Author: Pär Segerdahl (Page 19 of 43)

Can neuroscience and moral education be united? (By Daniel Pallarés Domínguez)

4 June, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

People have started to talk about neuroeducation, but what is it? Is it just another example of the fashion of adding the prefix neuro- to the social sciences, like neuroethics, neuropolitics, neuromarketing and neurolaw?

Those who remain sceptical consider it a mistake to link neuroscience with education. However, for some authors, neuroscience can provide useful knowledge about the brain, and they see neuroeducation as a young field of study with many possibilities.

From its birth in the decade of the brain (1990), neuroeducation has been understood as an interdisciplinary field that studies developmental learning processes in the human brain. It is one of the last social neurosciences to be born. It has the progressive aim of improving learning-teaching methodologies by applying the results of neuroscientific research.

Neuroscientific research already plays an important role in education. Taking into account the neural bases of human learning, neuroeducation looks not only for theoretical knowledge but also for practical implications, such as new teaching methodologies, and it reviews classical assumptions about learning and studies disorders of learning. Neuroeducation studies offer possibilities such as early detection of special learning needs or even monitoring and comparing different teaching methodologies implemented in school.

Although neuroeducation primarily focuses on disorders of learning, especially in mathematics and language (dyscalculia and dyslexia), can it be extended to other areas? If neuroscience can shed light on the development of ethics in the brain, can such explorations form the basis of a new form of neuroeducation, moral neuroeducation, which studies the learning or development of ethics?

Before introducing a new term (moral neuroeducation), prudence and critical discussion are needed. First, what would the goal of moral neuroeducation be? Should it consider moral disorders in the brain or just immoral behaviours? Second, neuroscientific knowledge is used in neuroeducation to help design practices that allow more efficient teaching to better develop students’ intellectual potentials throughout their training process. Should this be the goal also of moral neuroeducation? Should we strive for greater efficiency in teaching ethics? If so, what is the ethical competence we should try to develop in students?

It seems that we still need a critical and philosophical approach to the promising union of neuroscience and moral education. In my postdoctoral project, Neuroethical Bases for Moral Neuroeducation, I will contribute to developing such an approach.

Daniel Pallarés Domínguez

My postdoctoral research at the Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics (CRB) is linked to a research project funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness in Spain. That project is entitled, Moral Neuroeducation for Applied Ethics [FFI2016-76753-C2-2-P], and is led by Domingo García-Marzá.

Can a robot learn to speak?

29 May, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

There are self-modifying computer programs that “learn” from success and failure. Chess-playing computers, for example, become better through repeated games against humans.

Could a similar robot also learn to speak? If the robot gets the same input as a child gets when it learns to speak, should it not be possible in principle?

Notice how the question zigzags between child and machine. We say that the robot learns. We say that the child gets input. We speak of the robot as if it were a child. We speak of the child as if it were a robot. Finally, we take this linguistic zigzagging seriously as a fascinating question, perhaps even a great research task.

An AI expert and prospective father who dreamed of this great research task took the following ambitious measures. He equipped his whole house with cameras and microphones, to document all parent-child interactions during the child’s first years. Why? He wanted to know exactly what kind of linguistic input a child gets when it learns to speak. At a later stage, he might be able to give a self-modifying robot the same input and test if it also learns to speak.

How did the project turn out? The personal experience of raising the child led the AI expert to question the whole project of teaching a robot to speak. How could a personal experience lead to the questioning of a seemingly serious scientific project?

Here, I could start babbling about how amiably social children are compared to cold machines. How they learn in close relationships with their parents. How they curiously and joyfully take the initiative, rather than calculatingly await input.

The problem is that such babbling on my part would make it seem as if the AI expert simply was wrong about robots and children. That he did not know the facts, but now is more well-informed. It is not that simple. For the idea behind the project presupposed unnoticed linguistic zigzagging. Already in asking the question, the boundaries between robots and children are blurred. Already in the question, we have half answered it!

We cannot be content with responding to the question in the headline with a simple, “No, it cannot.” We must reject the question as nonsense. Deceitful zigzagging creates the illusion that we are dealing with a serious question, worthy of scientific study.

This does not exclude, however, that computational linguistics increasingly uses self-modifying programs, and with great success. But that is another question.

Pär Segerdahl

Beard, Alex. How babies learn – and why robots can’t compete. The Guardian, 3 April 2018

This post in Swedish

Bioethics dissolving misdirected worldliness

16 May, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

When we feel low, we often make the mistake of scanning the external environment to find the cause of our state of mind out there. One could speak of the depressed person’s misdirected worldliness. We are convinced that something in the world makes us depressed. We exclude that we ourselves play a role in the drama: “I am depressed because he/she/they/society is so damned…”

The depressed person naturally believes that the way to happiness lies in eliminating the external cause of the depression: “If I just could be spared from dealing with him/her/them/society, I would feel a lot better.” That is what the depressed person’s worldliness looks like. We are unable to turn around and see (and treat) the emergence of the problem within ourselves.

Xenophobia might be a manifestation of the depressed person’s misunderstanding of life. We could speak of the insecure person’s misdirected worldliness. One scans the external environment to find the cause of one’s insecurity in the world. When one “finds” it, one apparently “proves” it beyond doubt. The moment one thinks about immigration, one is attacked by strong feelings of insecurity: no doubt, that’s the cause! The alternative possibility that one carries the insecurity within oneself is excluded: “I’m suffering because society is becoming increasingly insecure.”

Finally, one makes politics of the difficulty of scrutinizing oneself. One wants to eliminate the external cause of the insecurity one feels: “If we stop immigration, society will become safer and I will feel more secure!” That is what the insecure person’s misdirected worldliness looks like.

You might be surprised that even anti-xenophobia can exhibit the depressed person’s misunderstanding of life. If we lack a deep understanding of how xenophobia can arise within a human being, we will believe that there are evil people who in their stupidity spread fake statistics about increasing social insecurity. These groups must be eliminated, we think: “If there were no xenophobic groups in society, then I would feel much better.” That is what the good activist’s worldliness can look like.

Like that we go on and on, in our misdirected worldliness, because we fail to see our own role in the drama. We make politics of our inner states, which flood the world as if they were facts that should appear in the statistics. (Therefore, we see them in the statistics.)

Now you may be surprised again, because even bioethics can exhibit the depressed person’s misunderstanding of life. I am thinking of the tendency to make ethics an institution that maintains moral order in society. Certainly, biomedical research needs regulation, but sometimes regulation runs the errands of a misdirected worldliness.

A person who feels moral unease towards certain forms of research may think, “If researchers did not kill human embryos, I would feel a lot better.” Should we make policy of this internal state by banning embryonic stem cell research? Or would that be misdirected projection of an inner state on the world?

I cannot answer the question in this post; it requires more attention. All I dare to say is that we, more often than we think, are like depressed people who seek the cause of our inner states in the world. Just being able to ask if we manifest the depressed person’s misunderstanding of life is radical enough.

I imagine a bioethics that can ask the self-searching question and seek practical ways to handle it within ourselves. So that our inner states do not flood the world.

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Read this interview with Kathinka Evers!

26 April, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Through philosophical analysis and development of concepts, Uppsala University contributes significantly to the European Flagship, the Human Brain Project. New ways of thinking about the brain and about consciousness are suggested, which take us beyond oppositions between consciousness and unconsciousness, and between consciousness and matter.

Do you want to know more? Read the fascinating interview with Kathinka Evers: A continuum of consciousness: The Intrinsic Consciousness Theory

Kathinka Evers at CRB in Uppsala leads the work on neuroethics and neurophilosophy in the Human Brain Project.

Pär Segerdahl

When fear of obscurity produces obscurity

25 April, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Obscurely written texts make us angry. First, we get annoyed because we do not understand. Then comes the fear, the fear of being duped by a cheat. Our fear is so strong that we do not dare to acknowledge it. Instead, we seriously suspect that there are madcaps who for some inscrutable reason write tons of nonsense. We had better take shelter in the house of reason!

Certainly, there are chatterboxes who talk nonsense. My own fear in this post is that fear of the obscure will make us shallow. Insightfulness easy appears as obscurity. It takes time to understand insightful texts. We often reread them; we age with them. If we do not give us that time, but demand immediate gratification, we might reject insightful texts as obscure and perhaps even dangerous.

There is an ideal of eradicating all obscurity: Write verbally explicitly, without any holes in the chain of reasons! The works of great thinkers are often scrutinized according to this ideal: Are there overlooked holes in their arguments through which truth might slip out? Can the holes be repaired, or will the ship sink with its cargo of truth claims?

A problem with this ideal of reason is that it can undermine our own literacy. The ideal can make even plain texts seem obscure, which reinforces the fear of being duped by cheats; hordes of them. Suddenly, one wants to correct all humanity, who apparently has not yet learned to be reasonable.

The ideal of reason becomes a demand for a small circle of intellectual ascetics who write intricately argued texts to each other: texts that, however, become incomprehensible to the rest of humanity. Like impregnable walls, protecting the house of reason.

Fear of obscurity risks making us both shallow and obscure. Therefore, take care of your fear! That is also a way of being reasonable. Perhaps a more insightful way.

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Rules for authorship must be clarified

11 April, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Recently, I wrote a post on honorary authorships in the academia. When I in that post tried to render the ICMJE criteria for academic authorship, I felt dull since I could not figure out how to express in my own words the fourth criterion:

”Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”

To count as an author of an academic publication, it is not sufficient to contribute to the research, to drafting or revising the intellectual content of the text, and to approve the final version. You must also satisfy this fourth criterion, which has to do with responsibility for research misconduct.

What does the criterion actually say? After reading an opinion piece by Gert Helgesson and Stefan Eriksson in Learned Publishing, I realize that it was not just my stupidity that caused my difficulties to summarize the fourth criterion. The formulation is ambiguous, which may be due to disagreement among the authors of the authorship criteria!

Helgesson and Eriksson find three possible interpretations of the fourth criterion:

Emphasizing the initial ten words (until the first instance of “work”), the criterion seems to say that all authors are responsible, or should be held responsible, for all parts of the article. If the work was fraudulent in some way, all authors should be held responsible, even if they were unaware of what was going on.
Continuing to read the whole criterion, its meaning changes. The criterion then seems to say that if fraudulence is suspected, then all authors have the responsibility to facilitate the investigation of the suspicions (regardless of what part of the work the suspicions concern).
A third interpretation goes further than the second interpretation. It says that an author should support investigations of fraudulence not only after the article was sent to a journal. An author should initiate such investigations him- or herself already during the research and drafting phase, if he or she suspects fraudulence.

It is impossible to determine which interpretation holds. Helgesson and Eriksson consider the third interpretation most reasonable from a research ethical point of view. If this is the intended interpretation, it should be made linguistically unmistakable in the next revision of the authorship criteria, the opinion piece concludes.

Pär Segerdahl

Helgesson, G. and Eriksson, S. Revise the ICMJE Recommendations regarding authorship responsibility! Learned Publishing 2018. doi: 10.1002/leap.1161

This post in Swedish

Risks of discrimination in population-based biobanks

4 April, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Even good intentions can cause harm. Considerately treating certain groups as “vulnerable,” such as pregnant women and children, can cause discrimination against them. If we protect them from participation in clinical research, we know less about how they respond to medical treatments. They are therefore exposed to greater risks when they are patients in need of medical treatment. Thanks for your concern.

Deborah Mascalzoni points out possible discrimination patterns in population-based biobank research. She particularly highlights people with psychiatric conditions, who often are excluded from such studies. However, she also mentions children, who rarely are included in population-based biobanks, as well as people with early forms of dementia or addiction problems.

Mascalzoni thus asks how representative population-based biobanks really are. This is important, as results from such research are increasingly used in the planning of care. We need to see these potential discrimination patterns more clearly, so that people suffering from psychiatric conditions, for example, have similar opportunities to benefit from research as others.

However, the patterns are caused not only by how we think of certain groups as “vulnerable.” Even practical difficulties, to which you may not give much thought, can cause discrimination. It is ethically and legally cumbersome to recruit children as research participants. People suffering from depression may have suicidal thoughts, which requires special efforts. People with early symptoms of dementia may have difficulty understanding complex information, which complicates the process of informed consent.

Some groups are in practice more difficult to recruit to population-based biobanks. Not only our consideration of certain groups as “vulnerable,” then, but also practical obstacles to which we do not pay attention, may cause biased research results, which may lead to poorer care for certain groups. There is therefore reason to ask about representativeness.

Pär Segerdahl

Mascalzoni, D. 2017. Reverse discrimination for psychiatric genetic studies in population-based biobanks. European Neuropsychopharmacology 27: 475-476

This post in Swedish

To become aware of something

29 March, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

The phenomenon I want to highlight in this post has many descriptions. Here are a few of them: To become conscious of something; to notice; to observe; to realize; to see; to become aware of something.

We all experience it. Every now and then, what these descriptions indicate occurs in us. We realize something; we become aware of something. It can be elementary, such as being struck (another similar description) by how blue the sky is. It may be painful, such as realizing how self-absorbed we are or how ungenerously we treat someone.

What is the point of living if we do not occasionally become aware of living?

Insights can also be philosophical, such as becoming aware of what it means to forgive someone. We cannot order someone to forgive, just as we cannot order someone to be happy. The words “I forgive you” may resemble an act of volition that a person can be ordered to perform; but only deceitfully empty words will obey the order. Genuine forgiveness comes spontaneously, or not at all. I say, “I forgive you,” when I notice, with relief, that I already have forgiven you; that I no longer harbor unforgiving thoughts about you, etc.

What would human life be without these insights into how we live? What would ethics be?

Just as forgiveness cannot be enforced, awareness cannot be demanded. “Realize this!” is not an order, but sheer desperation. Awareness is as shy as forgiveness. It comes spontaneously, or not at all. As soon as a certain form of awareness is required, enforced, or presumed, it contracts to a mere norm of thought. That is how communities of ideas arise, or churches, or philosophical schools: through narrowing consciousness. Loyal members will confirm each other while they deride “the others” who supposedly lack insight and must be rejected.

Considering how awareness does not obey orders, it can be seen as radical, as revolutionary. It takes us beyond all norms of thought and all communities of ideas! Suddenly we realize something that surpasses everything we thought we knew. However, if we try to force our insights onto others by proving them as facts, we reduce our spacious awareness to narrow binding norms. Our radical freedom is unnoticeable on the surface; we cannot display it without losing it.

If awareness is free and impossible to catch as a fact, do we have to remain quiet about these shy insights? No, philosophical work aims precisely at attracting shy insights into the light. By using fresh examples, considerations, similes and striking words, we try to entice what does not obey orders. This is the secret of a genuine philosophical investigation. It does not prove truths, but attracts truths. Whether the investigation succeeds, each one must assess for him- or herself. In philosophy, we cannot say, “Elementary, my dear Watson”. Nevertheless, many professional thinkers dream of saying it. They dream of the pure authority of binding norms of thought. Faith in reason is sheer desperation.

This post may seem to contain quasi-oracular pronouncements about forgiveness (and other matters). However, the intention is not that you should believe me or use the post as a norm of thought. Ultimately, my statements are queries from human to human: Do you also see the features I see in forgiveness and awareness? Otherwise, we continue the investigation together. For in philosophy we can never enforce the truth, we can only attract it. It comes spontaneously, or not at all.

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Intellectual habits prevent self-examination

21 March, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

The intellect is worldly-minded and extrovert. It is busy with the facts of the world. Even when it turns inwards, towards our own consciousness, of which it is a part, the intellect interprets consciousness as another object in the world.

The intellect can never become aware of itself. It can only expand towards something other than itself.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius gave a wonderful image of a self-examining person: “When the archer misses the center of the target, he turns around and seeks the cause of his failure within himself.”

The intellect is like an archer who cannot turn around. If the intellect were to examine itself, it would interpret itself as another target in the world to hit with its pointed arrows! The intellect is incapable of wisdom and knows nothing about self-knowledge. The intellect can only shoot projectiles at the world; it can only expand and conquer.

I am writing philosophy. That means I always turn around to seek the cause of our failures within ourselves. I rarely shoot arrows, and certainly not at external targets.

At the same time, this inner work meets obstacles in academic habits and ideals, which are largely intellectual and aim at the facts of the world. For example, I cannot examine our ways of thinking without citing literature that supports that these ways of thinking actually occur in the world (in authors x, y, and z, for example).

Such referencing transforms ways of thinking into worldly targets at which I am supposed to shoot. But I wanted to turn around and seek the cause of our failures within ourselves!

What do we truly need today? Something else than just more facts! We need to learn the art of turning around. We need to learn to seek the cause of our failures within ourselves. The persistent shooting of projectiles at the world has become humanity’s most common disease – virtually the human condition.

Do you think that the intellect can shoot itself out of the crises that its own trigger-happiness causes? Do you think it can expand out of the problems that its own expansions produce?

If Elon Musk takes us to Mars, surely he will solve all our problems!

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Two measures against the culture of honorary authorships

13 March, 2018 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

It is important in the academia to know who actually contributed as author to scientific publications. Partly because authorship is meritorious when researchers seek positions and funding. Partly to facilitate investigations of suspected research misconduct.

These are two important reasons why there are guidelines for academic authorship. These guidelines state that an author should not only contribute to design, data collection, or analysis behind the publication. An author should also contribute to writing and revising the text. An author should moreover approve the final version of the text, and agree to be accountable if there are issues of accuracy or integrity.

The number of authors listed on academic publications tends to increase. As an extreme example, I might mention that in 2011, 140 scientific articles were published listing more than 1,000 authors!

One reason for the larger numbers of listed authors is, of course, that research is becoming increasingly complex and requires collaborations that are more extensive. However, much suggests that the number of undeserving authors increases. One could speak of a culture of honorary authorships within the academia.

There are strong driving forces behind the culture of honorary authorships. It can be about supporting cohesion in a research group by avoiding the uncomfortable decision to exclude team members who contributed minimally to the work being published. It can be about creating good relationships with influential people in the research community by giving them authorship; which they sometimes demand. It can be about increasing the chances of being published by having a famous researcher’s name in the author list. And since big research projects are prestigious, a long author list looks good. It creates pressure on the journals to publish what apparently required the contribution of so many skilled researchers – one thinks.

What can we do about it? In a recent article with the, nowadays, modest number of four authors, it is emphasized that guidelines for academic authorship, which have been around for a long time and are well known, obviously do not suffice. In the journal Insights, Stefan Eriksson, Tove Godskesen, Lars Andersson and Gert Helgesson write that we probably need to create psychological incentives against the culture of honorary authorships.

More specifically, two simple measures are suggested that can reduce undeserving authorships within the academia:

When researchers seek positions, interview them about their contributions to publications that they include in the list of qualifications. If they are only honorary authors, they may not be able to account for the articles or how they contributed to them. Knowing that this is part of the recruitment process can create a psychological pressure to avoid undeserving honorary authorships.
Divide authorship and citations scores with the number of authors. Awareness that scores are calculated in this way creates a psychological pressure not to include undeserving authors in the author list.

One might object that this proposal instead risks excluding collaborators from contributing as authors, although they could very well be invited to function as well-deserved co-authors. This objection is addressed in the article. Instead of explaining the authors’ defense, I hope that my silence on this point will motivate readers of the Ethics Blog to read the important article. So that I do not lure you into some sort of honorary readership! How often do we not intimate that we have read something very interesting, which we in fact only skimmed through or heard summarized?

The academic culture of honorary authorships will not disappear easily. Ethical guidelines are obviously not enough. Of course, the best thing would be if we all became saints. While waiting for it to happen, psychological incentives may be needed to behave well.

Pär Segerdahl

Eriksson, S., Godskesen, T., Andersson, L., Helgesson, G. (2018). How to counter undeserving authorship. Insights. 31(1), p.1. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.395

This post in Swedish

Author: Pär Segerdahl (Page 19 of 43)

Can neuroscience and moral education be united? (By Daniel Pallarés Domínguez)

Can a robot learn to speak?

Bioethics dissolving misdirected worldliness

Read this interview with Kathinka Evers!

When fear of obscurity produces obscurity

Rules for authorship must be clarified

To become aware of something

Intellectual habits prevent self-examination

Two measures against the culture of honorary authorships

Meet the editor

Recent posts

Keywords on this blog

Explore our archive

Subscribe via email

Curious about the Swedish debate?

Recent comments