I delivered a lecture about ethical considerations related to the neuroscience of brain plasticity to a class at Stanford last night, and thought it might be fun to reiterate some of the issues raised for those bright young men and women struggling to understand how to behave in their professional lives. The class is organized by Bill Hurlbut, a Stanford neurologist and bioethicist who serves on the President’s Council for Bioethics, and Bill Newsome, a distinguished neurobiologist (member of the National Academy of Sciences) on the Stanford faculty who has had a long interest in neuroscience-related issues of philosophy and ethics.
The closing questions of my lecture, which you might consider as ‘food for thought’:
1. How can a neuroscience that lucidly explains the origins of “personhood”, “self”, “intentionality”, “free will”, et alia, be reconciled with our great religious and philosophical traditions?
2. How can a neuroscience that explains the origins of behavior be reconciled with what are (from a neuroscience perspective) archaic principles of jurisprudence?
3. Experience-driven “human capacities” are rapidly evolving in modern societies. How long shall we be satisfied with leaving the progressive societally-driven evolution of human capacities to cultural empiricism?
4. How long shall it be before we take the position that everything done by society to and for children and adults (i.e., to their brains) is not good for them? Who shall be the arbiter of “the good”?
5. How should we — and how could we — control the Pandora’s box of “behavioral modification” by a) brain plasticity boosted by b) “smart pills” and by c) genetic engineering?
6. How can we equitably deliver neuroscience-based training that can substantially alter individual human capacity and achievement?
7. What shall be the societal consequences of reducing the variance in human performance abilities – or of optimizing human performance in different specific task domains?
8. How do we reconcile the conflict between human individuality, and the natural impetus by politics, business, and sub-cultures to subvert it?
9. Do the neuroscience and related professional communities bear any responsibility for the ways in which their science is applied in the world? How can we (on what level should we) help assure that our societal governance is neuro-scientifically grounded?
10. Do you really think that the power of neuroscience is less, in its capacities for positive or negative societal change and impacts, than — for example — nuclear physics? [I then asked the students] Are YOU ready to take some personal interest in, or responsibility for its uses?
Over the next months, we’ll revisit and elaborate on these questions when current events or published scientific reports again remind us of their importance — and when we are reminded that, from this time forward, these issues shall worry and in some ways torment human societies, probably forever.
“5. How should we — and how could we — control the Pandora’s box of “behavioral modification†by brain plasticity boosted by “smart pills†and by genetic engineering?”
“6. How can we equitably deliver neuroscience-based training that can substantially alter individual human capacity and achievement?”
What would be necessary, firstly,
3. Experience-driven “human capacities†are rapidly evolving in modern societies. How long shall we be satisfied with leaving the progressive societally-driven evolution of human capacities to cultural empiricism?
4. How long shall it be before we take the position that everything done by society to and for children and adults (i.e., to their brains) is not good for them? Who shall be the arbiter of “the good�
“1. How can a neuroscience that lucidly explains the origins of “personhoodâ€, “selfâ€, “intentionalityâ€, “free willâ€, et alia, be reconciled with our great religious and philosophical traditions?”
In what way does neuroscience explain the orgins of these things? I think that any explanation provided in science is the same IN KIND to saying it is the brain that is the origin of the self, consciousness, etc. And while of course without the brain, and likewise without the complex neurological processes uncovered by neuroscience, there would be no self, consciousness, etc. But these PHYSICAL things (brain, complex processes) do not explain the origin of the self, consciousness, etc, any more than saying (a) we need a brain to have a self, and (b) we need a body to move. The brain and the complex processes are necessities, and are origins in this sense. But this is obvious, and doesn’t provide a thorough and meaningful explanation.
What is is about the brain and the complex processes that give rise to the self etc. Pointing to chemicals, processes, etc etc doesn’t provide any meaningful explanation about what it is about these PHYSICAL things that give rise to the self, consciousness, etc.
This is one of many debates in philosophy, and this discipline is the one to deal with these issues. One of the central issues of course is about the mind (what is it (it’s properties, etc), where is it located, etc), and this issues is not explained in any adaquate way by neuroscience. Philosophy often uses neuroscience to deal with this issue, but the philosophical concepts are the foundations. The notion of the mind, itself, is a philosophical one. I myself believe it to be a construction that is useful publically: something we all understand … a place where our internal thoughts/images/sounds/dreams take place, a place different than the outside world. It’s a profoundly vague, incomplete, and illusiory concept. Highly primitive.
Philosophers, especially, seem to need to argue for the mind. They conceived of it after all, as they did ethics, aesthetics, religion, etc. They have a persistent need for their to be things about us and the world that are underlying what we directly experience. “There has to be more” seems to be their guiding idea. What is obviously apparent about people and the world is not adaquate. There has to be more, and what there is (the mind, ethics, objective value, etc) is the true reality that underlies everything and is NOT DEPENDENT ON HUMAN BEINGS for their existence! That I like, LOVE!, a work of art is meaningless in the philosophers eye. Ah, how terrible it is for something to depend on human judgment, human perception. The work of art is beautiful IN ITSELF, and as such doesn’t rely on any person’s judgment or observation. It has beauty, value, IN IT. Ha!, totally false, and itself a illusiory, totally incomplete notion. But this is what philosophers and others NEED. I wonder if this reflects their personalities more than the quality of their thought, which most people admire and consider brilliant. Most philosophers are highly withdrawn less-social people who value their ideas more than people. They love the world of ideas. It’s their world. The outside, real world is not theirs. They don’t experience it that well, and stray away from it. They lack many core capacities that are needed to experience the outside world, and they turn inside and try to construct an internal world that they think is EVEN BETTER than what is MERELY available to anyone in the outside world. But it’s not available to them, as they lack the relevant capacities to enjoy, for example, the sustained exchange of facial gazes, the reading of each other’s eyes, the fulfillment this itself brings.
I don’t think science (neuroscience, etc) explains what it is about the physical things (brain etc) that gives rise to the self, consciousness, etc. What does XYZ chemicals and processes have to do with the self? Sure the brain and what neuroscience has uncovered gives rise to the self, and in this sense is the orgin of the self. But this is obvious. What is it about the aspects of the brain that gives rise to the self etc. What is it about a particular chemical, for example? This will never be answered, and I think is conceptually impossible to answer: we would have to see the self, consciousness, in order to explain it with minimal adaquacy. We haven’t and will never, as a formal matter. But anyway, I don’t think these things have ever existed — the concepts are primitive, profoundly vague, and used only for public purposes, such as in academics, in casual discussions, to describe things about ourselves to others, etc.
It’s interesting how each discipline tries to answer these fundamental issues. Often they each think it is their discipline that is best to do so, or either this along with some aspects of other disciplines. The issue of the origin of the universe. Physics believes it addresses this with various theories, much of philosophy believes that this is a conceptual issue rather than scientific issue. Hawking and Ellis’s big-bang theory states that the universe started from an initial singularity, namely an elementary particle, of immense density and astoundingly small. From this the universe and space began, and in a process of expansion. However, and as Hawking and Ellis address, this doesn’t address the question of how did this elementary particle arise, what caused it, and in what did it exist (space?). This theory simply changes the size of the object of our inquiry, namely the universe/space, to something of a different and smaller nature. While it is an incredible theory about a very important process of the universe, it in no way addresses the fundamental question of the origin of the universe. It simply replaces it with a different object of inquiry. The object is different, but the issue is the same.
Philosophy believes this is largly a conceptual issue, but also uses the advances in science to further theorizing.
I think (a) it is impossible to conceive of what was before the origin of the universe, and (b), this is not an issue of beign capable of conceiving of what there was, but rather that it is impossible to do so. It is a depressing fact that we will never know about most of the simplest fundamental questions, such as what caused the universe (what gave rose to it, when did it begin, etc). These questions are so simple in nature, though are formally impossible to answer. Not due to any limitations in our thought or human advancement, but instead due to that only certain things can be answered, and certain things can only be asked about. Wittgenstein in the Tractatus argues that if something can be asked, it can be answered — the very asking of it entails that there is a subject that is answerable. But I think the simplest and most fundamental issues are the one’s that can’t be answered, and only asked. It is their simple nature that limits the possiblity of being answered.
What is the orange color? The color can in no way be described, because it is a simple property. We can talk about it’s processes, molecular and chemical make up, interaction with light, etc, but none of these descriptions are of orange, the color. Like saying that neuroscience explains the origin of the self, consciousness, etc. Neuroscience explains the aspects of the things that give rise to what we think of as the self, etc, but like the constituents of any color not being the color itself, these aspects are not the self.
About ethics itself, the foundations of it are very contentious. The core part of ethics is the underlying belief that is objective value and objective reasons, that is, value and reasons that are not related or dependendent on any aspects of someone’s psychology (desires, interests goals, etc). This is an incredible view and I think without any adaquate support or proof. The issue of objective value is the most central issue, and even the viiew of what it is is in form is in my view no coherent, and I think involves dissociation from the true basis for sayign that anything has value, nemely, aspects of our psychology (desires, interests, goals, etc).
The notion of objective value underlies all discussion/theory about whether something is good, right, should be done, bad, wrong, shouldn’t be done — certain things, actions, etc are objectively good, and ceratin are objectively bad, etc. Some simple and general discussion: “we shouldn’t kill or harm anyone” (referring to non-defense situations, etc), “human beings are morally good”, “the political and economic and educational aspects of society ought to be organized in this way because this is the most good/fair/right for people.” There are amazing theories about these things. Their goal is to seach for the best arguments for what is morally good/right/fair and why — what is it about people, social cooperation, etc. Underlying these theories is that there is such a thing as objective value (moral value), and the stronger/more reasonable theories win approval if they do best to argue for why something is morally valuable. But in ethics they dont’ argue for whether there is moral value. This is done in a specialty area called meta-ethics, a serious part of philosophy from Aristotle onward, but not as popular and usually only found in certain distinguished philosophy departments. In meta-ethics, many of the important philosophers argue that there is objective value, and there arguments are incredible and take years of serious study to fully understand and respond to. It has seemed to me that what occurs in ethics is similar in form to what occurs when people ardently argue that something is GOOD (in the strong, objective sense) that obviously not the subject of moral inquiry and instead is the subject of simple preference. Children commonly do this — the color blue is good FOR EVERYONE (no question better than red or any other color), certain foods are good and others bad not only for themselves but for everyone (this is the objective aspect). Certain people, sports teams, etc, are good, and others bad. Here they are considering these things to have objective value — they are in their minds simply good and bad, for everyone. In these cases, it’s obvious that what is occurring, in my view, is that they are dissociating from the actual basis for their vies on what is good and bad, namely their desires/interests/goals, all of which are psychological. They so strongly like someone, or prefer a certain color or food or sports team, that they believe such things are good regardless of what they even think about them, that is, they believe these things are good or bad independent of what they themselves thing of them.
I think this dissociation happens at the highest level in philosophy, and pervades the core aspects of ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, etc.
I think that the stongest foundation for our common views and people’s own separate views is about why we prefer certain things, certain actions, etc. Preference in my view is the foundation, and the only foundation.
The problem with preference based theory is that the compelling, overriding, obligatory, categorical nature is not there. It’s “merely” what someone prefers, and I prefer something different. Not so. I think extensive argument can be provided with preference as the basis. But in the end, only preference is the foundation I think; only it can be the foundation; there is nothing else. It’s not that there isn’t objective value, rather it’s that any notion of objective value is highly incomplete, and not an understandable object of thought. What is occurring when people engage in ethics, and/or discuss objective value, is actually a severe dissociation from their preferences — they try to objectify their preferences, to take their preferences outside of themselves and conceive of them as lying in the world.
Maybe this type of activity (ethics) was designed by the founders as an effective way to commmunicate preference based views on what is good, bad, right, wrong, etc. They needed the import aspect and found that this was more effective than simply providing extensive expressions of preference and arguing why other’s preferences should accord with the preferences being advanced. There is a huge percentage of most societies that do not respond unless something is considered by them to have an overriding, commanding aspect to it, or, if not this then something that is supported by impending police action, jail, punishment, etc.
If autism/ASD (autism spectrum disorders) are developmental disorders, then how would biomedial, neurosurgical, or other treatments be determined to be effective in light of how the developmental capacities of the individual being treated (especially if an adult) are quite primitive? Would a treatment be determined effective if it allowed the person to begin re-developing from the point that development stopped, and if so what would this look like? Say with a 20 year old low functioning autistic, would this treatment allow her to start developing but at the say 2 year old communicative and emotiional level, and go from there, and if so, what would the developmental process look like … would it be more rapid or would it take as much time as it usually would for a 2 year old, that is, the 20 year old autistic can finally begin to start developing from 2 years old onward, as if she is now 2 years old in many core ways and now can proceed with her life, so when she is 40 years old she will be actually 20 years old in terms of her communicative, emotional, etc, abilities?
So with a treatment, to determine whether it’s effective do we have to look for whether it allows the person to finally begin developing at the point that development stopped? For Aspergers, while there usually is the developmet of intellectual and communicative abilities (though of a particular kind generally), it would seem that they, too, would be quite primitive in terms of emotional abilities (the abilities used for meaningful relationships). So the treatment would help them to begin from their primitive state onward.
I wonder how a treatment can be determined useful if what is being looked for to determine it’s effectiveness is whether the person can now start developing. It’s not that the person has been normal and encountered a degradation of functioning and what is being looked for is re-gaining that prior level of functioning, which was well established.
… If on the other hand, a treatment relatively rapidly caused a significant positive change in terms of the autistic person’s basic functioning, to the point that she was normal or at least in the range of normality, then would autism be considered a developmental disorder? In this case, the person’s abilities would rather rapidly be present, even though she never underwent a developmental process. In a sense she went from 2yrs old in terms of certain core abilities, to 20 years old. What would autism be considered then if this was the case and if a treatment(s) caused this for many/most with ASD? I’m not so much referring to whether there suddenly is a fully operative extensive language, but instead some other basic things, such as emotional and non-verbal communication/reciprocity, reciprocity with the outside world (visual, auditory, tactile, etc, stimuli), and more vaguely, connection with others and the world through exchange of good quality sustained eye contact and facial expression, visual and auditory aesthetic apprecition for the objects of sight and heaing, etc.
Can you discuss some of the main aspects of spatial representation in the brain/consciousness, and in the external world? I suppose that the space we see is dependent on it being represented in the brain/consciousness.
In those who are blind, or with one’s eyes closed, what are some of the main aspects of one’s interal spatial representation? For those who have never been able to see, I wonder what their internal representation of their surroundings is like. Is it accurate to say that they have an internal spatial representation (internal spatial field within which they picture things and experience things?