephew, it attempts to expose what Lewis feels is worthwhile in Christianity, from the vantage point of the other side, seeking to undermine it. For a polemic tract, I enjoy the humour, notably in Screwtape’s counsel against expecting too much benefit from the jingoism of war:

The results of such fanciful hatred are often the most disappointing, and of all humans the English are in this respect the most deplorable milksops. They are creatures of that miserable sort who loudly proclaim that torture is too good for their enemes and then give tea and cigarettes to the first wounded German pilot who turns up at the back door.

I’d certainly like to thing that this holds true, and of the Western world generally – that the discussions of torture that exhude from the internet (both extremists and legal experts) is just expension of hot air.
…
Yikes! On further reading, I find he actually names the type – materialist magician, who go in for this sort of thing. Consider me named and shamed. In other book related news – the news being that I have or am reading them also – must continue to smear Lemony Snicket with all the good-time love he undoubtedly deserves. After a mammoth two-month-odd sojourn through Michael Moorcock’s Mother London (verdict: good, and in parts immensely rewarding, but a bit of a schlep; even as a Londoner I got lost in some of the descriptions and areas) I got my synapse candy through books 4-6 of Snicket’s …Unfortunate Events. It’s not just the stories, it’s the style, the fun that isn’t aimed over the heads of kids, like some of the recent family films seem to be (I see ya Shrek, and I heard it in spades about Sharks Tale) but squarely at them, forcing them to duck and cover, then appreciate. So obviously, right at my level. Take this:

If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around and around the bowl, you could use the expression “a mixed bag” to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now.

And while you’re taking this, take that!! From another thumbed but unfinished novel, The Pleasure Of My Company from cerebral clown Steve Martin, sharing a gentle tale of an uncommon person who just happens to have OCD:

Thinking too much also creates the illusion of causal connections between unrelated events. Like the morning the toaster popped up just as a car drove by with Arizona plates. Connection? Or coincidence? must the toaster be engaged in order for a car with Arizona plates to come by? The problem, of course, is that I tend to behave as if these connections were real, and if a car drives by with plates from, say, Nebraska, I immediately eyeball the refrigerator to see if its door has swung open.

I also just got Dave Eggers’ How We Are Hungry, chunks of palatable short fiction, and have Kenan Malik’s Man, Beast and Zombie moaning to be read. My brain hungers for zombies…

As a kid, I was clothed in cast-offs, bikeless and warned off sweets, but none of that sweated me too much, as I was indulging with abandon my overriding hunger for knowing all kinds of stuff. I decimated my junior school library with 18 months still on the cards, and ended up purloining books from the middle school. Animals existed to be petted, sure, but also to be filed away in taxonomies alongside Latin names and habitats. And television smuggled me maths, hostory and science. I wasn’t a special kid, nor an angel; this was merely my preferred brand of sensation seeking. I soaked up the environment through words and concepts, rather than through joints, tendons and the arc a falling ball makes across the retina. (I.e. I was a bit of a geek.) Truly questioning what came in came later, as is with everyone; I began to question my faith, and to appreciate what I was told was not always the truth, from the obfuscation of politicians to the sleight of hand of teachers to the unreliable narrator. But I realise that many of those candidates for independent thought were carried as much by what I learnt – that the conceptual environment was driving me as much as me it. (This is the point where I would shift to discussing memes, if I was in the mood to cloud a discussion with tragically hip jargon.) My capacity to doubt Creation stories as literally true was only installed by access to credible alternatives, and explicit thought experiments to what the traditions I had learned would actually entail. These gifts were given to me through science and fiction, which is perhaps why I hold both so dear.

Now, the danger of the information driving is that you take some naps during the ride, and you’re not in total control of the route, binding you to missing some pretty important scenery. One book begs for another to be read, one revealed truth gestures coyly to another, and before you know it you are happily ensconsed in your fortress of solitude with an impervious worldview. If you can’t change your mind, are you sure you still have one? Of course, to slide the other way, well,that way lies indecisive Dave (minor but feted Fast Show character). And since most philosophers have given up on the idea of a truly objective privileged perspective, I hope you won’t mind that I do the same. What I have, instead, are some means by which I live my mental and moral life. They are not much, but I owe to them all of what little I have in either regard. Namely:

• faith in reason
• respect for evidence
• core beliefs – sentience has intrinsic value, people should not be treated instrumentally
• the preparedness to question

As to how these interact, I’m quite happy to concede that there is no formula at work. Even if I had one, I don’t think I would actually operate by it. Reason and evidence carry me most of the way through my day-to-day cognitive existence, with a certain set of background beliefs that generally aren’t appraised. They are, however, amenable to appraisal, and I can (and have) shifted my positions on them. The core beliefs are those that I would like to think I would retain even if someone made me a watertight argument against them. I am well aware of the fallibility of the mind generally, and mine specifically, and I could not regard myself a moral being if a figure of however superior intellect could, through ‘proving’ that slavery was ok, headlock me into agreeing.

All that said, I guess I’m a fairly typical left-winger, reminding me of that complaint about political philosophers that the top down systems they model turn out 9 times out of 10 to be a validation of some bottom-up system that’s been in play just fine without them. Having said that, my scientific optimism brought me full-face against the spirit of the left regarding GM technology, and it brought home how ‘your side’ can be composed of orthodoxies too. Since then it’s become clear to me just how rough around the edges some circles in the left are (and perhaps ever have been); I should stress again that this is less epiphanies on my part than the streaming of diverse information.

This post is not to chart my political trajectory, although for the record I guess I’m a moderate, liberal social democrat, though I suspect my epistemological materialism coupled with my teleological spiritualism earmark me for some positions some might deem extreme. Yet while I am moored in things I value, would fight for, which sustain me, I keep myself as free-floating as possible, as I nknow my more contingent beliefs, the things that are important to me principally because they are true and accord with my fundamental principles, must avoid ossification for them to be worth anything. To that end, the question must be a weapon, not against those who threaten your beliefs, but to test and probe those beliefs itself.

This is why I am angered by the erosion and inversion of this principle presented in the blogs regarding the Lancet study of late 04. (Here + here, if you want to tast it first hand; snippets from a ongoing war really.)The publication of the paper on Iraqi deaths due to the war generated many questions among war supporters, but not the right kind. Often just referred to as the Lancet study, as if the journal came into being just for the purpose of this study and poofed away after, it is clear that for many critics this is the first scientific paper, or certainly epidimiological study, that they have come across. This didn’t stop the cascade of mud slung at at, their methodology rubbished, their statistics misunderstood, their motives impugned. It has now become a canard to refer to it as discredited, dubious, biased or just plain wrong, when it is none of these things, and appears a quality piece of research. Few of the critiques provided any light, and fewer still were meant to do so – this was purely “throw enough shit and see what sticks”, writ large. If it were not for a few patient and painstaking (particularly for me Dsquared, but also Tim Lambert and Chris Lightfoot ) bloggers with the expertise to systematically wipe away the untruths and rebut the accusations, the effect would be ever more complete.

It dismays me that people are so willing to bend the information to fit with their beliefs. I guess I come at it a different way, or one could argue that the stance on Iraq is a core belief for some. I know it’s not for me; I marched against it before it happened, but now am cautiously optimistic for the future, and readily concede that it may turn out to have been worth it, even factoring in the deaths (note: we’re nowhere near the point where that judgment could possibly be made). It dismays me that questioning, a means I rate vital for mental life, can be subordinated to leash that boat flush against the quay. If you’re willing to make the conclusion that medical journals accept politically motivated propaganda, that medical researchers produce it, and that peer review accepts it, in order to maintain your preferred perspective on events, then any evidence you don’t agree with can be similarly wished away. Everything is true that I want to be true. It stikes me that this has some resonance with Hilzoy’s post on Obsidian Wings entitled “Hatred is a Poison” – one of the best posts I have read this year, as it happens; she notes how through the prism of partisanship your opponents, and eventually yourself, are rendered despicable. My point here is through that prism, or one much like it, evidence and reason are subordinated to the will of belief.

The term ‘reality-based community’ entered the blogging vocabulary a while back after a member of the US administration poo-poohed such an entity as antithetical to its purpose. I realise this is not the pastiche I thought it was. No-one will admit to not being reality-based, of course, and pride in reason and science is not the birthright of either side of the political divide. But you can talk the talk, and exult reason and enquiry above all else, and use them as weapons to obscure and undermine the true picture. It’s a creationist tactic: what about the eye? What about this molecule? Evolution is just a theory… until you create the appearance of two different camps, and consequently no consensus. Ditto warming. I’m not exempting the left, as GM and to some extent nuclear have infuriated me for years (if the left got on board these projects, and demanded accountable technologies developed for and in the hands of those who need them, the impact would likely be tremendous). But this wholesale comtempt for views that don’t gel with preconceived beliefs has characterised this current US administration (see my post here and is found in full force in people who seem otherwise reasonable, and talk up science in other capacities. It’s unscrupulous, and reeks of a deadening of the mind. That the site designated blog of the year by time magazine denies evolution augurs terribly for the future.