Tag: philosophy (Page 8 of 20)

What is a moral machine?

1 April, 2020 / Pär Segerdahl / 3 Comments

I recently read an article about so-called moral robots, which I found clarifying in many ways. The philosopher John-Stewart Gordon points out pitfalls that non-ethicists – robotics researchers and AI programmers – may fall into when they try to construct moral machines. Simply because they lack ethical expertise.

The first pitfall is the rookie mistakes. One might naively identify ethics with certain famous bioethical principles, as if ethics could not be anything but so-called “principlism.” Or, it is believed that computer systems, through automated analysis of individual cases, can “learn” ethical principles and “become moral,” as if morality could be discovered experientially or empirically.

The second challenge has to do with the fact that the ethics experts themselves disagree about the “right” moral theory. There are several competing ethical theories (utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics and more). What moral template should programmers use when getting computers to solve moral problems and dilemmas that arise in different activities? (Consider self-driving cars in difficult traffic situations.)

The first pitfall can be addressed with more knowledge of ethics. How do we handle the second challenge? Should we allow programmers to choose moral theory as it suits them? Should we allow both utilitarian and deontological robot cars on our streets?

John-Stewart Gordon’s suggestion is that so-called machine ethics should focus on the similarities between different moral theories regarding what one should not do. Robots should be provided with a binding list of things that must be avoided as immoral. With this restriction, the robots then have leeway to use and balance the plurality of moral theories to solve moral problems in a variety of ways.

In conclusion, researchers and engineers in robotics and AI should consult the ethics experts so that they can avoid the rookie mistakes and understand the methodological problems that arise when not even the experts in the field can agree about the right moral theory.

All this seems both wise and clarifying in many ways. At the same time, I feel genuinely confused about the very idea of ”moral machines” (although the article is not intended to discuss the idea, but focuses on ethical challenges for engineers). What does the idea mean? Not that I doubt that we can design artificial intelligence according to ethical requirements. We may not want robot cars to avoid collisions in city traffic by turning onto sidewalks where many people walk. In that sense, there may be ethical software, much like there are ethical funds. We could talk about moral and immoral robot cars as straightforwardly as we talk about ethical and unethical funds.

Still, as I mentioned, I feel uncertain. Why? I started by writing about “so-called” moral robots. I did so because I am not comfortable talking about moral machines, although I am open to suggestions about what it could mean. I think that what confuses me is that moral machines are largely mentioned without qualifying expressions, as if everyone ought to know what it should mean. Ethical experts disagree on the “right” moral theory. However, they seem to agree that moral theory determines what a moral decision is; much like grammar determines what a grammatical sentence is. With that faith in moral theory, one need not contemplate what a moral machine might be. It is simply a machine that makes decisions according to accepted moral theory. However, do machines make decisions in the same sense as humans do?

Maybe it is about emphasis. We talk about ethical funds without feeling dizzy because a stock fund is said to be ethical (“Can they be humorous too?”). There is no mythological emphasis in the talk of ethical funds. In the same way, we can talk about ethical robot cars without feeling dizzy as if we faced something supernatural. However, in the philosophical discussion of machine ethics, moral machines are sometimes mentioned in a mythological way, it seems to me. As if a centaur, a machine-human, will soon see the light of day. At the same time, we are not supposed to feel dizzy concerning these brave new centaurs, since the experts can spell out exactly what they are talking about. Having all the accepted templates in their hands, they do not need any qualifying expressions!

I suspect that also ethical expertise can be a philosophical pitfall when we intellectually approach so-called moral machines. The expert attitude can silence the confusing questions that we all need time to contemplate when honest doubts rebel against the claim to know.

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Gordon, J. Building Moral Robots: Ethical Pitfalls and Challenges. Sci Eng Ethics 26, 141–157 (2020).

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Herb Terrace about the chimpanzee Nim – do you see the contradiction?

23 March, 2020 / Pär Segerdahl / 1 Comment

Have you seen small children make repeated attempts to squeeze a square object through a round hole (plastic toy for the little ones)? You get puzzled: Do they not see that it is impossible? The object and the hole have different shapes!

Sometimes adults are just as puzzling. Our intellect does not always fit reality. Yet, we force our thoughts onto reality, even when they have different shapes. Maybe we are extra stubborn precisely when it is not possible. This post is about such a case.

Herb Terrace is known as the psychologist who proved that apes cannot learn language. He himself tried to teach sign language to the chimpanzee Nim, but failed according to his own judgement. When Terrace took a closer look at the videotapes, where Nim interacted with his human sign-language teachers, he saw how Nim merely imitated the teachers’ signs, to get his reward.

I recently read a blog post by Terrace where he not only repeats the claim that his research demonstrates that apes cannot learn language. The strange thing is that he also criticizes his own research severely. He writes that he used the wrong method with Nim, namely, that of giving him rewards when the teacher judged that he made the right signs. The reasoning becomes even more puzzling when Terrace writes that not even a human child could learn language with such a method.

To me, this is as puzzling as a child’s insistence on squeezing a square object through a round hole. If Terrace used the wrong method, which would not work even on a human child, then how can he conclude that Project Nim demonstrates that apes cannot learn language? Nevertheless, he insists on reasoning that way, without feeling that he contradicts himself. Nor does anyone who read him seem to experience any contradiction. Why?

Perhaps because most of us think that humans cannot teach animals anything at all, unless we train them with rewards. Therefore, since Nim did not learn language with this training method, apes cannot learn language. Better methods do not work on animals, we think. If Terrace failed, then everyone must fail, we think.

However, one researcher actually did try a better method in ape language research. She used an approach to young apes that works with human children. She stopped training the apes via a system of rewards. She lived with the apes, as a parent with her children. And it succeeded!

Terrace almost never mentions the name of the successful ape language researcher. After all, she used a method that is impossible with animals: she did not train them. Therefore, she cannot have succeeded, we think.

I can tell you that the name of the successful researcher is Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. To see a round reality beyond a square thinking, we need to rethink our thought pattern. If you want to read a book that tries to do such rethinking about apes, humans and language, I recommend a philosophical self-critique that I wrote with Savage-Rumbaugh and her colleague William Fields.

To philosophize is to learn to stop imposing our insane thoughts on reality. Then we finally see reality as it is.

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Segerdahl, P., Fields, W. & Savage-Rumbaugh, S. 2005. Kanzi’s Primal Language. The Cultural Initiation of Primates into Language. Palgrave Macmillan.

Understanding enculturated apes

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What shall we eat? An ethical framework for food choices (By Anna T. Höglund)

16 March, 2020 / Pär Segerdahl / 1 Comment

To reflect ethically on what we eat has been part of Western culture for centuries. In pre-modern times, the focus was mainly on the consumption of food, although it varied whether the emphasis was on the amount of food one should eat (as in ancient Greece) or on what kind of food one was allowed to eat (as in the Old Testament).

Modern food ethics has instead focused on the production of food, emphasizing aspects of animal ethics and environmental ethics. In a new article, I take a broader perspective and discuss both the production and consumption of food and further incorporate the meal as an important part of my food ethics analysis.

I identify four affected parties in relation to the production and consumption of food, namely, animals, nature, producers and consumers. What ethical values can be at stake for these parties?

For animals, an important value is welfare; not being exposed to pain or stress, but provided opportunities for natural behavior. For nature, important values are low negative impact on the environment and sustainable climate. For producers, ethical values at stake concern fair salaries and safe working conditions. For consumers, finally, important values are access to healthy food and the right to autonomous food choices. Apart from that, food can also be seen as an important value in pursuit of a good life.

Evidently, several ethical values are at stake when it comes to the production and consumption of food. Furthermore, these values often conflict when food choices are to be made. In such situations, a thorough weighing of values must be performed in order to find out which value should be given priority over another.

A problem with today’s food debate is that we tend to concentrate on one value at a time, without putting it in the perspective of other aspects. The question of how our food choices affect the climate has gained a lot of interest, at the expense of almost all other aspects of food ethics.

Many have learned that beef production can affect the climate negatively, since grazing cattle give rise to high levels of methane. They therefore choose to avoid that kind of meat. On the other hand, grazing animals can contribute to biodiversity as they keep the landscape open, which is good for the environment. Breeding chickens produces low levels of methane, but here the challenges concern animal welfare, natural behavior and the use of chemicals in the production of bird feed.

To replace meat with vegetables can be good for your health, but imported fruits and vegetables can be produced using toxins if they are not organically farmed. Long transports can also affect the climate negatively.

For these reasons, it can be ethically problematic to choose food based on only one perspective. Ethics is not that simple. We need to develop our ability to identify what values are at stake when it comes to food, and find good reasons for why we choose one sort of food instead of another. In the article, I develop a more comprehensive food ethical outlook by combining four well-known ethical concepts, namely, duties, consequences, virtues and care.

Duties and consequences are often part of ethical arguments. However, by including also virtues and care in my reasoning, the meal and the sense of community it gives rise to appear as important ethical values. Unfortunately, the latter values are at risk today when more and more people have their own individualized food preferences. During a meal, relations are developed, which the ethics of care emphasizes, but the meal is also an arena for developing virtues, such as solidarity, communication and respect.

It is hard to be an ethically aware consumer today, partly because there are so many aspects to take into account and partly because it is difficult to get reliable and trustworthy information upon which we can base our decisions. However, that does not mean that it is pointless to reflect on what is good and right when it comes to food ethical dilemmas.

If we think through our food choices thoroughly and avoid wasting food, we can do a lot to reach well-grounded food choices. Apart from that, we also need brave political decisions that can reduce factory farming, toxins, transports and emissions, and support small-scale and organic food production. Through such efforts, we might all feel a little more secure in the grocery shop, when we reflect on the question: What shall we eat?

Written by…

Anna T. Höglund, who is Associate Professor of Ethics at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and recently wrote a book on food ethics.

Höglund, Anna T. (2020) What shall we eat? An ethical framework for well-grounded food choices. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. DOI: 10.1007/s10806-020-09821-4

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Artificial intelligence and living consciousness

2 March, 2020 / Pär Segerdahl / 1 Comment

The Ethics Blog will publish several posts on artificial intelligence in the future. Today, I just want to make a little observation of something remarkable.

The last century was marked by fear of human consciousness. Our mind seemed as mystic as the soul, as superfluous in a scientific age as God. In psychology, behaviorism flourished, which defined psychological words in terms of bodily behavior that could be studied scientifically in the laboratory. Our living consciousness was treated as a relic from bygone superstitious ages.

What is so remarkable about artificial intelligence? Suddenly, one seems to idolize consciousness. One wallows in previously sinful psychological words, at least when one talks about what computers and robots can do. These machines can see and hear; they can think and speak. They can even learn by themselves.

Does this mean that the fear of consciousness has ceased? Hardly, because when artificial intelligence employs psychological words such as seeing and hearing, thinking and understanding, the words cease to be psychological. The idea of computer “learning,” for example, is a technical term that computer experts define in their laboratories.

When artificial intelligence embellishes machines with psychological words, then, one repeats how behaviorism defined mind in terms of something else. Psychological words take on new machine meanings that overshadow the meanings the words have among living human beings.

Remember this next time you wonder if robots might become conscious. The development exhibits fear of consciousness. Therefore, what you are wondering is not if robots can become conscious. You wonder if your own consciousness can be superstition. Remarkable, right?

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

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Exactly when does a human being actually come into existence?

18 February, 2020 / Pär Segerdahl / 3 Comments

The one who prepares the food may announce, “The food is ready now!” when the food is ready. However, when exactly is the food actually ready? When the kitchen timer rings? The potatoes are cooked then. Or when the saucepan is removed from the stove? The cooking ends then. Or when the saucepan is emptied of water? The potatoes are separated from the cooking medium then. Or when the potatoes are carried to the table? The food will be available to the guests around the table then. However, is the food actually available for eating before it is on the plate? Should not each guest say, “The food is ready now,” when the food is on the plate? However, if the food is too hot, is it actually ready? Should not someone around the table say when you no longer burn your tongue, “The food is ready now”?

Yes, exactly when is the food actually ready? You probably notice that the question is treacherous. The very asking, “exactly when, actually?” systematically makes every answer wrong, or not exactly right. The question is based on rejecting the answer. It is based on suggesting another, smarter way to answer. Which is not accepted because an even smarter way to answer is suggested. And so on. Questions that systematically reject the answer are not any questions. They can appear to be profound because no ordinary human answer is accepted. They can appear to be at a high intellectual level, because the questioner seems to demand nothing less than the exact and actual truth. Such extremely curious questions are usually called metaphysical.

However, we hardly experience the question about exactly when the food actually is ready as important and deep. We see the trick. The question is like a stubborn teenager who just discovered how to quibble. However, sometimes these verbally treacherous questions can appear on the agenda and be perceived as important to answer. In bioethics, the question about the beginning of a human being has become such a question. Exactly when does a human being actually come into existence?

Why is this question asked in bioethics? The reason is, of course, that there are ethical and legal limits to what medical researchers are permitted to do with human beings. The question of what counts as a human being then acquires significance. When does a fertilized egg become a human? Immediately? After a number of days? The question will determine what researchers are permitted to do with human embryos. Can they harvest stem cells from embryos and destroy them? There is disagreement about this.

When people disagree, they want to convince each other by debating. The issue of the beginning of a human being has been debated for decades. The problem is that the question is just as treacherous as the question about exactly when the food actually is ready. In addition, the apparent depth and inquisitiveness of the question serves as intellectual allurement. We seem to be able to determine exactly who is actually right. The Holy Grail of all debates!

The crucial moment never comes. The Holy Grail is constantly proving to be an illusion, since the question systematically rejects every answer by proposing an even smarter answer, just like the question about food. The question of the beginning of a human being has now reached such levels of cleverness that it cannot be rendered in ordinary human words. Philosophers earn their living as intellectual advocates who give debating clients strategic advice on metaphysical loopholes that will allow them to avoid the opponent’s latest clever argument. Listen to such metaphysical advice to debaters who want to argue that a human being comes into existence exactly at conception and not a day later:

”Given the twinning argument, the conceptionist then faces a choice between perdurantist conceptionism and exdurantist conceptionism, and we argue that, apart from commitments beyond the metaphysics of embryology, they should prefer the latter over the former.”

Do you feel like reading more? If so, read the article and judge for yourself the depth and seriousness of the question. Personally, I wish for more mature ways to deal with bioethical conflicts than through metaphysical advice to stubborn debaters.

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Efird, D, Holland, S. Stages of life: A new metaphysics of conceptionism. Bioethics. 2019; 33: 529– 535. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12556

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Neuroethics as foundational

28 January, 2020 / Pär Segerdahl / 1 Comment

As neuroscience expands, the need for ethical reflection also expands. A new field has emerged, neuroethics, which celebrated its 15^th anniversary last year. This was noted in the journal AJOB Neuroscience through an article about the area’s current and future challenges.

In one of the published comments, three researchers from the Human Brain Project and CRB emphasize the importance of basic conceptual analysis in neuroethics. The new field of neuroethics is more than just a kind of ethical mediator between neuroscience and society. Neuroethics can and should contribute to the conceptual self-understanding of neuroscience, according to Arleen Salles, Kathinka Evers and Michele Farisco. Without such self-understanding, the ethical challenges become unclear, sometimes even imaginary.

Foundational conceptual analysis can sound stiff. However, if I understand the authors, it is just the opposite. Conceptual analysis is needed to make concepts agile, when habitual thinking made them stiff. One example is the habitual thinking that facts about the brain can be connected with moral concepts, so that, for example, brain research can explain to us what it “really” means to be morally responsible for our actions. Such habitual thinking about the role of the brain in human life may suggest purely imaginary ethical concerns about the expansion of neuroscience.

Another example the authors give is the external perspective on consciousness in neuroscience. Neuroscience does not approach consciousness from a first-person perspective, but from a third-person perspective. Neuroscience may need to be reminded of this and similar conceptual limitations, to better understand the models that one develops of the brain and human consciousness, and the conclusions that can be drawn from the models.

Conceptual neuroethics is needed to free concepts from intellectual deadlocks arising with the expansion of neuroscience. Thus, neuroethics can contribute to deepening the self-understanding of neuroscience as a science with both theoretical and practical dimensions. At least that is how I understand the spirit of the authors’ comment in AJOB Neuroscience.

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Emerging Issues Task Force, International Neuroethics Society (2019) Neuroethics at 15: The Current and Future Environment for Neuroethics, AJOB Neuroscience, 10:3, 104-110, DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2019.1632958

Arleen Salles, Kathinka Evers & Michele Farisco (2019) The Need for a Conceptual Expansion of Neuroethics, AJOB Neuroscience, 10:3, 126-128, DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2019.1632972

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Christmas blog post about contemplation and wide horizons

19 December, 2019 / Pär Segerdahl / 1 Comment

What does it mean to be contemplative? In a conversation, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein addresses the issue through a contrast: professional racing motorists. A successful racing driver has one goal in mind: to break the speed record. It is not wrong to have such a well-specified goal. It is required if you want to be a professional racing motorist. However, the attitude encapsulates the mind. Any questions that do not take you closer to the goal become irrelevant. Imagine the driver discussing improvements to the carburetor with the mechanics. How would the atmosphere in the garage change if an inquisitive Socrates suddenly appeared and quietly wondered about the meaning of the sport? Endless questions without the slightest relevance to the adjustments of the carburetor! A racing motorist who wants to be the world champion cannot stop and contemplate different possibilities for human sports competition. Above all, not the possibility of a world where no one tries to break speed records. Who is this crazy fellow? Socrates must leave the garage.

As I said, there is nothing wrong with the racing motorist’s attitude; it is natural and often unavoidable. It has the dynamics of joy (and that of frustration). However, when it becomes too dominant, it restricts something else: the openness to the unknown, the sense of the unexpected. Big questions without given answers are seen as obscure, irrelevant and perhaps even dangerous, as they lack competitive edge and reduce the speed. The carburetor adjustments must be prioritized. Life as a competition must never vanish from sight. It could jeopardize the team spirit and the competitive advantages. If we discussed too many big and thought-provoking issues together as a society, it could even seduce the youth. The new generation loses the momentum that society needs. Young individuals are distracted from identifying with the specific goals that successful careers require. Socrates must leave society.

To think freely, is it nothing but useless folly? Small and large, useful and useless, are two themes that run through one of the great books of Chinese philosophy, Chuang Tzu. The book begins with a story about a huge fish, which soon turns into a huge bird, both so incredibly big that one would like to say that they exceed all dimensions. The huge bird is contrasted with two smaller creatures, a cicada and a dove, who simply cannot understand the big one. The bird almost merges with heaven itself. Can it even be called a bird, when it never flies from bush to bush? The small creatures cannot grasp the great bird. It lacks boundaries, like Socrates’ endless questioning. A related theme in Chuang Tzu is the usefulness of the useless. The book contains several stories of knotty and smelly trees, which, because of their uselessness for human purposes, are left free to grow big. “Everyone knows the usefulness of the useful,” writes Chuang Tzu, “but no one knows the usefulness of the useless.” Who reads Chuang Tzu in today’s China?

Perhaps we can say that Chuang Tzu develops contemplation and self-examination so far, that the self loses its boundaries and becomes one with heaven, just like the big bird. The wisdom that we can hear in Chuang Tzu is open to the infinite. Its boundlessness cannot be defined by teachings, doctrines or theories. It cannot be encapsulated in a philosophy or a religion. “To use what has a boundary to pursue what is limitless is dangerous,” warns Chuang Tzu. Dogmatism is as ancient as the wisdom that opens us to the unknown. In short, the boundless surpasses any doctrine about “the boundless.” If we dare to live with such wide horizons, we may understand voices like this one, “Plunge into the unknown and the endless and find your place there!” Totally useless words, which therefore can be useful in times that only understand the usefulness of the useful.

When philosophies and religions are defined so narrowly that they virtually function as cultural norms or party programs, they inhibit the freedom that was the point of the infinite, which we sought in its uselessness. When the search instead questions everything that restricts the mind, the contemplative endeavor can free the self from its encapsulation: the inner condition of lack of freedom.

Could this enable a humanity where people do not assert their personal interests against others? Without boundaries around the self, there is no one else to outcompete. Is there even an exploitable environment to pollute? We would let the world (and each other) be. However, such unequalled harmony cannot be defined as a goal without once again limiting freedom and making us encapsulated beings such as the cicada and the dove. “The understanding of the small cannot be compared to the understanding of the great.”

Is this happy news or is it just useless folly?

Pär Segerdahl

The Book of Chuang Tzu. (Translated by Martin Palmer.) Penguin Books, 1996

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, Gabriel Citron, (ed.). 2015. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Conversations with Rush Rhees (1939–50): From the Notes of Rush Rhees. Mind 124: 1–71.

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Communicating thought provoking research in our common language

11 December, 2019 / Pär Segerdahl / 1 Comment

After having been the editor of the Ethics Blog for eight years, I would like to describe the research communication that usually occurs on this blog.

The Ethics Blog wants to avoid the popular scientific style that sometimes occurs in the media, which reports research results on the form, “We have traditionally believed that…, but a recent scientific study shows that…” This is partly because the Ethics Blog is run by a research center in ethics, CRB. Although ethics may involve empirical studies (for example, interviews and surveys), it is not least a matter of thinking. If you, as an ethicist, want to develop new recommendations on informed consent, you must think clearly and thoroughly. However, no matter how rigorously you think, you can never say, “We have traditionally believed that it is ethically important to inform patients about…, but recent philosophical thoughts show that we should avoid doing that.”

Thinking does not provide the authority that empirical research gives. As an ethicist or a philosopher, I cannot report my conclusions as if they were research results. Nor can I invoke “recent thoughts” as evidence. Thoughts give no evidence. Ethicists therefore present their entire thinking on different issues to the critical gaze of readers. They present their conclusions as open suggestions to the reader: “Here is how I honestly think about this issue, can you see it that way too?”

The Ethics Blog therefore avoids merely disseminating research results. Of course, it informs about new findings, but it emphasizes their thought provoking aspects. It chooses to reflect on what is worth thinking about in the research. This allows research communication to work more on equal terms with the reader, since the author and the reader meet in thinking about aspects that make both wonder. Moreover, since each post tries to stand on its own, without invoking intellectual authority (“the ethicists’ most recent thoughts show that…”), the reader can easily question the blogger’s attempts to think independently.

In short: By communicating research in a philosophical spirit, science can meet people on more equal terms than when they are informed about “recent scientific findings.” By focusing on the thought provoking aspects of the research, research communication can avoid a patronizing attitude to the reader. At least that is the ambition of the Ethics Blog.

Another aspect of the research communication at CRB, also beyond the Ethics Blog, is that we want to use our ordinary language as far as possible. Achieving a simple style of writing, however, is not easy! Why are we making this effort, which is almost doomed to fail when it comes to communicating academic research? Why do Anna Holm, Josepine Fernow and I try to communicate research without using strange words?

Of course, we have reflected on our use of language. Not only do we want to reach many different groups: the public, patients and their relatives, healthcare staff, policy makers, researchers, geneticists and more. We also want these groups to understand each other a little better. Our common language accommodates more human agreement than we usually believe.

Moreover, ethics research often highlights the difficulties that different groups have in understanding each other. It can be about patients’ difficulties in understanding genetic risk information, or about geneticists’ difficulties in understanding how patients think about genetic risk. It may be about cancer patients’ difficulties in understanding what it means to participate in clinical trials, or about cancer researchers’ difficulties in understanding how patients think.

If ethics identifies our human difficulties in understanding each other as important ethical problems, then research communication will have a particular responsibility for clarifying things. Otherwise, research communication risks creating more communication difficulties, in addition to those identified by ethics! Ethics itself would become a communication problem. We therefore want to write as clearly and simply as we can, to reach the groups that according to the ethicists often fail to reach each other.

We hope that our communication on thought provoking aspects of ethics research stimulates readers to think for themselves about ethical issues. Everyone can wonder. Non-understanding is actually a source of wisdom, if we dare to admit it.

Pär Segerdahl

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An extended concept of consciousness and an ethics of the whole brain

4 November, 2019 / Pär Segerdahl / 1 Comment

When we visit a newly operated patient, we probably wonder: Has she regained consciousness? The question is important to us. If the answer is yes then she is among us, we can socialize. If the answer is negative then she is absent, it is not possible to socialize. We can only wait and hope that she returns to us.

Michele Farisco at CRB proposes in a new dissertation a more extensive concept of consciousness. According to this concept, we are conscious without interruption, basically, as long as the brain lives. This sounds controversial. It appears insensitive to the enormous importance it has for us in everyday life whether someone is conscious or not.

Maybe I should explain right away that it is not about changing our usual ways of speaking of consciousness. Rather, Michele Farisco suggests a new neuroscientific concept of consciousness. Science sometimes needs to use familiar words in unfamiliar ways. For example, biology cannot speak of humans and animals as an opposition, as we usually do. For biology, the human is one of the animals. Just as biology extends the concept of an animal to us humans, Michele Farisco extends the concept of consciousness to the entire living brain.

Why can an extended concept of consciousness be reasonable in neuroscience? A simple answer is that the brain continues to be active, even when in the ordinary sense we lose consciousness and the ability to socialize. The brain continues to interact with the signals from the body and from the environment. Neural processes that keep us alive continue, albeit in modified forms. The seemingly lifeless body in the hospital bed is a poor picture of the unconscious brain. It may be very active. In fact, some types of brain processes are extra prominent at rest, when the brain does not respond to external stimuli.

Additional factors support an extended neuroscientific concept of consciousness. One is that even when we are conscious in the usual sense, many brain processes happen unconsciously. These processes often do the same work that conscious processes do, or support conscious processes, or are shaped by conscious processes. When we look neuroscientifically at the brain, our black and white opposition between conscious and unconscious becomes difficult to discern. It may be more reasonable to speak of continuities, of levels of the same consciousness, which always is inherent in the living brain.

In short, neuroscience may gain from not adopting our ordinary concept of consciousness, which makes such an opposition between conscious and unconscious. The difference that is absolute when we visit a newly operated patient – is she conscious or not? – is not as black and white when we study the brain.

Does Michele Farisco propose that neuroscience should make no difference whatsoever between what we commonly call conscious and unconscious, between being present and absent? No, of course not. Neuroscience must continue to explore that difference. However, we can understand the difference as a modification of the same basic consciousness, of the same basic brain activity. Neuroscience needs to study differences without falling victim to a black and white opposition. Much like biology needs to study differences between humans and other animals, even when it extends the concept of an animal to the human.

The point, then, is that neuroscience needs to be open to both difference and continuity. Michele Farisco proposes a neuroscientific distinction between aware and unaware consciousness. It captures both aspects, the difference and the continuity.

Michele Farisco’s extended concept of consciousness also has ethical consequences. It can motivate an ethics of the whole brain, not just of the conscious brain, in the usual sense. The question is no longer, merely, whether the patient is conscious or not. The question is at what level the patient is conscious. We may need to consider ethically even unconscious brains and brain processes, in the ordinary sense. For example, by talking calmly near the patient, even though she does not seem to hear, or by playing music that the patient usually appreciates.

Perhaps we should not settle for waiting and hoping that the patient will return to us. The brain is already here. At several levels, this brain may continue to socialize, even though the patient does not seem to respond.

If you want to know more about Michele Farisco’s extended concept of consciousness and his ethics of the whole brain, read the dissertation that he recently defended. You can also read about new technological opportunities to communicate with patients suffering from severe disorders of consciousness, and about new opportunities to diagnose such disorders.

Pär Segerdahl

Farisco, Michele. 2019. Brain, consciousness and disorders of consciousness at the intersection of neuroscience and philosophy. (Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1597.) Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

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Honest questions examining our intellectual sinfulness

21 October, 2019 / Pär Segerdahl / 6 Comments

Why should we hold our philosophical tradition in high esteem? Why should we admire Socrates and other great thinkers? Because they strengthened reason? Because they taught humanity to set emotions aside and instead purify facts and logic?

If that were true, we should admire the philosophers for armoring humanity. For turning us into clever neurotics without contact with our emotional life.

I believe the greatness of these philosophers is more simple, humble and human. They were embarrassingly aware of their own intellectual sinfulness. They had the courage to confess their sins and to examine them closely. They had the courage to know themselves.

That sincere humility, I believe, marks true thinkers from all parts of the world. Just as Socrates, in the middle of a discourse, could hear an inner voice stop him from speaking with intellectual authority on some topic, Lao Tzu saw it as a disease to speak as if we knew what we do not know.

These genuine thinkers hardly spoke with intellectual certainty. At least not in their most creative moments. They probably felt ashamed of the cocksure voice that marks many of our intellectual discussions about prestigious topics. They probably spoke tentatively and reasoned hesitantly.

We are all fallible. Philosophy is, at heart, intense awareness of this human fact. How does such awareness manifest in a thinker? Usually through questions that openly confess that, I know that I do not know. A philosophical inquiry is a long series of confessions. It is a series of sincere questions exposing a deep-rooted will to control intellectually the essence of various matters. The questions become clearer as we come to see more distinctly how this will to power operates in us. When we see how our desire to dictate intellectually what must be true, blinds us to what is true.

Do you and I, as academics, dare to admit our intellectual sinfulness? Do we dare to confess that we do not know? Do we have the courage to speak tentatively and to reason hesitantly?

I believe that we would do a great service to ourselves and to humanity if we more often dared to speak openly in such a voice. However, we are facing a difficulty of the will. For there is an expectation that researchers should master facts and logic. Surely, we are not paid to be ignorant and irrational. Therefore, must we not rather disseminate our knowledge and our expertise?

Of course! However, without awareness of our intellectual sinfulness, which could stop Socrates in the middle of a sentence, we run the risk of contributing to the disease that he treated in himself. We display not only what we happen to know, but also a shiny facade that gives the impression that we control the truth about important matters.

In short, we run the risk of behaving like intellectual Pharisees, exhibiting an always well-polished surface. Below that surface, we wither away, together with the society to which we want to contribute. We lose touch with what truly is alive in us. It succumbs under the pressure of our general doctrines about what must be true. Intellectualism is a devastating form of fact denialism. In its craving for generality, it denies what is closest to us.

Do not armor yourself with rationalism as if truth could be controlled. Instead, do what the greatest thinkers in the history of all of humanity did. Open yourself to what you do not know and explore it in earnest.

You are vaster than your imagined knowledge. Know yourself!

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Tag: philosophy (Page 8 of 20)

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