Worth a thought

As you probably know, I am a fan of emphasising the Conservative perspective on events, albeit in moderation. The reason for that is that I deem ignorance of any kind potentially harmful. We need to know about Conservatives.

If you’re not put off by those introductory statements then you might find the following quite interesting. Paul Goodman, writing on the Tory grassroots internet platform ConsHome.com, posted an open letter to David Cameron this morning that illuminates some of the conflict within the Conservative Party about the course currently taken in relation to rioting and rioters. I particularly want to draw your attention to the last two paragraphs in which Goodman comments on the proposed British Bill of Rights. Goodman is addressing Cameron directly and he is making a valid point about the dark side of social morality as expressed by the PM.

“We’re working [said David Cameron in his speech yesterday] to develop a way through the morass by looking at creating our own British Bill of Rights…The truth is, the interpretation of human rights legislation has exerted a chilling effect on public sector organisations…It is exactly the same with health and safety.”

This is the big one, isn’t it?  Since the riots, you and other Ministers have made a series of announcements.  Convicted rioters could lose their council homes.  Even those not jailed could lose their benefits.  Child offenders will be named and shamed.  And so on.  But how on earth is all this compatible with the Human Rights Act?

The full post is here.

Lebst du noch oder schwimmst du schon?

How better to dive into the stream of consciousness and let your thoughts float than in a floating home?

from http://inhabitat.com/mos-architecture-lake-huron-floating-house/

With rising sea levels something very similar to this house on Lake Huron is needed (for full article on the house, click on the image).The ‘coolest’ floating homes can be found here.

I have a very bookish interest in this topic. I imagine without being able to explain why – this is called an ‘intuition’ and it is legitimate to reason with them, as I have learned – that thinkers writing books and thinking thoughts in floating homes would be less prone to indulge in dualistic thinking than thinkers who feel the softness of their own flesh against the unyielding surfaces of their stationary homes.

“Use it or lose it”. Report from the Marsilius Kolleg Heidelberg Winter School 2011

“It’s like this with the brain,” neurobiologist Hannah Monyer said to us this past Wednesday, “use it or lose it”. So use the brain we did like it was our job. From morning till evening. This is a short report from the Marsilius Kolleg Heidelberg Winter School 2011.

I don’t have much time to write; the schedule is tight in the best way possible: lunch is in about one hour and I don’t want to miss out on the warm companionship that we have developed with each other. ‘We’, that’s 29 young academics working in medicine, neurobiology, genetics, philosophy, theology, sociolgy, law, linguistics and psychology.We have all come to Heidelberg in order to discuss in an interdisciplinary manner the vital issues of the day, ‘how transparent is the human being?’

‘Not very much at all’, you may think, and you’d be right. One thing I have learned this past week is that neither the natural sciences nor the humanities can explain human thoughts, action and feeling very well at all. They can describe it beautifully and theorise certain aspects of it, but there are limitations. Although the human genome has been fully sequenced, neuroscientists don’t really know which processes in the DNA determine deseases or human traits. Claus Bartram, the first speaker at this winter school, pointed this out clearly to us. “The more we learn about the genome the less assurances we have about causal processes regarding human character, traits or deseases.” This is partly because the DNA is not, as had been thought until recently, the main driver behind the genetic wheel. The RNA intercepts and affects many processes of the DNA. Epigenetics also plays a big role; as Thomas Fuchs in particular made clear, environmental factors can have a lasting epigenetic effect. Hannah Monyer likewise emphasised the connection between neural processes and environmental changes and demonstrated how specific areas in the brain can be stimulated in such a way that their capacity changes in the long run.

All of this was a lot to take in for me and others, of course. One of the main lessons we learned from the genetics and neuroscience talks was that neither the body-mind nor the person-environment dualisms are credible figures of thought in the natural sciences any more. To put it bluntly and sociologically: even the brain is socially constituted, i.e. affected by social interaction.

Herman Schmitz, the great German philosopher, probably drove the point about the end of dualistic thinking home from a different angle when he explained his concept of embodied emotions to us. Emotions, he said, are intuitively treated as personal, fleeting sensations that are sort of ‘inside’ a self. Schmitz’s phenomenological thesis, in contrast, is that emotions are embodied, that we feel because our entire existence is embedded in bodily life (Leiblichkeit). There is a spatial aspect to this, too, which Schmitz captures in the notion of ‘emotions as atmospheres’: Schmitz used the example of an early morning forest and the freshness, uplifting, precious feeling it arouses in the person that walks into it. Schmitz would say that the walker came upon ‘the forest’s atmosphere’ and therefore herself felt fresh and inspired. This was a difficult move to make for many, me included. Far from preceding the walker spatially and temporally, Schmitz’s early morning forest atmosphere is clearly a creation of the Romantic spirit who has read a tad too much Brentano and Geothe. Yet the important point there too was that thinking of events as happening ‘out there’ and our responses to them, whatever they may be, as emerging ‘inside me’, is a reductionistic way of approaching the study of any human processes. To be sure, there is a continuum between different material, mental and emotional states of being, and positions on that continuum are subject to different and varied influences of a biological, social, cultural or spiritual kind.

I am very enthusiastic about the progressive ways of thinking I have been exposed here so far (although there was some analytical philosophy too – not everyone is riding the progressive wave yet). I am most blown away by the honesty with which neurobiologists and medical researchers that I have spoken to or that have given papers have admitted that they know very little about some of the processes that are of vital interest today, e.g. in genetics.  The cause for the development of some carcinoma or the cause for morbus Parkinson are not fully illuminated yet. In order to help anyway, these researchers must be able to accept that they are in the dark about some issues and focus on getting better in what they’re doing in the already researched areas, in the hope of some day being able to also shed light into the dark.

That same kind of ‘we cannot know this yet’-attitude is very alien to me as a sociologist. We seem to always know everything in one way or another. It’s all a matter of which perspective you take on a given issue, which body of theories you’re working with or which intellectual style you prefer. At the end of the day, you need to make a convincing argument. Admitting that you cannot know something would probably equal the statement ‘I am feeble-minded’ in its social effect. Yet at the same time the social sciences explicitly style themselves on the natural sciences…bit ironic, don’t you think?

This issue is certainly more mine only than it concerns other participants at this winter school. A problem that we all share, however, and that is determined by the nature of this kind of interdisciplinary event is how to talk with each other. Each discipline has its own terminology which it uses in intricate ways that are not immediately plausible to others. When a non-social scientist asks me “But what do you think about freedom? Surely people must be free! This is our greatest good!”, then I sort of need to (and do) translate that for myself first. In sociology, I think, ‘freedom’ makes an appearance as ‘agency’, and said questioner above was arguing against structural determination (which sociologists are apparently intuitively associated with – I’m not surprised). One of the best translation efforts I have seen was by a socio-linguist explaining a theological text, specifically the relationship between God, Jesus Christ and us folks. Using the language of communication studies in a highly illuminating way, partly because she needed to make sense of what she was reading to herself too, the theological text became immediately accessible to all of us. The point remains, however, that we tend to translate the new ideas and vocabulary that we are being confronted with into the language of our own discipline. We also usually flag up our disciplinary affiliation when we make a comment on a talk or text that is from a different field of inquiry. “I really liked what you said but being a philosopher/psychologist/lawyer, I instantly ask myself…” is a preamble we have heard often this past week. Interdisciplinary discourse does emerge but usually only after longer explanations made over a cup of coffee or a light alcoholic beverage. The recognition ultimately often is that we agreed all along but did so in ways that were unintelligible to each other.

Hannah Monyer pointed out that the more we use our brain, the more we strain particular parts of it repetitively, the more efficient the entire machine (what a shocking metaphor!! I’d be hit over the head if one of the other participants read this!!) will work even when the stimulus is a singular occurrence. The idea of a winter school like this one, then, could be to over-strain the participants’ brains for 10 days so that they are lastingly capable of dealing with large amounts of input on the spot. I am looking forward to that long-term effect!

Irrationality

According to my research diary, I conceived of the idea to write a book by the title The Boundaries of Knowledge on 12 August. I was probably slightly inebriated – I remember that I jotted my ideas down at night time, so it’s possible I was a bit tipsy. But in vino truly veritas est, I must say, because the concept isn’t half bad:

If we take the subjects that are commonly researched as a representation of things that we consider worth knowing about, then what are the subjects that lie beyond? And what are the reasons why we are not interested in them? This book looks at the social and cultural factors involved in mainstream research epistemology.

I then listed a few subjects that should be discussed in the book, one of which, as I realised last night (and I definitely wasn’t drunk, just so that you know), should be the topic of irrational behaviour. To be more precise, not just any irrational behaviour but akratic behaviour, i.e. acting against one’s better judgment.

Akrasia is definitely a phenomenon that lies in the unknown fields yonder, although, it must be said, a few philosophers have looked at it and ruminated it over the years. I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with akrasia through Amélie Oksenberg Rorty who writes about this topic in a humorous manner in her essay ‘Self-deception, akrasia and irrationality’.

Rorty starts off (and this is why akrasia must be discussed in that book of mine) with pointing out that rational choice theories have had to ignore akratic aspects of human behaviour and that she, Rorty, wants to bring them from “the beggarly outskirts, the slums of the self and theories of the self” (p. 115) into the centre of attention. Rational choice theory, Rorty explains, maps the self out in terms of a neoclassicist city with a “grand central square [...] from which all avenues radiate” (p. 115). This is an inaccurate view of the self, however; the self is not so much the Gardens of Versailles than the inner city of Berlin or, better yet, Paris, if this architectural metaphor makes sense: It isn’t centrally administered but rather split up into several little arronidissements, each of which has its own quirks and preferences and ways of doing things.

But why is it, then, that a person acts against their own better judgment, and what has it got to do with the self? Well, most of the demands that are made of us aren’t so clear-cut; they’re conflicting demands, which means that different aspects of our selves that we consider important are addressed by them. As a result, different quarters in our personalities are constantly in negotiation with each other as to what to do and why. Rorty does not believe in an overarching ‘rational will’ as such that unifies all the little arrondissements. In the majortiy of cases we act from habit anyway which means that we don’t think in terms of cost-maximisation and efficiency (which is what rational choice theory propagates, however).

Rorty goes through the different reasons for why we act akratically ystematically; I think this is a useful list to read read through with some care because it is here that we find out why we sometimes act so irrationally:

1. The Akratic alternative is attractive and has great salience. It dominates attention. “It can [also] represent the satisfaction of a frustrated need.” (p. 123) Perhaps this is how we’re lured into buying things that we don’t need? Because once you’re in the shop all these cosumer options are so very dominant? Hm.
2. “The attractions of the akratic alternative are sometimes those of the familiar, the habitual, the easy course.” (p. 123) This is a sort of surface attraction that is associated with convenience.
3. “Social streaming can pull in the direction of the akratic alternative: the akrates can follow the charismatic leader, or be influenced by the mechanisms of sympathy or antipathy to take a position or adopt an attitude that conflicts with his [sic] judgement, being impelled into action routines that conflict with the preferred alternative.” (p. 124)

You see what Rorty did here? She started with the assumption that action might not be entirely rational and then looked at how else it might occur.

I like this and I like Rorty’s conclusion that far from wanting to valorise akrasia and irrationality, it is important to understand that akratic motivations are part of all our actions. We are all irrational a lot of the time. Perhaps we need to tell ourselves that we are not so that we are able to accomplish what we set out to do, however (pp. 130-131). Rationality, then, is a narrative that we live by and that helps us to get through life.

I also like Rorty’s assessment that the self isn’t a centrally administered unit.  It isn’t a loose mumbo-jumbo federation of feuding villages either; it is something in between and more a sum of integrative processes (between the villages, or arrondissements, to be true to the terminology I’ve adopted here) than a structure. And I like that too.

But most of all I appreciate how this approach to action allows us to take another step away from the modernist obsession with rationality!

***

Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (1985) Self-deception, akrasia and irrationality. In Jon Elster (Ed.), The Multiple Self. Cambridge: CUP:

Off your feet and up again

As I was plodding to work this morning I was wondering if I was melancholy. I’m a bit gloomy and pensive; the foliage is turning red already (woe is me, the summer is over!), the wind feels decidedly wintery and there’s a scent of ending in the air. The students are returning, as are members of staff, and the more people are crowding into this building the more I realise how very unconnected I am to my social environment. In itself, that’s not so much a reason to be melancholy than for being sad. I’m not sure I like the isolation that comes with being an academic, the absence of community. I actually enjoy talking to people, and not just for instrumental reasons (‘he is the head of department, I better have a chat with him’, that sort of thing).

Well, the reason I am not purely sad is because I have found out that I can leave this place and go back to my friends and family. I am glad about that – and hence melancholy because melancholy is a mixture of gloominess and enjoyment at the same time. It is actually a very enjoyable state. I’m not saying that because I am morbid. Melancholy has given us splendid works of art and poetry; according to the OED, is it a “tender, sentimental, or reflective sadness; sadness giving rise to or considered as a subject for poetry, sentimental reflection, etc., or as a source of aesthetic pleasure”. It is a ‘delightful’ sensation, according to Jane Austen, especially if it isn’t of long duration; in Northanger Abbey, she speaks of ‘the delightful melancholy which [the] grove inspired’.

If you’re free to glance at the object of melancholy and then leave it behind – wonderful! Contemplate how things begin and end for a while, how every ending is a new beginning (Hesse), how insignificant the individual little feelings and emotions sometimes are, how wonderful each life stage is in its own right (still Hesse). Get your aesthetic kick out of the reflective experience. And then move on. Look, think, learn – and live.

But that’s precisely the problem with melancholy: because it grants a sense of aesthetic pleasure, some people get stuck in it. As Wendy Brown points out in her essay ‘Resisting Left Melancholy’,

The irony of melancholia, of course, is that attachment to the object of one’s sorrowful loss supersedes any desire to recover from this loss, to live free of it in the present, to be unburdened by it. This is what renders melancholia a persistent condition, a state, indeed, a structure of desire, rather than a transient response to death or loss.

It is true, melancholy can become the defining state of one’s self-identity. The emphasis with melancholy must therefore be on it being transient: Don’t wallow in it, move through it. If treated that way, melancholy is nothing to be afraid of, I think. It grants wonderful insights into the nature of being. Caspar David Friedrich, the painter of the moribund and decrepit, must have felt something like this, or how else did he bear the sight of dead trees, icy barren wilderness and ruins of ages long lost in human history? The Romantics believed that states like melancholy granted the individual self-knowledge and understanding; anything really that forces the individual to confront itself would serve that purpose.

Well, there’s certainly nothing like doing a PhD to confront the individual with herself. It’s a lonely task. There’s no community to draw on – that’s actually been my biggest disappointment in doing my PhD. But maybe that’s just a stage of life that one has to go through, a bit of barren wilderness, even an icy-cold one maybe, and then on to richer pastures. The point is, as I said above, not to get stuck in melancholy. Autumn will pass, as will winter, and it will be spring and warm again and all will be thriving and throbbing with life, next year.

***

Wendy Brown (1999) Resisting Left Melancholy. boundary 2 26(3), pp. 19-27.

What is a self?

I am about to get started on a new chapter in my thesis. The crucial concept I am working with is ‘self-formation’ and naturally I want to start the chapter saying something like ‘The self is a … that does x and y and therefore influences a,b, and c in this and that way.’ But how do you define the self to start with? What is a self?

It is something that we all know we have, right? Is it possible not to have a self? Not really, being or acting ‘selfless’ is a temporary possibility that already starts with the self. Karl Scheibe (1995) says the self is ‘a non-bodily something’; hardly useful. William James (1902), more sophisticatedly, identified three different selves that all rest in the same body: the material self (the body), the social self (view of who one is in relation to others) and the spiritual self (composed of important emotions and motivations). Yes, that’s already more like it…but almost too complex! What if important emotions are triggered by a group of people? Which self are we then talking about, the social or the spiritual self?

The self is a given and we only come to know about it in a secondary fashion. Looking at people’s values and preferences, for instance, tells you something about their selves, say Bellah et al. (1996). If I remember correctly, Wilhelm Gaeb said in one of his books that trying to catch a look at the self so as to then describe what one sees makes as much sense as the little dog trying to catch its tail. We always already know of our self. We only ask ourselves who we are, i.e. what our self actually is or means, when we stand at a fork in the road (that cuts like a knife?). Or when we have to write a chapter about self-formation.

The German philosopher Volker Gerhardt (1999) says that we only act in accordance with our sense of self if we act rationally, or if we can give reasons for why we act this way. Nice, helpful, but also already starts with the self. (This explains why you can’t be held accountable for acts you committed while you were possessed by a demon.)

And what is a self? Seemingly, it’s a meaningful concept to everyone. It’s what is not the rest of the world, it’s what only I know myself. It’s a rat tail, or dog’s tail. It’s not a good topic to start a chapter with; makes you go doolally. To emphasise that point, here is what an image search on ‘self’ returns: