Life Swings, Life Sucks

1.
In Jennifer Doudna's and Samuel Sternberg's excellent book, "A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution," the authors discuss the development of gene editing and gene therapy--in which Doudna was very much involved as a prominent research scientist--and the awesome powers that are more and more available in the field of genetic manipulation. She supports "changes in which DNA is altered...to correct a harmful gene variant," and is against changes that will "provide some type of genetic advantage." That is, the elimination of scourges such as sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis is to be desired; the production of designer babies, however, is not. Genetic engineering is widely accepted in the United States and elsewhere. It is an amazing phenomenon. For instance, genetic material from a spider that gives the arachnid its ability to spin silk from spinnerets has been inserted into the genes of goats. The resultant silk protein is thereupon isolated from goat  milk, resulting in a substance that has commercial use. Fruit, vegetables and a wide array of living "subhuman" things are genetically modified today, and, apparently, cause no harm.

Genetic engineering doesn't stop there, of course. DNA manipulation, for instance, has resulted in pigs the size of lapdogs--ideal for pets? Desired results in animals and plants are one thing; what about "desired" results in humans?

The suffering caused by genetic diseases is, well, horrible. A prominent bioethisist, quoted in the book, said, "to intentionally refrain from engaging in life-saving research is to be morally responsible for the foreseeable, avoidable deaths of those who could have benefited from research in gene-editing is not an option, it is a moral necessity." And, as perhaps expected, the optimist thinker, Steven Pinker, advises those who would proceed cautiously, to "Get out of the way."

It is not that simple. The path to lapdog-size piglets can also lead to lapdog-size humans. The potential for the use of genetic editing to "improve" humanity is very real. Manipulation of genes that would increase longevity or improve intelligence is only a lab away.
Doudna is confident that humanity will straighten out and fly right--metaphorically, that is--but I'm not so sure.

Calvin, I think, was quite correct in stating that the human mind is a factory of idols. Perhaps only half right; angels are produced by the neuron assembly line as well. What is to stop a rogue state, however, from producing designer babies? If every North Korean, for instance, became an Einstein, where would that leave every European?

For me a general truth is that whenever something good comes along, someone will also occasionally put it to bad use. It's not human nature, perhaps, but it is indeed fallen human nature.
Increasing access to nuclear weapons--it seems naive to think that this was once t h e issue!

(Since I began this article, a NYT article confirmed that a young person had been cured of sickle cell anemia through genetic manipulation.)

2.
In a recent debate among Democratic candidates for the presidency, Sen. Elizabeth Warren challenged Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He recently had a nine-hundred-dollar per plate  fund raiser in a winery. "What kind of people go to such events," she complained. Apparently not those whose first priority is fighting for equality. Buttigieg countered that he was far less wealthy than any other Democratic candidate. More important, he argued that the purpose of Democrats should be to defeat Donald Trump, not to pass "tests of purity." The implication is: stay pure and lose. (Trump, in contrast, has raised to date over 300 million dollars for his reelection, far far more than any Democratic candidate.
--As the French say, l'argent fait tout, although it is my hope that in 2020 l'argent ne ferait pas que presque tout).

In this world, purity is for angels, who are, of course, fictional creatures. Just as a scientist shouldn't be overly confident that progress will always--or alas! even mostly--be put to use in ways that are consistent with justice, equality, and compassion; politicians need to fight for what's right, even if this sometimes includes "stretching the truth".

We can learn a lot from observing primate behavior. There is a school of thought that nature is savage; "scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed" may serve as a motto for this view. Civilization is at best a veneer under which nature, red in tooth and claw, is always ready to appear. Close observation of chimpanzees and bonobos, however, have disproved this theory: there is a lot of cooperation and even compassion among primates. An example of which is a bonobo that took a stunned bird to the top of a tree and released it, saving its life. But primate life, especially among chimpanzees, has its dark side as well. They apparently can be just as savage as humans.

I hold the great moral imperative, namely to love one's neighbor as oneself, to be of natural, that is, evolutionary, origin; this dictum, I believe, arose through cooperation necessary for group survival. It is a moral imperative, that is, a command, since the temptation to do one's neighbor in can be strong as well.

Would you like another example of how a good can be put to less than noble use? The internet. I am in my mid 70's and sometimes forget a name or place. I can google the missing word instantly. I am also using the internet to type this essay. There are so many good uses of the internet! I, like so many others, would find it difficult to live without it. On the negative side, however,  is political manipulation and the diminution of privacy. Not to forget that the most frequent use of the internet has to do with porn.

The ambiguity of life makes one a realist. Even an optimistic realist. Although when you scratch a altruist you will never find unadulterated purity, you will frequently find decency.Yes, scientific progress is great, Jennifer Doudna, but it is best to proceed not only confidently, but with caution. Yes, Senator Warren, striving for purity is also good, but, the world being what it is, one must gaze at the heavens while keeping one's feet on common ground.

Is There A Scientific Basis for an Adequate Theory of Morality? Part ll

The answer, as discussed in part l, which I posted on my blog on 2/25/2016, is a resounding no.  (Please refer to Part 1 for an in- depth discussion why this is not the case; I will provide only a brief summary here.) Research has determined, on the basis of functional MRIs,  (fMRIs,) that contemplation of a moral issue elicits a dual response in the brain.  The first, centered in the amygdala, is an immediate "gut" reaction, which is not to be trusted.  The second reaction, centered in the prefrontal cortex, involves abstract reasoning. and is considered to be a more reliable guide.  This, as we have asserted, is nonsense.  If one is convinced, for instance, that X is evil, one's abstract reasoning will readily find justification for this assertion, even though a thinker with a different belief system might be absolutely convinced that X is as innocent and intrinsically good as A.  What determines one's response is adherence to a particular belief system--an axiom such as a form of the Golden Rule-- which cannot be derived from science; it must be assumed.

Part 1 was written partially as a basic confirmation of Tasmin Shaw's article, The Psychologists Take Power, which appeared  in the February 25, 2016 edition of The New York Review of Books.   In that article, Shaw discussed five books by prominent psychologists, who at least seem to assert that experts know better.  They don't.  Shaw informs us that at least some  members of the American Psychological Association were rather easily seduced by the CIA  to assist in the torture of detainees in the wake of 9/11.  (Most of that assistance dealt with expert advice regarding how to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" effectively.  Only a few were involved in actually torturing detainees.  Money, of course, was involved, a lot of it.)  Supported by centuries of evidence, the assertion  that money and power often, quite often, corrupt experts and non-experts alike is undeniable.  If science, specifically, if psychological expertise, can't be relied on, what can?  We asserted in the first article that a form of the Golden Rule, specifically the "commandment" that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, can be relied on to judge the behavior of all human beings, whether they graduated from Harvard or not.  We will discuss why this is so in Part 111; in this article we will analyze the response of some of the authors Shaw criticized, which appeared, along with Shaw's comments, in the April 7, 2016 edition of The New York Review of Books, Moral Psychology: An Exchange.   

The authors of the response, Pinker and Haidt, are angry.  They state, "Shaw asserts that psychological and biological facts are 'morally irrelevant' and 'can tell us nothing' about moral propositions. She insinuates that psychologists lack 'a reliable moral compass' that would equip them to oppose torture."  They take this fact to be an attack against the discipline of psychology, and, especially, against adherents of Positive Psychology, developed by Martin Seligman, a system which has strongly influenced them. Feeling insulted and besmirched by Shaw's article, they respond with ad hominem insults of their own: "And she prosecutes her case by citation-free attribution, spurious dichotomies, and standards of guilt by association that make Joseph McCarthy look like Sherlock Holmes."

Ouch.

It turns out, however, that they are in basic agreement with Shaw's assertion, namely, that the discipline of psychology cannot be the source of morality. Consulting one of their colleagues, Peter Bloom, they quote him as follows: "'The fact that one cannot derive morality from psychological research is so screamingly obvious that I never thought to explicitly write it down.'"  Fair enough.  The authors, however, don't leave it at that.  They insist that, at the very least, psychological research can help invalidate a faulty moral assertion:  "Recent discoveries in moral psychology offer another point of contact.  Many ethical convictions are underpinned by strongly felt intuitions that some action is inherently good or bad. Sometimes those intuitions can be justified by philosophical reflection and analysis.  But sometimes they can be debunked and shown to be indefensible gut reactions, without moral warrant."  (That is, with help from fMRIs.) This is patently false.  Psychological research cannot determine whether a gut reaction is morally defensible or not; you need a moral philosophy to do that.  Sometimes, like the innate intuitive gut reaction against incest, the more reflexive moral response seems justified indeed.  One cannot imply, as the authors obviously do, that fMRIs can help determine the validity of a moral response.  As the authors have stated, it is "screamingly obvious" that psychology cannot produce a moral compass, and without one, morally speaking, humans don't know where they are and are thus unable to judge the validity of a specific fMRI response.

The authors, armed with the belief that psychological research can help determine whether a moral view is defensible or not, go even farther astray.  They provide historical examples of positions that psychology can help debunk by determining that they are "indefensible gut reactions."  These examples include "...outrage over heresy, blasphemy, and lèse-majesté, revulsion against homosexuality and racial mixing, callousness toward slaves and animals and indifference or hatred toward foreigners."

Are these merely gut reactions? Without a moral stance, none of these prejudices can be debunked. A simple thought experiment reveals the absurdity of the authors' claim.  If Dr. Pinker had been born in the nineteenth century, the analytical part of his brain would most likely be aglow with the production of many reasons why racial mixing is morally wrong.  If Dr. Haidt had been born in the eighteenth century, his prefrontal lobes would almost certainly have come to the conclusion that homosexuality is a crime against nature--perhaps even punishable by death.  (One can imagine, with horror, what the analytical part of their brains would have come up with if they had been alive when Leviticus was written, which among other things, prescribes the death penalty for violating Sabbath rules.)

The analytical part of the brain can be, as history has so readily proven, a "factory of idols," which Calvin correctly asserted while conveniently forgetting that his own brain was mass-producing them as well.

A good deal of the animus against Shaw contained in Haidt's and Pinker's response is the assumption that Shaw was singling out psychologists as being particularly prone to corruption.  It is indeed undeniable that some members of the A.P.A. were paid enormous sums by the CIA ($81,000,000.00 to be exact) to develop and participate in a program, informed by psychological research, of "enhanced interrogation techniques," the Bush regime's euphemism for torture.  Shaw makes a good case that Martin Seligman, a former president of the  A.P.A. whose system of Positive Psychology was widely influential, was not innocent regarding this collusion.  If some psychologists consider themselves moral experts and thus less easily corrupted by money and power, criticism, of course, is very much warranted.  Money and power, however, have a high potential to corrupt us all, rich and poor, the educated and the under-educated alike.  That it often takes a larger amount to bribe a professional than it takes to bribe a worker does not relativize the wrongdoings of either class.  Even those who are supposed to know better frequently don't.  Priests who are sexual predators; cardinals who protect them; members of the clergy who launder money for the Vatican-- these and others are notorious examples of those who preach the Golden Rule and flout it in practice.  It is safe to say that psychologists are no worse and no better than the rest of us.

If morality cannot be derived from science, are human beings, who need moral principles in order to live well, lost in the wilderness without a compass?  I think not.  Pinker and Haidt imply--falsely, I believe--that psychology is superior to philosophy since the former prefers reality over imagination.  Shaw correctly counters that "...imagination is the capacity that allows us to take responsibility, insofar as it is ever possible, for the ends for which our work will be used."  This is correct as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.  Shaw, as a scholar of Nietzschean philosophy, knows that human beings are free to devise moral principles to live by.  Nietzsche believed that the morality of Christianity was the morality of slaves; their 'superiors' could and should follow their will to power without being bound to a form of the Golden Rule.  This may be true, but the history of the last century readily illustrates where this truth can lead.

I assert that that some form of the Golden Rule must be assumed as an axiom--an axiom, of course, by definition cannot be proved. More than assumed, the validity of "Love Your Neighbor as Yourself" can be intuited.  Two roads lead to the highest morality, one paved with the silver of wisdom, the other paved the gold of love.  As Aristotle taught in his Nicomachean Ethics, all one needs to do is to follow the examples of those who are intuitively and widely acknowledged to moral leaders.  (Al-Ghazali, the great Sufi leader of eleventh century Baghdad, famously put this principle into action.)

No, one can't prove that, say, Leviticus 19, is the best moral guide.  Similarly, as deconstructionists would have it, one can't prove that Shakespeare is superior to Alice Walker or that Bach is superior to Burt Bacharach.  Intuition and experience, however, can convince us that some moral compasses are indeed better guides than others.

In the third part of this four-part series, I will examine why I believe Leviticus 19 to be not only the best moral guide we have, but, as we shall see, if practiced, it has psychological benefits as well.