Re: If your brain is sick, or you're over-emotional, the news is good!

Phil Graham (pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au)
Sun, 27 Jun 1999 21:23:00 +1000

At 12:30 25-06-99 -0400, John St Julien wrote:
>I am not sure where the moral outrage I see expressed fairly regularly here
>about biology and technology comes from.

If you mean me, you've misinterpreted what I was trying to express. First,
I wouldn't characterise it as moral outrage, but I find it interesting that
you describe it as such. "Moral outrage" has the same kind of dismissive
and perjorative connotations in intellectual fora as the term
"intellectual" does in, say, politics: these days, one ought neither take a
moral stance in academia nor an intellectual stance in matters of policy. I
was expressing frustration and incredulity at Coates's statement, and not
because of either biology or technology per se (or even at all). Both are
potentially worthwhile and certainly not intrinsically "evil". In fact, my
thinking is informed largely by various socio-biological traditions, and
I'm a confirmed technophile. Biology ought to be understood (even in its
synthetically, nominalistically circumscribed form, as defined by the
institutionalised, intellectual division of labour under which we operate),
as should technologies of all sorts: physics, mathematics, humour (which,
as Eugene pointed out, is also a technology of social control), and so on.

>Is it that such things simply should not be known?
>or
>is it that folks don't trust people to act humanely if biology is well
>understood?

Some of the assumptions that underpin Coates's statement are what concern
me. The first two are trivial:
1. That the brain controls everything in humans. This is an downright
stupid idea.
2. That biochemistry is the source and cause of all "dysfunctions" of the
brain, which is also quite stupid.
3. That someone or some group could decide what was an appropriate level of
emotionality, slothfulness, pride (there's two of the seven deadly sins out
of the road, he also covered kleptomania, overt sexuality, and the rest of
the seven as well), or, for god's sake, appropriate levels (and, no doubt,
types) of humour "in" a person.
4. That such idiocies are being incscribed in policy.

The nature-nurture argument, dull and nominalistic circumscription that it
is, is of absolutely no interest to me in this either. It's a complete
nonsense. Any idea that the two can be separated is utter nonsense, and any
suggestion that something exists outside nature is just as nonsensical. I
do, however, eschew any "que sera sera", Doris Day nihilism. I feel I must
take a position on issues that impinge on my sensibilities, moral or
otherwise, so I do. Any inaction on my part to do so would be false
"objectivity", itself a highly questionable value system (ideology). As Jay
pointed out, all we have is knowledge and values, each of which are
construed along each others' lines of trajectory.

What really annoys the hell out of me is that after the most brutal century
in recorded history (you can argue with me that it hasn't been, but you'd
be wrong by most reasonable measures), and armed with the knowledge that
discourses of eugenics; false scientifism; laissez faire economics;
nationalism; religious fundamentalism; empiricism; economic expansionism;
and ethnic, racial, and linguistic normativism (thanks largely to the
lovely Francis Galton, an eminent statistician and eugenicist) breed the
most brutal of conditions in human societies, today, we are reproducing
these discourses in tandem, en masse in new guises.

As to stuff being beyond our control: yes. almost everything that affects
us is beyond our control except for one thing (and every drunk must learn
this): what we do as individuals. This is the only thing we have any degree
of control over whatsoever, the rest is contingently determined effects. Of
course, these effects reach out and change bits of the world, like my words
are now.

>I sometimes get the feelling that the ideas themselves are considered
>anti-human and that demostrating that some of them are resulting in
>consequential technologies is understood as morally bankrupt.

No idea or technology is intrinsically morally bankrupt (except perhaps
weapons of mass destruction), despite what the catholic church might teach
its kinder. It's the way we deploy technologies and ideas that can be
judged as morally this or that, but again, such a judgement must be based
on what we think is good or bad. I happen to think that inscibing idiotic,
eugenic ideas (and ideas that represent the rest of my list above) in
policy is bad, ahistorical, and essentially barbaric. I don't like
barbarism, nor do I like normativism. I know what they look like, I
evaluate them negatively.

>Am I misreading the position?

If it's mine you're talking about, yes.

>Instant caveat: I too am outraged by the idea of Soma; but, that outrage
>has to share some place of honor with my outrage at the presence in the
>lives of friends and relatives of Altzheimers, aids dementia, Parkinson's,
>suicidal depression, and other, demonstrably organic, definitely
>dehumanizing, conditions. Where does the baby end and the bath water >begin?

Babies are a pertinent subject where dementia is concerned, especially
Altzheimers. The current treatment for dementia, which works at least in
the short term, is to graft live foetus cells onto the brain (cf Richard
Restak, 1995). Demand and supply is certainly a moral issue here in which
there can be no neutral position. Also, just because a problem is
demonstrably organic (what is not in an organism?) doesn't mean it has its
sole source in one part of the body (in this case, the brain).

What amuses me is the unwillingness of people to accept the fact that
they're mortal and decay-bound. People see their loved ones dying and cry
out against the cause of their death. I, however, think that the way death
is "done" is the more important issue issue - I'm against murder and the
death penalty, for instance, but not euthenasia under certain
circumstances. Thus I may be in need of some genetic "intervention" myself.
Goodness knows, I've tried enough chemical intervention to be considered
somewhat of an autoethnographic expert on the matter.

Consequently, I'm not at all outraged by Soma or Prozac, and that wasn't
the point of my post either. Prozac has helped people close to me, and, at
one particularly rotten stage of my life, me. I have no problems with
chemical or biological interventions. Nor do I have a problem with drug use
(in the sense of it being intrinsically good or bad - it can be both or
either). What I do have a problem with is inscribing false, religious
fundamentalist, technocratic, eugenic scientifism in policy.

Phil

Phil Graham
p.graham who-is-at qut.edu.au
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html