Rational Philosophy

The AP reports on the success of a Japanese team in making genetically modified mice that show no fear of cats. This demonstrates that mice fear cats instinctively, upsetting the more commonly held view that the fear is learned.

The scientists from Tokyo University found that the modified mice quite happily cosied up to the unmodified cats and played with them.

I’ve been reading a fascinating biography of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is getting a lot of play at the moment because of his role in insisting on the separation of church and state as America was being constituted. Jefferson, a Virginian, saw and felt the unfairness of a system in which religion gets forced on people. Fortunately for the country he was a persistent and forceful person who carried forward this conviction even when others would have been OK allowing some degree of intermingling.

Roger Cohen invokes Jefferson’s ideas in an opinion piece that counters Mitt Romney’s vapid criticism of European Secularism, echoing to some degree my own response the other day. Jefferson was an enlightened man. His father read the classics out loud to his family. He had a classical education at home and then at university. Jefferson had great sympathy for the enlightened movements of Europe, and considered anything short of a rational grounding for society unacceptable. In his native state, he reformed the laws of inheritance, for instance, because he thought them inherently unfair.

Jefferson, one can imagine, must be turning in his grave. As Europe has marched on to become widely secularist and for the most part enlightened, America has slumped into a nation riddled with weird zealotry and faith-based fervor, where politicians either make it in part because they genuinely appeal to the religious community or are cowed into pandering to that community. As I sit here, I can think of several reasons why this gap has opened up — the sheer size of America, isolating far-flung communities from the influence and challenge of rigorous thought, the psychological composition of the people who populated America — people came here seeking peace and prosperity trusting largely in their faith that God would provide, the long, lingering influence of slavery and segregation, which was propped up by the idea that whites were somehow better than blacks, a very irrational proposition. I’m sure there are many other potential explanations.

But, as I see it, the point is less how did this happen, and more, how will this change.

The NY Times reports on a new study that indicates that human evolution accelerated rapidly in the last 40,000 years. There’s debate about whether that acceleration has continued over the past 10,000 years, but the study brings with it some hope that we’re not done yet.

Back to those mice…

If mice are genetically programmed to fear cats, this tells us two things: First, that while environment can affect our thoughts and behavior, we start from a predisposition toward a certain psychology and physiology. (My fear of spiders, for instance, may have been influenced by my mother’s fear of spiders, but it was probably also an inherent fear.) Second, that mice evolved their fear of cats.

And if mice can evolve a fear of cats (which seems self-evident to my mind), then human beings can evolve to become more enlightened.

Did I skip a step or two? I fear I did.

1. Is it evolutionary progress to become more enlightened? If you question the answer to this, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.

2. What evolutionary pressure will cause the human race to become more enlightened?

Again, I can come up with several theories in answer to the second question, and I’m sure you’ll find your own. All other things being equal, I think that women are more likely to find enlightened men attractive and vice versa. Who wants to be married to a cave-man? An enlightened man will also be more helpful around the house and with the kids, prompting the woman to be OK having more kids with him. And enlightened people are probably less likely to die stupid, meaningless deaths.

As I argue in my book we’ll one day look back on religious fundamentalism as an anomalous blip in the history of America. The Japanese modification of mice to fear no cats gives me fresh hope that American genes will adjust over time to fear no smiting from on high. At which point the Bushes and the Huckabees and the Romneys of the world will disappear from the political scene with a puff of enlightened smoke.

In an article today on the growing importance of DNA information in the criminal justice system, the New York Times reports: “All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions.”

And in a NYTimes story on Saturday; Texas is moving ahead with execution by lethal injection (next up, a Honduran, Mr. Chi,) despite the Supreme Court’s last minute intervention the previous day to prevent a similar execution (since the drug administered may result in pain that could be considered cruel and unusual): “A lawyer here who represents Hondurans in the United States, Terence O’Rourke, has said Mr. Chi’s execution would violate international law.”

What struck me about these events, apart from the importance of the events themselves, was the philosophical basis for deciding matters of importance to society at the local, state, federal or even international level. I wondered why a prisoner in one state detention system should be denied access to DNA test results if, as a society, we were to conclude that access to such test results was reasonable and good. And why when we have international laws about some things, as a matter of simple humanity, we wouldn’t have international laws about others.

I realize that there are practical matters to consider (not least of which the difficulty of arriving at decisions and implementing on a large scale), and I realize that the constitution and legal system of the United States deliberately leaves many matters to be determined and decided by the local and state legislature, but from a philosophical perspective, such an arrangement troubles me. And it troubles me further that there seems to be such a fierce defense of the right for local and state legislatures to reach their own determinations. Surely if something of such importance as DNA access is appropriate in one jurisdiction it is appropriate in another?

I grew up in England where such things are determined far more homogeneously. The laws of the land don’t vary from place to place in England for matters of great importance (although there are by-laws for matters of limited importance). Which perhaps explains to some extent why it strikes me so oddly that something as important as a convicted person’s right to access DNA information can be withheld in some parts of the country and not in others.

To approach this philosophically: Ideally, a society creates rules and laws that serve its collective and individual interests. We can think of society at various levels — a small social group, an organization or community, a town or city, a state, a country, and the world. Sometimes the rules and laws of a particular group logically apply only to that group (the requirements for membership of a club, for instance). And sometimes the rules and laws of a particular group naturally intersect with a larger or different group — local, state, and federal laws for instance.

One can say that logically the rules and laws within the jurisdiction of a group should be appropriate to the universality of that which is being determined.

For instance, to take a simple example, laws about how close I can build my house to another house have a great deal to do with the particular geography and density of population of the place I live. The zoning laws of New York City probably don’t make sense in Billings Montana. The same could be said about noise ordinances, or any number of concerns that would naturally vary in their importance and interpretation from one place to another.

But the same does not seem to logically apply to the example of access to DNA evidence. Logically, if access to DNA evidence can mean the difference between incarceration and exoneration of the innocent, such right to access should be determined nationally not locally. Innocence or guilt does not vary from state to state.

Likewise, I would think that as a species we could find general agreement between countries on what is cruel or inhuman. (Sad to say that the current United States administration has not set good precedent on applying such logic.)

This is a theme and pattern that comes up again and again. Accepted processes and procedures, whether legal or otherwise, very often come about by custom and by the sway of particular events and people. Over time they become accepted. We don’t challenge their logical foundation.  Rarely do we take a set of problems and concerns and seek to understand them logically, rationally, from their founding principles. Logical interpretation won’t always provide the best solution or the only solution, but it is a perspective that should always be considered.

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