Rational Philosophy

New findings of brain research, exoneration through DNA analysis, and relationship twists.

My four year-old son gloms on to new interests with great intensity and with a level of focus that seems infinitely unflagging. Depending on the interest, his mother and I either rejoice (relatively speaking) at his fascinations, or despair. But neither state lasts long. Just when we think he’ll be a Thomas The Tank Engine junky all his life (despair!), he moves on to Lightning McQueen (better). And as we begin to worry that he’s reciting all the words to the Cars movie, he drops that and moves on superheroes. Now we’re anxiously awaiting the next new thing while we try to figure out how to dissuade him from wearing his superhero costumes — complete with capes and masks — everywhere he goes.

For children, new habits are old hat. But as we grow to adulthood, we tend to narrow our focus and stick to things we feel comfortable with. But according to research findings (and this one passes the ‘duh!’ test) when we stretch ourselves and try new things, form new habits, we create new pathways in the brain, and even new brain cells, that can lead to innovative thinking.

The NY Times article is light on references, but points to a couple of interesting concepts:

1. That research in the 1960s indicated that we’re born with the capacity to tackle challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively.

2. That when we reach puberty our brains tend to close off half of that capacity, maintaining the approaches that have worked best for us so far.

These seem like very dubious claims. I’ve always felt that true analysis has to begin with innovation. Sure, spoon fed bookwork can be achieved with almost no innovation — if we’re told to tackle a problem in a certain way — but if we’re faced with a true challenge, one that comes without a prescription, don’t we have to think innovatively in order to get the analytical ball rolling?

So, I take these strict categorizations with a large grain of salt. But I do like the idea of challenging ourselves to forge new pathways in the brain. And the more that I read about the studies in this area, the more excited I become about the prospect that people can change the way they think. (See Irony And The Plastic Mind and The Promise of The Plastic Mind.) We can respect the idea that we approach challenges with some mix of analysis, procedure, collaboration and innovation, even if we don’t consider them mutually independent strategies. And this gives a new dimension to our habit experimentation — if we tend to do a lot of things heavy on analysis, try something that’s heavy on innovation…

NPR reports on James Lee Woodward, the 17th Dallas man to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Woodward had spent 27 years behind bars, even forgoing chances of parole because he wouldn’t apologize for a crime he didn’t commit. The new Dallas DA — Craig Watkins — is determined to reexamine as many dubious convictions as possible in order to get the innocent out from behind bars. At an institutional level Watkins has begun to institute new habits of fairness and due process in the DAs office. And this seems to be a very important connection between these two articles. Just as we can stretch ourselves on a personal level to get ourselves out of a rut, to challenge ourselves to think more innovatively, so, too, the same thing can and does happen with society.

Institutions, after all, comprise people, people doing what they’re accustomed to doing, and what they are told to do, or implicitly or explicitly encouraged to do. It is the Craig Watkins of the world who act as catalysts for change within our institutions. (Sadly Watkins success at overturning old convictions with DNA evidence can’t be replicated in other parts of Texas — everywhere else the DNA evidence of these old cases has been discarded.)
(Of course, not all change is positive. The Bush administration has provided a striking example fo change for the worse, creating an institutional mindset in government that has set the country back several decades in terms of enlightened national and global policies.)

Coincidental to the main theme of this post, I came across an article on CNN.com that dips into the things that can happen in relationships when one partner makes a big change. The report gives several examples — the man who encourages his wife to become a nudist, the woman who ditches her fiance when he quits his high power job, and the man who loses his wife when he tells her he’s a cross-dresser.

What’s interesting about the CNN article vis a vis this post is that it points to a subtle way that we can forge new pathways in relationships just by being ourselves, by accepting our desire for something and being honest about it. Interestingly, the relationship experts don’t seem to unreservedly endorse honesty and self-expression. There’s a bit of finger-wagging going on. But in each of the three examples I found it hard to see that the relationship would be worth salvaging if it couldn’t survive the new challenge at hand.

I’ll end with the words of James Lee Woodward: “Time is what you make of it. You’re living no matter where you are.”

For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On the reproductive strategies of Komodo Dragons — what they tell us, and what they don’t. And a parallel in the trends of religious affiliation.

Neil Shubin, associate dean at the University of Chicago and the provost of the Field Museum, tries to shrug off objections to cloning as “unnatural” by explaining that female Komodo Dragons, and other species, can reproduce without the need for male fertilization. Shubin reasons that this phenomenon, reported in Britain and Kansas, in which the offspring have identical DNA to the mother, shows that we’re on shaky ground if we turn to nature to determine that cloning is unnatural. Since nature can encompass all kinds of odd survival mechanisms, Shubin argues, when it comes to survival, “anything goes.” But in his rush to eliminate nature as an infallible moral compass (a sensible intent, since, as he says, only humans have a sense of morality) Shubin unfortunately shuffles out of the door the question of what’s “natural.”

Shubin’s argument goes like this: Cloning happens in nature (through the phenomenon of virgin births). Therefore cloning can’t be said to be unnatural.

He has, of course, stooped to a very basic form of sophistry by taking two different ideas and equating them. Virgin birth in Komodo Dragons has evolved over millions of years as a survival mechanism when male fertilization is unlikely or difficult. When humans clone a species we deliberately achieve our means with mechanisms that haven’t evolved. That’s the whole point of applying science to cloning — to hoodwink nature.

In amongst this sophistry though, Shubin points out that male fertilization persists as by far the most likely form of reproduction in Komodos, despite the possibility of virgin birth, because it mixes up the gene pool of the offspring and in so doing allows for adaptation. (Passing on the same genes makes adaptation impossible.)

“Without variation,” as Shubin notes, “the world would be static and unchangeable, and species would gradually disappear as they failed to meet challenges…”

This put me in mind of a new survey on religion from the Pew Forum. In its survey of over 35,000 Americans (a relatively large sample), Pew found that “more than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all.” “The number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.”

I should quickly state that non-affiliated does not necessarily mean non-religious; overall about 10% claimed to be non-religious (1.6% atheist, 2.4% agnostic, and 6.3% secular unaffiliated).

I’ve spoken at length in other posts that statistics mislead and get misused. But here I want to say something that would, I believe, hold true even if the statistics told another story; it would just lead to a different prediction.

The decision to change one’s religious affiliation requires as a prerequisite some openness to the idea of change. In making such a change one must be prepared to let go of the old affiliation in favor of the new one. In this way the process is analagous to evolution. Just as the body of an organism responds to physical impulses, so, too, our consciousness responds to mental impulses. And just as the natural world would be static and unchangeable without variation, so, too, the world of ideas would be static and unchangeable without variation.

If we take the Pew statistics at face value, they indicate that the world of ideas has begun to bring about a move away from particular religious affiliation, particularly in young people. Depending on our own religious beliefs, we may wish this to be otherwise. But we cannot argue that the capacity for change, the flexibility and adaptability of beliefs is a healthy sign — it is the evolution of consciousness.

Now for the subjective, but rational, commentary: I am not surprised by the trend that is apparently revealed in the Pew survey. It tracks with similar surveys in Europe (although charting a less dramatic move toward secularism than Europe has seen). And it makes rational sense. Relgions started out as mechanisms by which people tried to make sense of the world. Inspired by doubt, wonder, and fear, early humans invested inanimate objects with the power of deities. Once these inanimate objects were more fully understood, the sense of the divine moved ever further from the tangible world until in more recent times it became invested in an unseen, unseeable, omnipotent but ultimately elusive deity (after all, what was left?)

The more people become aware and convinced that existence can be understood without recourse to a god, the more they will be to change and even let drop their religious affiliations.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

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On the impetus for reinvention.

Some of my shirts no longer fit me. Either my neck has grown or the collars have shrunk. I like my shirts, they’re familiar and worn-in, but sooner or later I know I have to let them go and get new shirts. As I sit here with my collar unbuttoned it occurs to me that life in general demands that we let go of things that no longer fit. Yesterday I wrote about Ireland’s move away from plastic shopping bags, catalyzed by the minister of the environment’s tax on shopping bags, but inspired by the conviction of the government, thoughtfully and firmly communicated to and adopted by society, that Ireland could do without plastic shopping bags.

This morning, as I dumped yesterday’s coffee grounds into a plastic garbage bag, I considered the plastic bag phenomenon from another angle: What if someone were to invent an alternative to plastic that was biodegradable and actually good for the environment? Surely that’s fanciful, I told myself. But if, several decades ago, we had factored in the future harm to the environment, perhaps we wouldn’t have been so quick to use plastic so widely and intensively. If environmental friendliness had been a key design criteria, plastic may never have got off the ground (or out of the test tube).

As society enters a post-industrial enlightenment we need new design criteria. Society needs to give scientists, inventors and corporations aspirations beyond the self-evident goals of cost-effectiveness and aesthetic appeal. With organic produce finding their way into mainstream supermarkets, WalMart’s commitment to selling more fluorescent light bulbs, hybrid cars becoming hip statements of eco-commitment, etc., we can see a new twist to the consumer economy. But it’s still a twist to the old rather than a wrench away toward the new. Companies, aware of consumer demand for products that satisfy the customer’s desire for environmental peace of mind, clamor to cater to a market niche. Whereas Ireland’s move away from plastic shopping bags represents a wholesale shift in consumer demand rather than a spotlight on a dedicated market segment.

And, as in Ireland, such wholesale shifts can only happen if supported by public policies and laws that embrace them and support them. On super-Tuesday it’s important to remember that we elect leaders and governments to represent our needs. And unless we are myopic, one of our preeminent needs as a society must be our own persistence and survival, not just for the next four years, but for many, many years to come. If we elect leaders who don’t care about issues of pollution, overflowing landfills, toxic waste, endangered species, destruction of natural habitats, global warming, and inhumane or dangerous farming techniques more than they care about reelection, then we’re voting for society’s demise.

The same appeal for reinvention can be made for government itself. We should see nothing sacrosanct in the form of government we already have. President Bush has interpreted his constitutional powers so broadly as to make a mockery of such interpretation and in doing so he’s set dangerous precedent. Those who drafted the constitution aimed for it to embody certain principles. Their drafting reflected desires of the forming nation. The challenges faced by America today are very different from those it faced back then. To move forward we need to be willing to look at where we are now — government rife with corruption, bullied along by special interests, arcane systems and institutions weighed down by habit and inertia. It’s great that the current election has generated such interest and excitement, but in many ways it’s politics as usual.

Do we have the system of government we need in order for our society to evolve as we want it to evolve? That’s the question we need to ask ourselves. Not just today but tomorrow and constantly. Because shirt collars get tighter, and the world changes. We can only survive if we’re willing to let go of the old and adapt.

“Today, I am not the person I was ten years ago.” Karl Svensson, a convicted murderer, told his Swedish classmates at medical school when his past caught up with him. The prestigious Karolinska Institute eventually side-stepped the unprecedented question of whether to expel Mr. Svensson simply because of his past criminal acts — once a neo-Nazi, apparently, Svensson’s crime had been deemed a hate crime. Instead, the institute expelled him on a technicality — he had falsified his high school records by substituting his assumed name for his birth name of Hellekant.  The story raises two very interesting questions: 1. Can we change? and 2. Should a person who has committed this kind of crime be allowed to practice medicine (or another similar profession)?

The New York Times editorial board has endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate. Its opinions supporting the endorsement of Clinton for the Democratic and McCain for the Republican vote make fascinatingly candid reading. The Times’ opinion of Clinton again raises the question of whether someone, fundamentally, can change. It left me wondering whether Clinton has changed, and, if so, whether she has changed enough to overcome the disadvantages in her character that have revealed themselves so often in the past — her divisiveness and “I know best” intellectual hardness. The Times uses the example of her “famously disastrous foray” into trying to solve the healthcare issue to support its premise that she has changed and now displays a new understanding of what’s to be done.

I’ve written before about our capacity to change as it relates to the concept of free will and personal development. Being conscious allows us to choose between options, and to select options that may be difficult, unattractive or counter to our immediate instinct. Through this reasoning we can see that it is possible to develop new levels of awareness and new patterns of behavior, to make choices different from those we would have made in the past.

But if we examine the concept of behavioral change we find a composite concept. And we tend to conflate and confuse its constituent parts: When I ask, “can we change?” I could really be asking two separate questions. The first: “Can someone become altered such that the same impulses will lead to different immediate responses?” And the second: “Can someone become altered such that the same impulses will lead to different eventual responses?”

Ten years go, in an angry confrontation, Svensson reacted violently. His immediate response was to be urged to violence. And he acted on this immediate response by lashing out.

To say that Svensson’s immediate response may have changed, we would have to believe that he would not feel urged to violence if faced with a similar confrontation ten years on. I would say that we have very little reason to believe that Svensson or anyone could change in this way simply through reflection and remorse. Our immediate, instinctual response is pre-conscious, and therefore isn’t subject to conscious influence.

On the other hand, to say that Svenssion’s eventual response may have changed seems a much more reasonable and rational conclusion. Svensson, still feeling a violent urge, could now have a modified conscious response and resist the desire to lash out.

Svensson’s classmates were split over whether he should be allowed to stay on. Those that supported him said that he’d paid his debt and, by inference, should be trusted to have changed his conscious response to confrontation. But we can infer that those of his classmates who still distrusted him understood and feared that his immediate response to confrontation (or other stress) could and indeed would still be violent.

Should a violent killer, rehabilitated in his conscious actions, be trusted in the medical profession? To answer that question we would need to understand the degree and range of provocation that Svensson may react violently to, and the strength of his newfound ability to keep his emotions in check. In the absence of reliable ways and means to measure these variables, it would seem reasonable for society not to want Svensson providing medical care. Svensson has rights of freedom, but it also seems reasonable for society to say that he has forgone some of those rights (such as an unfettered choice of career) by his past actions.

So to Hillary Clinton: Although the circumstances are very different, we are confronted with the same logical argument. As I understand it, the instinctual fervor of Clinton’s liberal ideological passion inspired and limited her original approach to tackling the healthcare issue. Her newfound understanding means that she’s better able to consciously override her immediate divisive response. But the concern remains that she would encounter similar instinctual responses in a broad range of political situations.

As we’ve seen with Bush and as tends to happen to those in high office, the stresses and demands of the job certainly don’t make it easier to overcome one’s immediate responses. As the Times’ opinion points out, Clinton has been succumbing to these impulses during her campaigning, underscoring the perspective that we have reason to doubt that she has truly learned to keep her immediate responses in check.

Obama, on the other hand, reveals a more promising character for non-devisive leadership. This then narrows the gap between the candidates that the Times claims to exist, and perhaps even makes Obama the more logical choice. It becomes a matter of character versus experience. I for one would choose character every time.

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On the philosophy of newness.

When I turned on my radio at the start of the new year and listened to the litany of tragic news from around the world (most notably in Kenya and Pakistan), it crossed my mind to wonder whether things ever really change. Even a relatively tame story about the desire of some Scots to separate from England saddened me because it struck me as the undoing of a unifying force. Countries merge and split. People war and feud. The world over we repeat our mistakes from one generation to the next. Or do we?

That Barak Obama won Iowa’s Democratic primary yesterday is in itself momentous. That he won it with a unifying, hopeful message is inspirational. Barak believes in change. When I read Paul Krugman’s recent opinion that Obama was naiive in thinking that he could bring together the opposing voices in the country to achieve valuable progress, it gave me pause. Maybe Krugman was right, I thought, maybe Obama is naiive. But last night when I checked in and saw that Obama had won in Iowa, and this morning as I thought about what he’d done to win, I began to believe that Krugman is mistaken. From a position of weakness, the optimist can do little to sway cynical and self-interested entities (like drug companies). But from a position of power, with a strength of conviction and a willingness to exert influence, the optimist can achieve more than the pessimist could ever dream of.

It is only by looking at the way things shift over time that we can discern whether change and progress is really possible. That the radio reports attacks and riots doesn’t mean we’re living in a world of irretrievable conflict and violence. It means that there is still conflict and violence, for sure. But we need to compare this period to past periods to understand whether things are now worse, better or the same.

To take a small example: My daughter is fourteen. I could not imagine sending her out to work. But a hundred years ago (and even still in some parts of the world) children much younger were sent out to work.

Slavery, racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, bloody crusades, religious intolerance, capital punishment (in all states except Texas)… These things aren’t gone but they’re diminished, more globally deplored.

What we need to guard against is pessimism and relapse. David Brooks tells us not to be afraid that Huckabee won the Republican race in Iowa. Why should we not be afraid, I ask? Here is a man who doesn’t believe in evolution. This is a relapse that should make us not just afraid but determined to do whatever we can to stop him from prevailing in his quest to lead the country.

In the wake of a hazing death, a fibbing (and possibly fight-fixing) grand master, and a what seems to have been an attempted assault on the all-male sanctity of the sumo ring (Japan Wrings Its Hands Over Sumos Latest Woes) change threatens Japan’s sumo tradition. As the NY Times piece points out, though, a little digging reveals that sumo doesn’t quite have a stronghold on tradition. Much newer than people believe, and with much more of a history of reinvention than the current purists want to acknowledge, sumo is no stranger to change.

On the global stage, the threat of climate change has caused many people to react by simply denying its possibility. It’s been interesting to see that as time has passed, more people have become prepared to accept the prospect that the world’s climate is changing. In the US this has happened more slowly than in other parts of the world.

Philosophically, the psychology of change has two primary components: Acceptance — coming to terms with the idea that change is possible, desirable, inevitable, real. And resistance — the idea that the status quo is possible, desirable, inevitable, real.

When change looms it tends to create a tension between acceptance and resistance. This tension can exist in one person, or between people. And it strikes me that such a tension is not just inevitable, but desirable. Acceptance of change not balanced by some resistance will lead to unproductive or harmful change as well as productive and beneficial change.

In society, however, people tend to polarize around positions of acceptance or resistance to particular changes. I’d go further and say that forces in society encourage people to polarize. The “you’re either for it or against it” demand.

Where did this come from? Why do certain aspects of the structure of some societies tend to divide on issues rather than encouraging reasoned debate?

A group, philosophically and logically speaking, requires that the members of the group have some common characteristic. I always remember my math friends at college discussing the question of whether the group that contains all groups contains itself. (A question I could never quite see the importance of.) In this I’m speaking of any group, not just groups in society. A group of marbles may be called a group because they’re all green, or because they’ve been put into the same bag, or because they’re all less than an inch in diameter…

For groups of people in a society, the common characteristic can be quite strong — all of the members of the group are blood relatives, for instance. Or it may be quite weak — they are all taking the same bus.

But people are extremely good at grouping themselves, at establishing groups and reinforcing those groups. It is a critical social function.

Take the example of the bus stop: All of you are waiting for the same bus. There is no particular allegiance, no great bonding force. But now if the bus is late, all of a sudden the members of this ad hoc group have something in common. They can rally around the disagreeability of the bus being late.

To take the example one step further, we can imagine what happens if, after an hour of waiting, a bus comes around the corner just as a newcomer shows up at the bus stop and sidles up to the front of the line. The “group” will be inclined to turn on the newcomer and tell him what’s what.

While philosophically speaking a group is not emotional, psychologically speaking the stronger the urge to form groups, the more likely the groups will be to defend the parameters of their existence.

This tendency to easily form strong groups has doubtless helped human beings survive and prosper. It causes us to work well together when we can establish a common goal. But it also causes us to take sides on issues, and to defend against a change to the group, just for the sake, sometimes, of defending against change.

In Japan, the people who feel most strongly about the parameters of sumo most actively resist any change to those parameters. They have associated themselves with the group that likes sumo to be traditional. Even though they don’t personally know many or perhaps any other members of this group, they wish to keep the group strong. Contrarily, those who feel that sumo should change have joined another group. They will fight just as vehemently for the idea that a change is good.

Acceptance of change and resistance to change confuse us then in part because they are the same thing behind a different mask.