Category: Uncategorized

Understanding through neuroscience, unpromising and promising

For any die-hard reductionists out there, here’s an article on the promise of “neuroeconomics”:

Yet it is likely that one day we will know much more about how economies work – or fail to work – by understanding better the physical structures that underlie brain functioning. Those structures – networks of neurons that communicate with each other via axons and dendrites – underlie the familiar analogy of the brain to a computer – networks of transistors that communicate with each other via electric wires. The economy is the next analogy: a network of people who communicate with each other via electronic and other connections.

Well, good luck on that! Similarly, one might hope that we’ll all be better at using Excel spreadsheets if we start studying how electrons move about in the CPU.

On another note, here is an interesting interview with Michael Gazzaniga talking about the interplay between neuroscientific accounts and broader social structures, particularly in discussions of free will:

For me, it [the interplay between mind and brain] captures the fact that we are trying to understand a layered system. One becomes cognizant there is a system on top of the personal mind/brain layers which is yet another layer–the social world. It interacts massively with our mental processes and vice versa. In many ways we humans, in achieving our robustness, have uploaded many of our critical needs to the social system around us so that the stuff we invent can survive our own fragile and vulnerable lives.

This seems to me the way to go. We shouldn’t simply dismiss neuroscience, of course; but the interesting question is how the “bottom-up” causal story connects with the “top-down” causal story.

Occupy Wall Street

This article discusses the difficulty Occupy Wall Street protestors have had in coming up with a series of demands.  One sees in their meeting minutes the difficulty (and frankly absurdity) of democratic processes that refuse structure.  Coming up with a list of demands is hard enough (especially when they are so keen on not marginalizing anyone that they want 90% consensus), but even the call for demands is controversial.  My favorite remark was this:

“Inherently, in asking for demands, you are accepting that there is a power greater than yourself, which is something that this movement is categorically against.”

Good luck with that whole “brotherhood of man” without any structure thing, what Occupiers are calling “this beautiful society we are creating in this park.”  This is a perfect example of why John Lennon’s song Imagine is so stupid. He asks us to imagine there is no heaven, no hell, no countries, no property, no religion too.  The assumption is that without these “alien forces” of civilization, life would all come up roses.  Sut such a view is utterly naive about human nature.  Wisdom of the ages – whether it be religious wisdom or the wisdom of the Greek tragedians like Sophocles and Aeschylus – knows that something has gone wrong with the human condition.  The cookie jar has been broken, things are not “all good” and won’t be fixed y just getting rid of things like the civilizing forces of things like rule of law and culture.

So yes, Lennon is a “dreamer”, as he admits in his song.  But a hopelessly idealistic one, idealistic to the point of absurdity.  For my part, in the city of man I prefer the structure of the rule of law.

Anyway, when I think of these movements and the issue of demands, I immediately think of this classic scene from Life of Brian.  After all, “What have the Romans [capitalists] ever done for us?!”  I love the demand made: “We are giving Pilate 2 days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the roman imperialist state.”  I wonder if the Occupy Wall Street demands are any less absurd.