Do Republicans have a point in questioning NSF guidelines?

by Massimo Pigliucci

You’ve probably heard of the uproar that has recently been caused by a bill introduced by Texas Representative Lamar Smith, the chair of the US House of Representatives’ Science Committee. Lawrence Krauss has commented on it on behalf of the Center for Inquiry, and so has the Chronicle of Higher Education, the American Physical Society, The Scientist magazine, and Science Insider, among others.

At issue is draft legislation that would require the director of the National Science Foundation to declare that each grant approved for funding is:

i) “... in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science;
ii) ... [of] the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large; and
iii) ... not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies."

Like almost every Republican move in a while (like, years, if not decades), it sounds superficially reasonable, until one digs just a little deeper to uncover the deeply ideological and highly disturbing motives behind the proposal. That Smith’s intentions are anything but benign was immediately betrayed by his request to Cora Marrett, the acting NSF director, asking for specific information about five particular grants awarded recently by the agency. According to Science Insider, Smith wanted comments of the copies of each reviewer, together with the notes of the NSF officers managing the process of peer review. Why? He said that “I have concerns regarding some grants approved by the Foundation and how closely they adhere to NSF’s ‘intellectual merit’ guideline ... the proposals about which I have requested further information do not seem to meet the high standards of most NSF funded projects.”

Needless to say, this is a highly unusual — perhaps unprecedented — move by a US Congressman, and one wonders exactly why Smith feels better qualified than the NSF officers and scientists who have actually reviewed the proposals in question (Science Insider does not identify the research topics with which the five grants are concerned, but one can make highly educated guesses...)? If you look up his bio, you will find that Smith graduated in 1965 from the the Episcopal School of Texas, in 1969 from Yale University, and in 1975 from Southern Methodist University’s Law School. That is, his technical background is as a lawyer, which makes him just as unqualified to be concerned about NSF’s standards of peer review as it makes me unqualified to represent anyone in a court of law.

It should therefore be clear that this is just another attempted Republican hatchet job to undermine the nation’s standards of reason and evidence in favor of their narrow minded ideological agendas. That said, let us take a closer look at the three points above, and see how unreasonable they are when considered on their own merits, as opposed to as thinly disguised trojan horses.

Quite frankly, all three standards seem pretty reasonable to me. The third one simply asks that NSF certifies that the money isn’t going to duplicate efforts. This is already standard NSF procedure, as Principal Investigators (i.e., the scientists submitting grant proposals) cannot submit the same proposal to different agencies except under very specific circumstances (e.g., if they are young investigators at their first attempt at funding), and even then they will have to withdraw their proposals from all agencies but one if they happen to be multiply funded. (A possibility that, given recent funding rates at federal agencies, especially NSF, has ridiculously low priors.)

The second one should be qualified because it contains the clause “of utmost importance to society at large.” As long as we agree that scientific knowledge is in itself important to society, we are good to go. After all, NSF’s very mission is not directed toward practical applications (for which we have NIH, the USDA, the DOE, etc.), but toward basic research. Still, not all basic research is actually worthwhile, or at the very least not worth the money, so setting standards is reasonable.

The first requirement, “to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science” also seems to withstand scrutiny as long as one changes the “and” to another “or” (otherwise one could read the sentence as saying that all research has to specifically aid national defense, which would definitely be too restrictive). Again, this assumes the idea that a nation’s health, prosperity etc. also depends on the accumulation of basic scientific knowledge, an assumption without which the very existence of NSF wouldn’t make any sense.

So why shouldn’t NSF support such standards, discounting the specific and pernicious intentions of Representative Smith? Indeed, NSF — to some extent — already does address these issues. The process of peer review that examines each grant proposal is, at its ideal, designed precisely to guarantee that the funded science is worthwhile by the highest intellectual standards of the relevant community (i.e., the community of scientists in a given discipline). And NSF has for years required Principal Investigators to write a “statement of broader impact” in which they explain why and how their proposed research will benefit society at large. What, then, is the big deal?

The thing is: a lot of funded basic scientific research doesn’t really have a social impact, broad or narrow. Which is why most grant proposals’ statements of such impact are boiler plate stuff copied and pasted from one grant to another (trust me, I’ve done it), and usually can be summarized into a few rather unconvincing points: (1) the grant will fund some student (undergrad, grad or both), who will learn “valuable skills” of a sort; (2) well, it is well known that basic research often leads to unexpected and unplanned important applications “down the line”; and (3) the one usually informally given by scientists when pressed to explain how, exactly, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of research time investigating the sexual habits of an obscure species of butterflies in the middle of Panama will help anything at all: “it’s intrinsically interesting, of course.”

Let’s start with (3) first: I’m not sure how to cash in on the concept of intrinsic intellectual interest, though I suspect there may be some more or less reasonable ways of doing so. But I can tell you that most of my colleagues (myself included, of course!) use that nice phrase as a synonym for whatever we happen to find interesting or challenging. There is, of course, nothing wrong in having idiosyncratic, even arbitrary, taste in intellectual matters — just like I cannot really fault you for preferring milk to dark chocolate, however strongly I feel you are actually wrong in your bizarre preference... But when one is asking a federal agency funded by taxpayers to shell out significant amounts of money one needs a bit more than just “I find it interesting” as a justification.

Which brings me to number (1) above: it is surely of some social value to train a few students in the ways of scientific research (though all too often for undergraduates this amounts to little more than pipette washing). But it also likely isn’t worth the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars (depending on the field) of your average NSF grant. Indeed, good small liberal arts colleges manage to give their students a nice taste of what it means to do research with comparatively small budgets, for the simple reason that learning how to do science doesn’t require being involved with cutting edge and/or expensive projects.

We are then left with (2): the contention that basic research is necessary because it leads eventually to applications of direct human interest. This is certainly true, as far as it goes, but you will notice that for a crowd that prides itself in abiding by the weight of evidence, most scientists are exceedingly recalcitrant to provide actual quantitative evidence of such connections. Yes, you do get a number of anecdotal stories, usually the same select few, recycled over and over. Or you get the argument that pretty much any complex example of applied science would simply not have been possible without some basic research preceding it.

While both the anecdotes and the generic basic applied argument are reasonable, they are a bit of a red herring, since they do not actually answer the fundamental question. The issue is not whether basic science can lead to human applications, but how often, and whether NSF’s funding strategy is the most efficient way to get us there. [1] As far as I know (and by all means, let’s crowdsource this), neither NSF as a federal agency, nor certainly individual Principal Investigators, have been making that argument in any detailed and verifiable way.

All of which does not, I hasten to say, justify the latest Republican assault on basic science. Nor does it mean that we shouldn’t have a National Science Foundation. But researchers themselves have for years called for a more rational approach to scientific funding and peer reviewing, which certainly has to include transparent ways of allocating money, and certainly more than just generic, boiler plate statements of “social impact.”

This is a complex conversation to have, and it is not one at which only scientists ought to be invited either. NSF, NIH, the USDA, the DOE etc. are all funded at taxpayers’ expense, and they are all under Congressional oversight — as they ought to be. It is therefore up to scientists to make a good case to the public, and yes to policy makers, that funding basic research is not a luxury, but rather a practical and cultural necessity for an open society. So far, they haven’t been doing a particularly good job, which I think only helps demagogues like Lamar Smith. We really ought to be able to do better than this.

———

[1] Interestingly, there is now a whole field of “translational research” that attempts to deal with this sort of question in a systematic way.

The Talking Cure: The Political Model and The Dialectical Model

by Steve Neumann

I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States. — Alexis de Tocqueville, On Democracy, 1835

When Alexis de Tocqueville surveyed the social and intellectual terroir of the fledgling United States of America in the early 1830s, he noticed that the independence of mind the Americans possessed led them to mistrust and even reject received opinions and philosophical systems. Though it could be argued that he had at least a bit of a favorable view of the Americans on that account (even while wondering aloud if it would ultimately lead to their demise), I think it’s clear that the American culture of today, nearly 200 years later, has obviously suffered from this lack of engagement with more rigorous philosophical thought. 

Nevertheless, three philosophers (all from the University of North Texas) recently argued in Inside Higher Ed that it may be time for the proceedings of the Ivory Tower to open itself up to official review and evaluation from the plebeian herd. It’s an interesting suggestion, one that would result in a sharp turn from the general trend of philosophical discourse and professionalization since the Renaissance, which was further solidified by the 19th Century German university system.

The authors’ argument rests mainly on the fact that the discipline of philosophy is “a highly technical, inward-looking field that values intellectual rigor over other values such as relevance or timeliness,” and on the emergence of a trend of criticism directed toward the standard peer review process and “academic accountability” anyway. They say that philosophers should take advantage of this trend by mentioning “a variety of ethical, epistemological, and political issues surrounding peer review worthy of philosophic reflection,” but insist that “the most pressing is the question of whether we should extend the notion of peer beyond disciplinary bounds.”

Though their essay is ultimately disappointing because they never really give a satisfactory reason as to why this is the most pressing question, I think a more interesting issue concerns the decentralization of philosophical inquiry and discourse itself. I’d like to offer some thoughts of my own, in regard to both professional philosophy and “lay philosophers” like me.

Getting back to de Tocqueville for a moment, he noticed that the social conditions of the Americans of his time didn’t allow for “speculative studies”; he observed that, since they enjoyed considerable success in navigating their practical lives, this led them to conclude that just about everything in life could be explained or grasped, and grasped by them. The necessary pragmatism of their day-to-day material and social existence showed that they didn’t need to “extract their philosophical method from books; they have found it in themselves.” They took from traditional (non-religious) sources of wisdom only what proved useful for pragmatic ends. And the fluidity with which individuals in an egalitarian, democratic society move about caused them sometimes to lose “the trace of the ideas of [their] forefathers” altogether.

What de Tocqueville is describing is nearly identical to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s observations in his essay “Self-Reliance,” which was published not long after de Tocqueville’s “On Democracy.”  Emerson and de Tocqueville were contemporaries (born in 1803 and 1805, respectively), and the similarities in thought come as no surprise. One wonders what de Tocqueville thought of someone like Emerson, a homegrown philosopher. To my knowledge de Tocqueville never mentioned Emerson in his writings, although he surely must have known of him.

It’s clear to me that in America today there is still a large (or at least vocal) contingent of these what you might call “self-reliant patriots.” I’m looking primarily at you, Tea Party; and, of course, other political Libertarians. I suppose that’s always been the case to some degree, but are these modern self-reliant patriots cut from the same cloth as those of Emerson’s and de Tocqueville’s time?

Without getting into a detailed analysis of early American social and political life, or creating a lengthy taxonomy of modern thinkers, I’d like to focus more on the average, workaday citizen earning a living, raising a family, doing her best to keep abreast of social and political trends and events via major media outlets (CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, and maybe even the New York Times and Washington Times; but not outlets like Mother Jones or The Weekly Standard). I want to focus on the people I imagine make up the majority of the electorate, whatever their political allegiance.

It seems (and this is based partly on personal experience, partly on news reports and polls from all over the political spectrum) that these people form their opinions about religion, culture, science, etc., largely from a combination of their reading of the major media and the ensuing discussions they have (if they have them at all) with members of their social circle. They may occasionally come across articles and essays from Malcolm Gladwell or David Brooks, but I doubt they’re reading books by academic philosophers or philosophically-literate scientists. 

This is what I encounter most in my life: I work and live primarily among college-educated, middle-class people who strive for the ever-elusive work/life balance. Between earning a living, raising a family, and making time for hobbies, there never seems to be time or energy left over to devote to traditional intellectual pursuits. Indeed, when I go on at length about moral philosophy or the philosophy of space-time, they’re more likely to tell me that life is simply too short to waste on pondering such things. 

I can hardly blame them. I don’t have a spouse or children (with the exception of my beautiful eight year-old German Shepherd Dog), so I’m free to devote most of my leisure time to intellectual pursuits. This means dividing my time between the vagaries of my day-to-day existence and the pleasures of “intellectual adventuring.” Clearly others feel they derive enough philosophical guidance from their religion or other “pop philosophies” that are easily accessible (and digestible) from the likes of Oprah or Dr. Oz. I don’t intend the term “pop philosophies” in a necessarily pejorative sense because, as I noted in the previous paragraph, the predicament most middle-class people find themselves in lends itself quite naturally to the simplicity and purported practicality of these philosophies, and they may be efficacious, to a point.

So to recap: I imagine the “average citizen” to be college-educated, busy as hell with work and family and hobbies, absorbing — sometimes inadvertently, sometimes intentionally — “philosophical” insight from major media outlets in tv show, blog post, or essay form. I don’t see them seeking out and reading book-length theses by academic philosophers. Additionally, I imagine that the information they are processing is either accepted outright (due to confirmation bias — yes, we all have it), or is put through a very brief dialectical analysis that doesn’t go beyond one or two objections at most. Again, this is a natural outcome of the time/energy problem involved in engaging in intellectual activity once one has satisfied the foundational needs represented by something akin to Maslow’s hierarchy.

Allow me to coin two terms, the Dialectical Model (DM) and the Political Model (PM), to designate two approaches to philosophy vis-à-vis the decentralization of philosophical inquiry and discourse. I’d like to designate the DM as what might be called the traditional notion of academic philosophy: the systematic search for the truth of matters discussed amongst and between professional philosophers. The PM, on the other hand, represents what the authors of the Insider Higher Ed article consider to be sophistry. I call it the “Political” model because this is what I believe occurs in American political (and cultural) discourse; that is, the generally specious, casuistic, partisan rhetoric employed by politicians, bloggers, and talking head ideologues on both ends of the political spectrum.

It seems to me that the PM is the option of choice whether one is conservative or liberal, religious or atheist — whether you’re Rick Santorum or Sam Harris. Individuals like Santorum and Harris are much more involved in the culture wars because they’re public intellectuals (before you slam down the lid of your laptop in disgust, I’m using that term descriptively, because they are in the public eye influencing the culture) and because they tend to say things that turn them into lightning rods for ideological derision. The sort of things they say is in turn what gets discussed among average citizens making up the electorate.

It is likely that our early American citizens of de Tocqueville’s time were just as impassioned, if not more so, by their social and political beliefs. de Tocqueville already called our attention to a fact that has become painfully contentious in the culture wars of our time, namely, the role of religion in public life: “It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society.” However, he went on to observe that “religious institutions have remained wholly distinct from political institutions, so that former laws have been easily changed whilst former belief has remained unshaken.” This clearly isn’t the case for us modern Americans. Whatever the actual influence of Christianity on our political system, religion and politics in America are now two sides of the same societal coin. Just think of “In God We Trust” on actual coins.

Now, despite the protracted extinction burst of the highly-visible Religious Right, there are signs that Americans are becoming less rigid in their religious beliefs, or at least less likely to allow those beliefs to inform their political positions. This is a welcome development, but as Nietzsche warned, God’s shadow is still intolerably long. I think it’s clear that there is a stark and important difference between the early Americans, whatever the strength of their religious beliefs, and the self-reliant patriots of today. It seems to me that the PM of today is much different from the PM of America’s early years, which is why it is detrimental to our political lives to maintain our version of the PM. From this perspective, the three University of North Texas philosophers’ suggestion that academic philosophy open itself up to non-academic evaluation and judgment seems ill-advised.

Regardless, what they suggest may already be taking place, albeit unofficially. For instance, they mention utilizing “the number of publications in popular magazines or newspaper articles; number of hits on philosophic blogs; number of quotes in the media; or the number of grants awarded by public agencies to conduct dedisciplined philosophic work” as potential evaluative criteria. While it is still the case that professional philosophers’ primary outlets for their work are academic journals, the de-centralization the authors in question seem to endorse is already happening through blogs like our own Rationally Speaking, FreethoughtBlogs and Patheos, where young DM philosophers like Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers churn out prodigious amounts of philosophical discussion outside the Ivory Tower.

Maybe a hybrid of the Dialectical Model and the Political Model has already emerged, quite organically, and what the academy has to do is to co-opt it. Being a non-academic myself, I really can’t say how the academy would incorporate such developments into their evaluative process. But one suggestion I would like to see come to fruition, and one I believe would help rehabilitate the Political Model, is for our public education system to “teach the controversy,” so to speak: that is, have our secondary education system incorporate classes that discuss the history of religion and philosophy, including the salient aspects of each major religion (Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Abrahamic Trinity) and philosophical school (e.g., Analytic, Continental, etc.), and perhaps most importantly an introduction to basic philosophical concepts. I don’t see this happening any time soon, but there is no harm in having a wish list.

Rationally Speaking podcast: Chris Mooney on the Republican brain

Can science denialism be blamed on a "Republican brain"? In other words: is there something about the psychology of Republicans that makes them inclined to reject the scientific consensus on topics like evolution and climate change?

Special guest Chris Mooney argues there is, elaborating on the thesis in his popular book, "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality." Massimo and Julia debate whether the evidence support Chris's thesis.

Chris's pick: "How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes."

Arguing pluralism instead of Church-State

www.globalpost.com

by Michael De Dora

When Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan were asked about how their religious beliefs influence their views on abortion during last week’s debate, Americans were given more than just the chance to hear two vice presidential candidates discuss their faith and how it relates to a controversial political issue. They were given the chance to observe the candidates address a much broader subject: the relationship between religion and politics.

As could be expected, the two candidates outlined two very different approaches to this relationship. In order to discuss the broader points, let’s first take a look at what Biden and Ryan said.

Ryan’s answer:

I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, of how to make sure that people have a chance in life.

Now, you want to ask basically why I’m pro-life? It’s not simply because of my Catholic faith. That’s a factor, of course. But it’s also because of reason and science.

You know, I think about 10 1/2 years ago, my wife Janna and I went to Mercy Hospital in Janesville where I was born, for our seven-week ultrasound for our firstborn child, and we saw that heartbeat. A little baby was in the shape of a bean. And to this day, we have nicknamed our firstborn child Liza, “Bean.” Now I believe that life begins at conception.

That’s why — those are the reasons why I’m pro-life. Now I understand this is a difficult issue, and I respect people who don’t agree with me on this, but the policy of a Romney administration will be to oppose abortions with the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

Biden’s answer:

... with regard to abortion, I accept my church’s position on abortion as a — what we call a de fide doctrine. Life begins at conception in the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life.

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the — the congressman. I — I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that — women they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor. In my view and the Supreme Court, I’m not going to interfere with that.

Ryan's response:

All I’m saying is, if you believe that life begins at conception, that, therefore, doesn’t change the definition of life. That’s a principle. The policy of a Romney administration is to oppose abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

(You can find a full transcript here).

According to Ryan, there is no way (or no reason to try) to separate one’s beliefs regarding the veracity of religious claims from one’s approach to specific policies. For example, if you believe an embryo is a person made in the image of God, and deserving of certain rights, that will undoubtedly influence your approach to abortion. But, according to Biden, there is a way to separate these two. In his view, an elected official must realize that not everyone he or she represents practices his or her religion, and therefore should not have to live according to its dogmas. I think they each make an important point. Allow me to explain.

Ryan’s point cannot be easily dismissed. When Ryan says that he does not see “how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith,” he is stating what counts as a fact for many people. Ryan — like many devoutly religious people — honestly and ardently believes that embryos are people, and that abortion is murder. Though I consider that position incoherent and unsupportable, it is difficult, if not impossible, for a person to believe that, yet sit idly by while thousands of abortions are happening every year. That is simply how belief works: once you accept some proposition as true, you are bound to act on it.

As for Biden, I have a hard time believing that he truly agrees with the Catholic Church on abortion, at least as fervently as Ryan. But that’s not necessarily what matters here. Biden has a compelling point in regard to making laws in a pluralistic society. While he readily admits that he has religious beliefs, he also realizes that public policy influences the lives of millions of different Americans. As such, he thinks public policy should not be based on his (or anyone’s) religious beliefs, which require a personal leap of faith, but on reasons that are accessible by all Americans.

You’ve probably noticed that Biden’s position does not employ the separation of church and state argument; he uses the pluralistic society argument. I suspect some secularists found Biden’s answer incomplete, but I think the pluralistic society argument could actually be more effective at convincing religious believers to adopt secular policies than a purely church-state argument (though I would note that pluralism is indirectly an argument in favor of church-state separation).

To be clear, I interpret the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as mandating government neutrality on religion. Government should not favor religion over non-religion, non-religion over religion, or one religion over another. But there is nothing in the Constitution that states that religious lawmakers are required to leave their consciences at home when they arrive at their respective statehouses. In my view, secularists should realize this, and consider directly rebutting arguments for religiously based laws when they come to the surface, instead of asking politicians to dismiss them as personal or as outright absurd (even if they are). These beliefs are clearly influencing our political system, and should be exposed to critical reasoning.

While we cannot control the reasons people give for their beliefs, we can work to prevent religious-based reasons from entering the debate in the first place, steering political discourse towards secular reasoning. How? I think Biden’s pluralistic society argument is instructive here.

As it happens, this argument has been detailed before by a familiar figure: President Barack Obama. As Obama writes in The Audacity of Hope, “What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.” [1] An example he uses is (oddly enough!) abortion:

If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or invoke God’s will and expect that argument to carry the day. If I want others to listen to me, then I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

People cannot hear the divine voice others claim to hear, nor can they rely on others’ assertions that they have heard God’s voice. Furthermore, most people do not believe in the same holy book. In fact, even adherents to the same religious traditions often disagree over central tenets. And, of course, many people (reasonably, I might add) deny that the supernatural realm exists to begin with.

What does the pluralistic society argument mean for religious lawmakers? It doesn’t mean that they cannot hold or even speak about their religious beliefs in political debates. The fact that we live in a highly religious open democracy means that such reasons are bound to appear often. A person’s religious views naturally influence his or her views in politics, and we cannot bar these from entering the discourse. But politicians should also hold to certain practices regarding how to best make public policy. Since laws influence millions of different people who have different values, they cannot be defended by mere reference to a holy book or faith. Public policy must be based on natural world reasons that everyone can grasp and understand. Believe in religion if you like, but also believe that “I can’t make other people live according to my religion; I need to base laws on values that apply to everyone.”

At the least, this approach pushes religiously devout lawmakers to consider how they can defend their views on clearer grounds to all of their constituents. At its best, it will help foster a more reasonable public policy.

For Rep. Ryan, this means that it is not enough to simply tell the story of your wife’s childbirth and of the nicknaming of a seven-week-old embryo. If you think beans deserve equal or even more moral and legal consideration than women, you need a better argument than “I looked at an ultrasound and nicknamed what I saw; you should too.”

If you want to restrict abortion, you need to answer questions such as: what does it really mean to say that life begins at conception? Why do you think embryos are persons worthy of moral consideration and legal protection? Why shouldn’t a woman have the right to largely control her body and make reproductive decisions with her doctor? If you can’t answer these questions without reference to some religious principle, you should think deeply about whether you are fit for public office.

______

Note: a shorter version of this article first appeared on The Moral Perspective.

[1] Editorial Note: this is essentially John Rawls’ argument, as articulated in his A Theory of Justice.

Answers for Aristotle: response to the Weekly Standard

by Massimo Pigliucci

My new book, Answers for Aristotle, is about to come out. It is an excursion, aimed at a general public, into what I call “sci-phi,” the practical conjunction of science and philosophy — a theme familiar to readers of this blog. If you wish, you can think of it as a self-help book for people who dislike self-help books. The basic idea is to explore “the big questions” (you know, the usual suspects: morality, relationships, politics) from the joint perspective of the best science and the most compelling philosophy available to date. After all, the standard answers to those questions come from either religion or folk wisdom, the first one being based on imaginary entities and their arbitrary pronouncements, and the second being, shall we say, somewhat more fallible than one would wish.

The first couple of pre-publication reviews were positive. Kirkus called it “a useful introduction to sources on both sides of the science-philosophy divide,” while Publishers Weekly said that it is a “careful examination of the surprising connections between science and philosophy ... a witty and insightful look at the relevance of philosophy today.” So far so good!

Then the review by Mark Blitz was published in The Weekly Standard (the neo-con magazine directed by Bill Kristol), and I knew there would be, ahem, misunderstandings. Blitz is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy and director of the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom (of which Kristol is Chairman), at Claremont McKenna College, and is kind enough to say that Answers for Aristotle “is not a bad book,” but it’s clear that there isn’t much he likes about it.

Blitz begins by remarking that Answers joins “the current gaggle of semi-popular works meant to inform the eager, but ignorant, about what neuroscience and psychology say about this, that, or the other thing.” Well, no, actually, it is precisely that crowd that I don’t wish to join, hence my emphasis on both science and philosophy, an approach that Blitz blithely dismisses as a marketing ploy on my part. Besides, isn’t the point of popular books about topic X to inform those who are “ignorant” (literally, the ones who do not know) of X?

The first substantive issue raised by Blitz is that I am allegedly “a bit too beholden to academic authority” (hey, I’m a university professor!) on the odd ground that whenever I cite a source in the book I use the form “psychologist x, political scientist y, neurobiologist z.” I wondered what exactly is wrong with acknowledging the proper field of expertise of the people you mention, particularly in a book that deals with a multiplicity of disciplines. After all, you wouldn’t want me to cite psychologist x’s likely naive opinion of a philosophical argument, or neurobiologist z’s personal political opinion.

I didn’t need to wonder past the end of the same sentence: “and, most desperately, philosopher Peter Singer, as if his job title makes his views less, rather than more, ridiculous.” Ah! It shouldn’t surprise me that a writer for a neo-con magazine despises (not just disagrees with, but feels compelled to ridicule) one of the most influential (and, yes, controversial) contemporary professional philosophers. After all, Singer is known not just for his work in defense of animal welfare, but also for advocating pretty unpopular positions among the political Right, including euthanasia and infanticide (under very restricted conditions, but still). Unlike Blitz, however, I think it intellectually healthy to help oneself to good arguments regardless of who advanced them, which does not imply buying someone’s opinions wholesale. In fact, I disagree with much of what Singer says, largely because he is a utilitarian and I am a virtue ethicist, so I don’t find several of his conclusions compelling. But when he takes interesting positions, I cite him appropriately (professional affiliation and all).

“Pigliucci’s general point is that if we know more, we will choose better and be happier. Oddly, he never argues this point, and some of his own discussions call it into question. He does not analyze, let alone debunk, obvious ways in which ignorance can be bliss or its handmaiden.”

I always find it disconcerting when an intellectual seriously argues that people should be kept ignorant “for their own good.” Yes, there is indeed some research (mentioned in the book) showing that — to a small but measurable degree — ignorance and even superstition may ease our way through life (see, for instance, a RS podcast episode on the latter point, as well as a couple of posts we have published about it). But Answers for Aristotle is written from the point of view of virtue ethics, and ignorance is most definitely not a virtue, for Aristotle as well as for most of us, neo-con wishes to the contrary notwithstanding. If Blitz’s ideal society is one of ignoramuses who do not question authority and common wisdom, happy with the modern version of panem et circenses (what would that be, cheeseburgers and Netflix?), that is his prerogative, but my entire career as a public writer is informed by the exact opposite stance.

And then I read this stunner, mid-way through the review: “Locating, say, certain moral choices in this or that part of the brain, or uncovering hormones or chemicals involved in love, or seeing what brain scans show when someone makes a political judgment tells one about love, morality, politics, poetry, and philosophy only to the degree that one grasps these phenomena in the first place. Thoughts and feelings are directed toward what they are about, and are influenced by what they are about. They are mediated or structured by reason and what is general. Sight is not only about seeing, but about what is there to be seen. Mathematics is about what is true, not only about what happens in the brain. Politics is not only about my feelings and transitory opinions, but about ways of life and the common institutions that direct and help to form these opinions and passions. One needs to know the range and intricacy of love before one ascribes, locates, or reduces the experience to brain chemistry.”

Yes, indeed, all of the above! But at this point I have to question whether Blitz has actually read the book. Seriously, I know authors always throw that sort of line to their critics, but the above paragraph is a very good summary of what the book is about, because of my basic thesis that wisdom results from the best knowledge of facts (science) and the best reflections about those facts (philosophy). Blitz ought to have been very happy with a book like Answers, but he isn’t. I suspect this is simply because my reflections aren’t to his liking, not because I reduce love, politics and math to fMRI scans (since I most certainly do not).

Or perhaps Blitz just didn’t understand what I was after, despite my careful and (I thought) accessible treatment of the subject matter: “Pigliucci’s project seems precisely to be finding guidance for values in the facts that science (apparently) discovers.” That’s exactly what I don’t do! I don’t expect Blitz to have read my critical review of Harris’ nonsense about science answering moral questions. But surely science (or, more broadly, facts) aren’t irrelevant to ethical reasoning. If, for instance, we are debating abortion, and one of the salient points of our argument is that it is an acceptable procedure, say, before the point in development at which the fetus is capable of feeling pain, then obviously we need science to give us its best estimate of when that point factually occurs. But notice that science isn’t in the business of telling us why pain is an ethically relevant consideration, or how it is to be balanced against, say, the interests of the mother.

The chief problem Blitz seems to have with Answers for Aristotle is ideological in nature. He complains of me: “He honestly confesses his standard left-of-center political preferences, but also tendentiously skews things in this political direction.” Well, if I am honest about my political preferences (unlike, say, Blitz, who doesn’t say what his are anywhere in the review, even though they are clearly pertinent) it is hard to imagine how I can then dishonestly skew things for the reader, unless the latter simply wasn’t paying attention.

Here is an example of what Blitz is complaining about: “He acts as if John Rawls’s views have never been seriously challenged,” a fair criticism if I had set out to write a book about political philosophy, or a book pretending to have a “view from nowhere.” But I didn’t. I set out to advise readers interested in reflecting about the big questions in life, and I did so from a clearly stated progressive perspective. In my mind (and that of most political philosophers, from what I get from the primary literature) Rawls is the defining figure in the field in the latter part of the 20th century. Yes, he has had his critics, chief amongst them Robert Nozick, but even Nozick by the end of his life had serious doubts about libertarianism and embraced a type of collectivism, and at any rate his criticism of Rawls was far too nuanced to be of much comfort to the neo-con agenda.

And then we come to the other big issue from the perspective of the political Right, religion: “One place Pigliucci shows intellectual energy is in his discussion of religion. He thinks that religious belief is rooted in superstition, and argues that Plato has proved in the Euthyphro that we do not need gods to be moral. Although his discussions raise important questions, he ignores the place of belief in securing obedience to law, in advancing ethical action, and in elevating our understanding of ourselves and others.” [I take it as a point in my favor, by the way, that Blitz, who has written professionally about Plato does not substantially object to my take on the import of the Euthyphro.]

Ah, but the point of those three chapters in Answers is precisely that the intelligent and educated person (clearly, not Blitz’s ideal audience) does not need the crutch of religion in order to follow the law (as well as questioning it when called for), to work one’s way through ethical dilemmas for which the Big Ten are woefully inadequate, or to arrive at a fact-based, rather than myth-based “understanding of ourselves and others.”

Finally, Blitz — perhaps feeling that his case wasn’t strong enough — resorted to the weapon of last resort available to the critical reviewer, questioning the author’s competence, or at least his intellectual depth: “The examination [of a better book] would discuss studies in enough detail that we would know on whom they were conducted, how they understood the phenomena that compose their research question, how reliable and long-lasting their results are, and whether they have been replicated. ... Such a book would be a tall order, but anything less distorts understanding.”

But that sort of book, which Blitz is of course more than welcome to write himself (or he could check the abundant references in the “Digging Deeper” section at the end of mine), would have been a long technical tome, while Answers for Aristotle is expressly designed for the (intelligent, educated) general public. It would be like complaining that Stephen Hawking should have engaged in a lot of quantum mathematics to make his case in The Grand Design. It simply doesn’t work that way, and Blitz ought to know better. Perhaps the Weekly Standard’s readers will.

The Community of Reason, a self-assessment and a manifesto

media.photobucket.com

by Massimo Pigliucci

I have been an active member of the self-described Community of Reason since about 1997. By that term I mean the broad set encompassing skeptics, atheists and secular humanists (and all the assorted synonyms thereof: freethinkers, rationalists, and even brights). The date is easily explainable: in 1996 I had moved from Brown University — where I did my postdoc — to the University of Tennessee, were I was appointed assistant professor in the Departments of Botany and of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. A few months after my arrival in Knoxville, the extremely (to this day) unenlightened TN legislature began discussing a bill that would have allowed school boards to fire teachers who presented evolution as a fact rather than a theory (it is both, of course). The bill died in committee (though a more recent one did pass, go Volunteers!), in part because of the efforts of colleagues and graduate students throughout the State.

It was because of my local visibility during that episode (and then shortly thereafter because I began organizing Darwin Day events on campus, which are still going strong) that I was approached by some members of a group called “The Fellowship of Reason” (now the Rationalists of East Tennessee). They told me that we had much in common, and wouldn’t I want to join them in their efforts? My first thought was that an outlet with that name must be run by cuckoos, and at any rate I had a lab to take care of and tenure to think about, thank you very much.

But in fact it took only a couple more polite attempts on their part before I joined the group and, by proxy, the broader Community of Reason (henceforth, CoR). It has been one of the most meaningful and exhilarating decisions of my life, some consequences of which include four books on science and philosophy for the general public (counting the one coming out in September); columns and articles for Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, The Philosopher’s Magazine and Philosophy Now, among others; and of course this blog and its associated podcast. I made many friends within the CoR, beginning with Carl Ledendecker of Knoxville, TN (the guy who originally approached me about the Fellowship of Reason), and of course including the editor and writers of Rationally Speaking.

But... yes, there is a “but,” and it’s beginning to loom large in my consciousness, so I need to get it out there and discuss it (this blog is just as much a way for me to clarify my own ideas through writing and the feedback of others as it is a channel for outreach as an academic interested in making some difference in the world). The problem is that my experience (anecdotal, yes, but ample and varied) has been that there is quite a bit of un-reason within the CoR. This takes the form of more or less widespread belief in scientific, philosophical and political notions that don’t make much more sense than the sort of notions we — within the community — are happy to harshly criticize in others. Yes, you might object, but that’s just part of being human, pretty much every group of human beings holds to unreasonable beliefs, why are you so surprised or worried? Well, because we think of ourselves — proudly! — as a community of reason, where reason and evidence are held as the ultimate arbiters of any meaningful dispute. To find out that too often this turns out not to be the case is a little bit like discovering that moral philosophers aren’t more ethical than the average guy (true).

What am I talking about? Here is a (surely incomplete, and I’m even more sure, somewhat debatable) list of bizarre beliefs I have encountered among fellow skeptics-atheists-humanists. No, I will not name names because this is about ideas, not individuals (but heck, you know who you are...). The list, incidentally, features topics in no particular order, and it would surely be nice if a sociology student were to conduct a systematic research on this for a thesis...

* Assorted nonsense about alternative medicine. Despite excellent efforts devoted to debunking “alternative” medicine claims, some atheists especially actually endorse all sorts of nonsense about “non-Western” remedies.

* Religion is not a proper area of application for skepticism, according to some skeptics. Why on earth not? It may not be a suitable area of inquiry for science, but skepticism — in the sense of generally applied critical thinking — draws on more than just science (think philosophy, logic and math).

* Philosophy is useless armchair speculation. So is math. And logic. And all theoretical science.

* The notion of anthropogenic global warming has not been scientifically established, something loudly proclaimed by people who — to the best of my knowledge — are not atmospheric physicists and do not understand anything about the complex data analysis and modeling that goes into climate change research.

* Science can answer moral questions. No, science can inform moral questions, but moral reasoning is a form of philosophical reasoning. The is/ought divide may not be absolute, but it is there nonetheless.

* Science has established that there is no consciousness or free will (and therefore no moral responsibility). No, it hasn’t, as serious cognitive scientists freely admit. Notice that I am not talking about the possibility that science has something meaningful to say about these topics (it certainly does when it comes to consciousness, and to some extent concerning free will, if we re-conceptualize the latter as the human ability of making decisions). I am talking about the dismissal-cum-certainty attitude that so many in the CoR have so quickly arrived at, despite what can be charitably characterized as a superficial understanding of the issue.

* Determinism has been established by science. Again, wrong, not only because there are interpretations of quantum mechanics that are not deterministic, but because a good argument can be made that that is simply not the sort of thing science can establish (nor can anything else, which is why I think the most reasonable position in this case is simple agnosticism).

* Evolutionary psychology is on epistemic par with evolutionary biology. No, it isn’t, for very good and well understood reasons pertinent to the specific practical limitations of trying to figure out human selective histories. Of course, evopsych is not a pseudoscience, and it’s probably best understood as a science-informed narrative about the human condition.

* The Singularity is near! I have just devoted a full column for Skeptical Inquirer (in press) to why I think this amounts to little more than a cult for nerds. But it is a disturbingly popular cult within the CoR.

* Objectivism is (the most rational) philosophy according to a significant sub-set of skeptics and atheists (not humanists, since humanism is at complete odds with Randianism). Seriously, people? Notice that I am not talking about libertarianism here, which is a position that I find philosophically problematic and ethically worrisome, but is at least debatable. Ayn Rand’s notions, on the other hand, are an incoherent jumble of contradictions and plagiarism from actual thinkers. Get over it.

* Feminism is a form of unnecessary and oppressive liberal political correctness. Oh please, and yet, rather shockingly, I have heard this “opinion” from several fellow CoRers.

* Feminists are right by default and every attempt to question them is the result of oppressive male chauvinism (even when done by women). These are people who clearly are not up on readings in actual feminism (did you know that there have been several waves of it? With which do you best connect?).

* All religious education is child abuse, period. This is a really bizarre notion, I think. Not only does it turn 90% of the planet into child abusers, but people “thinking” (I use the term loosely) along these lines don’t seem to have considered exactly what religious education might mean (there is a huge variety of it), or — for that matter — why a secular education wouldn’t be open to the same charge, if done as indoctrination (and if it isn’t, are you really positive that there are no religious families out there who teach doubt? You’d be surprised!).

* Insulting people, including our close allies, is an acceptable and widespread form of communication with others. Notice that I am not talking about the occasional insult hurled at your opponent, since there everyone is likely a culprit from time to time (including yours truly). I am talking about engaging in apologia on behalf of a culture of insults.

The point of this list, I hasten to say, is not that the opinions that I have expressed on these topics are necessarily correct, but rather that a good number of people in the CoR, including several leaders of the movement(s), either hold to clearly unreasonable opinions on said topics, or cannot even engage in a discussion about the opinions they do hold, dismissing any dissenting voice as crazy or irrelevant.

As you can see, the above is a heterogeneous list that includes scientific notions, philosophical concepts, and political positions. What do the elements of this list have in common, if anything? A few things, which is where I hope the discussion is going to focus (as opposed to attempting to debunk one’s pet entry, or deny that there is a problem to begin with).

A) Anti-intellectualism. This is an attitude of lack of respect for the life of the mind and those who practice it. It may be strange to claim that members — and even some leaders — of the CoR engage in anti-intellectualism, but the evidence is overwhelming. When noted biologists or physicists in the movement dismiss an entire field of intellectual pursuit (philosophy) out of hand they are behaving in an anti-intellectual manner. When professional “skeptics” tell us that they don’t buy claims of anthropogenic global warming, they are being anti-intellectual because they are dismissing the work of thousands of qualified scientists. To be more precise here, I think there are actually two separate sub-issues at play:

A1) Scientism. This is the pernicious tendency to believe that science is the only paragon of knowledge and the ultimate arbiter of what counts as knowledge. And the best way to determine if you are perniciously inclined toward scientism is to see whether you vigorously deny its existence in the community.
A2) Anti-intellectualism proper. This is the thing on display when “skeptics” reject even scientific findings, as in the above mentioned case of global warming.

B) The “I’m-smarter-than-thou” syndrome. Let’s admit it, skepticism does have a way to make us feel intellectually superior to others. They are the ones believing in absurd notions like UFOs, ghosts, and the like! We are on the side of science and reason. Except when we aren’t, which ought to at least give us pause and enroll in the nearest hubris-reducing ten-step program.

C) Failure of leadership. It is hard to blame the rank and files of the CoR when they are constantly exposed to such blatant and widespread failure of leadership within their own community. Gone are, it seems, the days of the Carl Sagans, Martin Gardners, and Bertrand Russells, and welcome to the days of bloggers and twitterers spouting venom or nonsense just because they can.

Where does this leave us? Well, for one thing — at this very moment — probably with a lot of pissed off people! But once the anger subsides, perhaps we active members of the CoR can engage in some “soul” searching and see if we can improve our own culture, from the inside.

To begin with, are there positive models to look up to in this endeavor? Absolutely, and here I will name names, though the following list is grossly incomplete, both for reasons of space and because some names just happened not to come to mind at the moment I was typing these words. If you are not listed and you should be, forgive me and let’s amend the problem in the discussion thread. So here we go: Sean Carroll, Dan Dennett, Neil deGrasse Tyson, D.J. Grothe, Tim Farley, Ken Frazier (and pretty much anyone else who writes for Skeptical Inquirer, really), Ron Lindsay, Hemant Mehta, Chris Mooney, Phil Plaitt, Steve Novella (as well as the other Novellas), John Rennie, Genie Scott, Michael Shermer, Carl Zimmer, and many, many more.

Do I have any practical suggestions on how to move the CoR forward, other than to pay more attention to what the people just mentioned say, and perhaps a little less attention to what is spouted by some others who shall go unmentioned? At the risk of sounding somewhat immodest, yes, I do. Here are a few to get us started (again, discussion on how to improve the list will be most welcome). Once again, the order is pretty much random:

i) Turn on moderation on all your blogs, this will raise the level of discourse immediately by several orders of magnitude, at the cost of a small inconvenience to you and your readers.

ii) Keep in mind the distinction between humor and sarcasm, leave the latter to comedians, who are supposed to be offending people. (In other words, we are not all Jon Stewarts or Tim Minchins.)

iii) Apply the principle of charity, giving the best possible interpretation of someone else’s argument before you mercilessly dismantle it. (After which, by all means, feel free to go ahead and mercilessly dismantle it.)

iv) Engage your readers and your opponents in as civil a tone as you can muster. Few people deserve to be put straight into insult mode (Hitler and Pat Robertson come to mind).

v) Treat the opinions of experts in a given domain with respect, unless your domain of expertise is reasonably close to the issue at hand. This doesn’t mean not criticizing experts or worshipping their pronouncements, but only to avoid anti-intellectualism while doing it.

vi) Read more philosophy, it will do you a world of good. (I am assuming that if you are a member of the CoR you already do read quite a bit of science. If not, why are you here?)

vii) Pick the right role models for your skeptics pantheon (suggestions above, people to avoid are left to your keen intuition).

viii) Remember what the objectives are: to learn from exposing your ideas to the cross-criticism of others and in turn help others learn to think better. Objectives do not include showing the world how right and cool you are.

ix) Keep in mind that even the very best make mistakes and occasionally endorse notions that turn out to be wrong. How is it possible that you are the only exception to this rule?

On the death of Andrew Breitbart (and others)

http://media.salon.com/

by Michael De Dora

As you have probably already heard, the controversial public figure Andrew Breitbart died on March 1 of a heart attack. He was 43 years old.

The main line of business for Breitbart was news, in particular, web news. Early in his career, he helped Arianna Huffington start The Huffington Post. He then proceeded to found the web sites Breitbart TV, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace. Yet he is perhaps best well known for being an advocate and commentator who supported the Tea Party movement, railed against the Occupy movement, harshly criticized liberals, and was a major force behind several public stunts — most notably the ACORN video controversy and the resignation of U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod. You can read more about Breitbart’s exploits here.

You might recall that I wrote about the last of those exploits, Sherrod’s resignation, on this blog. To refresh your memory: Breitbart posted on his website an edited clip of a longer speech by Sherrod that, without context located elsewhere in the talk, made her look racist. This led to her forced resignation by then Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. In my article, published August 2, 2010, I argued that while Breitbart was responsible for Sherrod’s downfall, a host of other actors — conservative pundits, lawmakers such as Vilsack, and the American public — were also to blame for blindly accepting the claims or bowing to the commands of a man who, for all intents and purposes, had made a career out of smearing his opponents and enemies.

So, it surprised a couple of my friends to learn that I think America — if not the world — will be better off without Breitbart. Given the arguments laid out in my previous article, outlining that Breitbart wasn’t nearly as bad as many liberals made him out to be, how could I possibly believe that? Allow me to explain.

One of the first things I read after Breitbart’s death was an article in the Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi, titled “Death of a Douche.” As you can imagine, the article was not entirely kind to Breitbart. I say “not entirely” because Taibbi does give Breitbart some credit. Then again, Breitbart would have expected, and perhaps accepted, nothing less than Taibbi’s treatment. Remember that this was the man who called the late Sen. Ted Kennedy a “villain,” “big ass motherf@#$er,” “a duplicitous bastard, “a prick,” and “a special pile of human excrement” — all in the just three hours following his death.

In the days following Breitbart’s death, I posted Taibbi’s article on a couple of social media web sites, and passed it along to friends. As I said, I received pushback, which came in three kinds:

1. “You and others are giving Breitbart too much credit. He didn’t have that much power to do harm. He didn’t get Sherrod fired.”

2. “The guy had a wife and four kids. I heard he was a good father and husband, and a nice guy. Lay off.”

3. “How could you have rooted for anyone’s death? Or even be happy that he’s dead? Are you sick?”

Whether or not my friends had read my previous article on Breitbart’s exploits — some had, most hadn’t — they were throwing my own arguments back in my face. For reference, let’s go back and read what I wrote in that August 2010 essay:

“Let me be clear: this essay is neither pardoning the behavior of Breitbart … Rather, this essay argues that while people often find it convenient to blame the media, in this case Breitbart and FOX News, for social problems, they ought to realize that it is a social problem that feeds the media. That is, Breitbart and media outlets cannot be understood apart from the social and political context in which they exist. Why does Breitbart have the power he has? Why do people listen to Breitbart? Because they agree with him.”

I continued:

“By blaming social problems on one man or one organization, we thus ignore the social reality that these men and organizations are backed by millions of Americans, and make the problem out to be much simpler than it really is. They would not exist in such powerful roles without the support of a sizable number of people.”

Here is where things get sticky:

“Contrary to what many would tell you, Breitbart and FOX News did not create the Tea Party and the extreme Right which wants to disable Obama and his administration in any and every way possible. Instead of blaming them for creating social problems, we ought to consider the complex and numerous factors that influence what we see represented and supported in the media, and ponder how much of an effort we’ve made in the battle against that with which we disagree. Anything less would wrongly simplify our problems and let everyone off the hook too easily.”

In hindsight, I admit that I used poor wording. In no way was I trying to excuse Breitbart and others for their actions. In many cases — certainly in the Sherrod case — Breitbart lied to or intentionally misled people to achieve his own goals. Without Breitbart’s actions, Shirley Sherrod would probably still have her job.

My central point was that Breitbart was not the only person responsible. He can’t create a controversy, or for that matter an entire movement, without some help. Many sections of the public were willing to be misled, perhaps because of their lack of skepticism or their prior beliefs about racism, big government, etc. This does not absolve Breitbart of his sins, it merely spreads the blame around. I hope this is now clear.

The other two points are not necessarily related to my previous article, but they are worth considering for a moment.

Regarding the second point: is there a rule written somewhere regarding how soon after a person’s death the public can discuss his or her merits (and demerits)? Is there a rule that only neutral things, or even good things are to be said, because that person’s family members or friends might be reading or watching? I certainly don’t recall these rules being in effect for the worst dictators of human history. I don’t recall them being in effect for even lesser evils, such as convicted mass murderers and terrorists. Do you recall hearing anything like: “Hey, why are you saying so many bad things about Timothy McVeigh?! He just died! And he had a family … and friends. Give it a couple of years. Stop being so mean.” I am going to guess not.

If McVeigh doesn’t work for you, try substituting Osama Bin Laden or Joseph Stalin (I’ve purposely not mentioned you know who). I hope you see my point. Sure, the people in question might have treated their significant others and friends well, and even been nice guys in private. But their actions had disastrous — or, rather, deadly — consequences for hundreds, thousands, even millions of people.

I am not comparing Breitbart to McVeigh, Stalin, or Bin Laden, who were explicitly murderous, but the facts are clear: Breitbart made a living by issuing intentionally misleading and/or inflammatory statements and behaving in a provocative manner, with the goal of destroying those who disagreed with him. He succeeded often. His statements and actions were public, and as such are perfectly fit for debate and criticism. No one knocked on his family’s door, or sent them personal letters (in fact, I extend sympathy to his family). Taibbi’s article was written in Rolling Stone, a magazine that often features public debate. It did not criticize his personal life. It criticized the (I would say radical) beliefs and actions he placed in the public square for all to see and feel. And it did this in retrospect, given his death. So, where’s the problem?

Regarding the final point, I didn’t see anyone rooting for Breitbart’s death, although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn some had. That seems disturbing. I considered Breitbart toxic, but not so much as a murderous dictator. He wasn’t killing people; he just knew how to unethically manipulate public opinion.

That said, I still think the world is slightly better off without Andrew Breitbart and his work. I wanted him to be exposed and less valued in our society - not dead. But I am not going to miss him. Are you?

Republican brains, Republican genes

by Massimo Pigliucci

There has been much talk of, and much furor about, a spate of research into the biological bases of the differences between people who are politically conservative or liberal. Chris Mooney has a new forthcoming book provocatively entitled The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality (a follow up to his previous The Republican War on Science). Republican commentators, predictably, are not happy. (Though I didn't hear them complaining when Jonathan Haidt's research hinted at the possibility that conservatives have more moral dimensions than progressives — if one can seriously consider issues of “purity,” unconditional respect for authority and unreflective nationalism as part of the moral sphere.)

Chris has published a series of posts on his blog and at the Huffington Post about both genetic and neurobiological research purporting to explain why Republicans think differently from Democrats, and has even invoked evolutionary explanations underlying these differences. The research is certainly interesting, and some of the findings intriguing, if preliminary. The general idea is that conservatism is ideologically “defensive,” while liberalism is “exploratory,” and that accordingly different personality types are attracted to the Right or the Left.

For instance, a study conducted at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has shown that conservatives react very negatively and very strongly — from a physiological perspective — to images of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as if engaging their fight or flight response against a perceived threat. Liberals, somewhat predictably, reacted positively to the same images, as if they were exposed to an appetitive stimulus (no, we are not talking sexually appetitive). The more interesting finding of this type of research, however, is that the responses of the two groups are not symmetrical. For example, conservatives dislike President Obama much more than liberals like him, and while liberals showed themselves willing to read news from a variety of sources, including Faux News, conservatives concentrated almost exclusively on the latter, pretty much ignoring stories labeled as originating from CNN or NPR (this is regardless of the actual content of the story).

Research highlighted by Chris indicates that these distinct behavioral attitudes map to differences in the way their brains react to stimuli, and that these in turn are associated with genetic differences between the two groups. Now, Chris is careful in stating that “to study the biology or genetics of political differences is not to embrace determinism,” and rightly so. But a good number of his readers aren’t quite so nuanced, judging from the tenor of the comments his posts receive.

Instead, people seem to jump the gun from the (very preliminary, somewhat cursory) evidence to the two classical fallacies of biologization: 1) if it’s in the brain it’s “biological” (as opposed to cultural), and 2) if it’s genetic it can’t be changed. The first fallacy is part of the recent trend that Julia and I labeled "neurobabbling" (and that Raymond Tallis less charitably refers to as neurotrash), while the second one is as old as the controversies over the heritability of IQ during the second part of the 20th century (and repeats the same mistake of creating a false dichotomy between nature and nurture).

(There is a third problem with this line of inquiry, which comes into play when people invoke evolutionary, usually adaptive, explanations to account for complex cultural traits of modern societies. While there likely are discernible traces of our evolutionary past in pretty much everything we do, it is just too easy to make up stories about that past, and too darn difficult to find a shred of evidence to actually test those stories. Not that this seems to be of any deterrence when it comes to selling books or writing sensationalistic articles, of course.)

I have recently touched on the problem with correlative analyses of brain and behavioral activity here at Rationally Speaking. Of course we will find, always, a neural correlate of any human behavior. That’s how humans behave, through actions that are rooted in the functioning of the brain. That said, it certainly is interesting to discover that the brains of liberals and conservatives look different in an fMRI scan, but to go from that observation to building a solid causal scenario isn’t that easy. Brains are things that grow and change in response to myriad environmental stimuli, from before we are born to pretty much the end of our lives. It is very difficult — and certainly hasn’t been done by the recent flurry of studies — to disentangle genetic, environmental, and developmental effects for any human behavior, let alone for something as complex and context dependent as being conservative or liberal in 21st century United States. It’s not just that we don’t know whether having a certain brain predisposes someone to be a Republican or whether being a Republican molds our brain responses in a certain way. It’s that the very question doesn’t make much sense because the causal pathways are complex, interrelated, and full of feedbacks.

Similarly with the issue of genetics. Genes don’t make us think or vote. They just make proteins. There are huge layers of complex causality separating a given strand of DNA and your decision to watch Bill O’Reilly or Jon Stewart, so that discovering genes influencing a given behavior (many, many other things being equal) is interesting, but constitutes only a tiny fraction of the puzzle, and one that is particularly apt to be misunderstood by the public and exploited by demagogues.

And here is the crux of the problem: again, the science of any human behavior is intrinsically interesting (to humans), and certainly worth pursuing. But the history of this type of research is fraught with sloppy experiments and hasty interpretations on the part of scientists themselves, and has the potential to lead to disastrous social attitudes and policies (if you want just one example, think of the infamous eugenics laws enacted by a number of states in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century — with support from progressive intellectuals, I might add — and which led to 60,000 people being forcefully sterilized because of sloppy science twisted in the service of ideology).

The risk we face in the case of this new trend of biologizing politics is that — regardless of Chris’ and others’ careful disclaimers — many people will conclude that there is no point in engaging “the other side” because, you know, they can’t help themselves, they are the way they are because of their brains, their genes, and their evolution. Chris ends one of his pieces (on the alleged evolutionary roots of the political divide) by saying: “the lesson for conservatives? Well, here it is tougher. You see, first we’d have to get them to accept something they often view as aversive and threatening: The theory of evolution.” Nice quip, but as it turns out plenty of conservatives accept evolution (and global warming, etc.), and there is a good number of progressives who believe in coocoo notions about vaccines causing autism, 9/11 being the result of a government conspiracy, and of course the perennial favorite, quantum mysticism.

The reality is that we are the product of both biological and cultural evolution, that we are constrained by our genetic makeup, and that everything we think and do is mediated by our brains. But our political opinions do change, both over our lifespan and sometimes from an election to the next, and they change because we can be persuaded through a variety of means, some of which even include rational discourse! So, let us certainly look at the science of politics, but let us also not neglect to engage each other on the issues whenever possible, and as reasonably as we can manage.