This Blog has moved to a new Adress.

On Ethics and Freedom.

This is a video of a conference presented by French philosopher Alain Badiou at Princeton. The conference was conceived as a dialogue with US scholar Cornel West and his thought.

On Ethics:
There are three major forms of Ethics; theological (ehtics of submission to the law), natural (ehtics of sensibility anchored in the concept of victimhood), and formal (Kantian. What is important in Kantian Ethics or the formal ethics is the form of action and the form is the subjective intention of action. If we act taking in consideration our interest, we are wrong and if we act taking in consideration our duty, we are right. This is the ehtics of a purely subjective liberty).

None of these ethics, according to Badiou who cites the example of september eleven, answers the question of the ethics that permit us to reach to the real world, the ethics of the real world and the real people.
Because there exist great differences in human actions in concrete situations. Badiou thinks that there is no general abstract law for ethics determining what is good and evil. 'Neither law, nor pity, nor pure intention can be foundation for ethics', he affirms.
The difficulty is to determine a general orientation for action. We always have to find in the situation itself the new rule for action. He advances the idea of an ehtics for singularity, not singularity of persons, but singularity of situations. This kind of ethics require from us to believe in the real world, and to believe in the world , according to Deleuze, is to believe in the concrete lives of people.

On Freedom:
'Freedom is always a production, and not an expression, in the context of an affirmative and intimate struggle against the desire of an harmony between personal and intimate orientation and social expression'.
'For freedom we are always to make a choice, the real choice is always a choice also against ourselves and not the direct and spontaneous expression of something intimate.
'To be free is to participate to the process of a Truth, to be incorporated to the Truth body, to be able to do something which is impossible, to be free is our experience of something impossible'.

A Paradigm Shift In Evolutionnary Theory ?

The modern interpretation of evolutionnary theory, known as Neodarwinsim, has put too much emphasis on some aspects of the theory: Competition, Adaptation, and Genes. Those themes became popular among evolutionnary scientists and eclipsed many others. The great evolutionnary biologist Ernst Mayr stated that there are four major components to the theory:

Common origin
Evolution by Random variations
Selection
Adaptation

The last two processes are thought to result in the survival of the fittiest.

Only the common origin stands outside scientific scrutiny today. And while random variations are not disputed, their role in evolution has been questioned by, among others, Lynn Margulis who advocated symbiogenesis, instead of random genetic variations, as the main factor in evolution. Selection and Adaptation, which are interdependant in Neodarwinism, leading to the survival of the fittiest, were seen by the late evolutionnary biologist Stephen Jay Gould as anthropomorphic concepts borrowed by Darwin from the social sciences of his time. Gould used to stress at the beginning of many of his talks that selection by adaptation and survival of the fittiest didn't work well for Adam Smith but worked for Darwin. As a matter of fact, Darwin, in a first draft of the theory, didn't mention fitness and adaptation. For a very long time, Darwin was reluctant to publish his book 'The origin of species by means of natural selection', he needed to fill some gaps in the explanation, and these gaps came from the social sciences at a time when Darwin was pressed by his friends to go ahead and publish his theory unless Wallace, who had the same intuition about evolution, was going to publish before him.
Gould found that the modern interpretation of two apsects of the theory of evolution, selection and adaptation, by emphasising the role of random variation of the gene to suit the environment, and later to suit the gene itself, according to Dawkins' 'selfish gene', has a teleological feature. This is a negative statement since science and nature have no goals, no intention. Only humans, and God, have purpose. For Gould, there is no goal in Nature, not even adaptation, there are only chance, accident, and contingency.

At the heart of this modern interpretation of Darwin's theory there is an old definition to a concept not well understood, the concept of Species. For a very long time, the concept of Species was understood from the standpoint of interbreeding: animals fronm the same Species are those who can interbreed. There were some recognised minor exceptions, but they were still exceptions. However, a new study is going to shake this definition and with it probably the edifice of the modern interpretation. This new study is not the only one to question the old definition of Species. Lynn Margulis, who studied bacteria, showed that small organisms, like bacteria, swap their genes very frequently. This process is the last step in symbiotic life, when symbiosis between two Species is long enough to change the phenotype of both organisms when they are not in symbiosis,and when it leads to some mix of genes in the new organism. Indeed, says Margulis, because of frequent gene swap in bacteria, one can affirm that there are no Species in bacteria. Margulis was one of the few evolutionnary biologists working at the margins of the Neodarwinist paradigm, claiming that Neodarwinism neglected data from small organisms and from symbiotic life, in the interpretation, and concerned itself only with big animals and competition. For her, small organisms, and symbiogenesis tell us a different story on Evolution. A story of cooperation instead of competition.

Indeed, the new study suggests that:

As more and more genes were sequenced, it became clear that the patterns of relatedness could only be explained if bacteria and archaea were routinely swapping genetic material with other species - often across huge taxonomic distances - in a process called horizontal gene transfer (HGT)...As it became clear that HGT was a major factor, biologists started to realise the implications for the tree concept. As early as 1993, some were proposing that for bacteria and archaea the tree of life was more like a web. In 1999, Doolittle made the provocative claim that "the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree" (Science, vol 284, p 2124). "The tree of life is not something that exists in nature, it's a way that humans classify nature," he says

Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) is opposed to the classical vision of Gene Transfer, which is the vertical one in the Tree of life of Darwin, the vertical descent of Species.
Interbreeding is swapping genes. And swapping genes between unicellular animals, even unicellular eukaryotes, when it happens in multicellular and big animals is called hybridisation. Most scientists concerned with big animals think that hybridisation is an exception. But that's not the fact. The fact is that hybridisation concerns more than 10% of multicellular eukaryotes (i.e. organisms). And genetic studies of big animals are revealing that HGT is happening in big animals also as ''ever more incongruous bits of DNA are turning up in multicellular genomes''.

Last year, for example, a team at the University of Texas at Arlington found a peculiar chunk of DNA in the genomes of eight animals - the mouse, rat, bushbaby, little brown bat, tenrec, opossum, anole lizard and African clawed frog - but not in 25 others, including humans, elephants, chickens and fish. This patchy distribution suggests that the sequence must have entered each genome independently by horizontal transfer (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 105, p 17023).

And what exactly does this mean for the tree of life of Darwin and for the Theory of Evolution ?

...downgrading the tree of life doesn't mean that the theory of evolution is wrong - just that evolution is not as tidy as we would like to believe. Some evolutionary relationships are tree-like; many others are not.

That's one reassuring point of view.

And the one that is not reassuring:

"Our standard model of evolution is under enormous pressure. We're clearly going to see evolution as much more about mergers and collaboration than change within isolated lineages."
Rose goes even further. "The tree of life is being politely buried, we all know that," he says. "What's less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change." Biology is vastly more complex than we thought, he says, and facing up to this complexity will be as scary as the conceptual upheavals physicists had to take on board in the early 20th century.

If we reconsider Mayr's components for Darwin's theory (listed above), we may end up with a completely different picture:

Common origin
Evolution, not so much by random variations, but by Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), or interspecies breeding, or symbiogenesis
Selection and adaptation by survival of the fittiest are replaced by cooperation.

Exit Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Jean-Pierre Changeux, and all those ultradarwinists that stressed vertical descent and competition. Enter Stephen Jay Gould, Lynn Margulis, and a new era of cooperative and messy Biology, a solidary world. The change of paradigm is certain. However, one might ask at the beginning of this economic and ecological crises if the new paradigm is not, yet again, influenced by what is going on in our human world...

New Scientist, 21 January, 2009. 'Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life'

UPDATE 1: February, 10th, 09: Darwinism must die so that Evolution may live.
UPDATE 2: February, 10th, 09: The old paradigm is resisting.

The Milgram obediance experiment reenacted.

Researchers at Santa Clara university led by Jerry Burger reenacted Milgram's experiment and found that the percentage of people ready to inflict harm on others in order to follow orders from authority is still the same, more than 40 years later, although the funding and the new ethics rules for the experiment have drastically changed. It was privately funded and the upper limit for the number of volts received by the 'learner' were limited, not for the sake of the 'learner' (who actually did not receive any shock) but for the sake of the psychological welfare of the 'teacher-torturer'.

Below you will find five videos showing the most important parts of the original Milgram experiment.

PART I.


PART II


PART III


PART IV The 'Teacher' here was very obediant, even though he had doubts.


PART V.Here the attitudes of the subjects are analysed. The importance of the group in the interpretation is stressed. But this was the conceptual frame for the interpretation after the horrors of WWII. However, I think we should move beyond this frame of interpretation and examine the importance of one on one interindividual relationships in shaping people's ethical decisions, factors such as loyalty to an individual, friendship, personal reward, and the image of the self the other contributes to shape in our mind. Clearly, the Abu Ghraib horrors, and especially the example of Lyndie England's involvement in them, encompassed both the group and the interindividual relationship aspects in wanting to harm others for the sake of following orders from an authority figure.

The mechanism of a 2000-year-old computer to decode the heavens, finally explained.

Dignitas Personae: Vatican document on bioethics.

Part 1. Don't let the first page, which is scanned upside down, stop you. The rest is easily accessible.

Part 2.

The Ethics of psychotropes consumption: An Overview


Psychotropes are taken by people in two different situations. On one hand, some psychiatric conditions clearly differ from usual life. The prevalence of schizophrenia is the same throughout the world and is readily identified through symptoms that are rarely seen in normal life. The treatment for this disorder produces relief only in the people diagnosed with this illness, and not in others. Neuroleptics for example are powerful psychotropes, but they cannot be used as enhancement and comfort drugs. On the other hand, some psychiatric disorders constitute the extreme of a continuum of behaviors that are seen in normal people. Who has never been depressed or anxious? Which child has never been inattentive? The medications used to treat these conditions are providing new opportunities for normal people to benefit from them. This adresses the problem of the limits between normality and disorder. Within this category, psychotropes can broadly be ranged into two groups depending on whether they are taken to treat mood or behavioral disorders, but their effects are very often observed on both with a primary effect lodged in one group and a secondary in another. Antidepressants act on mood but they create modifications in behavior including agitation and impulsiveness, especially during the initial phase of the intake. Psychostimulants like Ritalin, which is prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Attention deficit Disorder, can have effects on mood. The most often cited are apathy and emotional detachment. Recently, with the increase in consumption and the controversy surrounding the potential role some antidepressants may have in suicidal behavior in children and adolescents, a debate emerged in Psychiatry about the prescription of psychotropes, specifically antidepressants, for children and adolescents.

The most vocal critic of the over-prescritption and the over-consumption of psychotropes in Psychiatry is Dr. David Healy. In a November 15, 2005, in a portrait of him published in the Science section of the New York Times, Dr. Healy, a psychiatrist, is described as being ''internationally known as both a scholar and a pariah who established himself as a leading historian of modern psychiatry with the book, The Antidepressant Era." His cri d'alarme about the potential dangers of antidepressants earned him a strong animosity in the academic world. ''Because of his controversial views, Dr. Healy has lost at least one job opportunity, at the University of Toronto in 2001. In some circles, his name has become so radioactive that it shuts down discussion altogether." One of his colleagues said that "If you even raise the same issues he does, you're classified as being with David Healy and that makes people very reluctant to talk. He has become very isolated."

However extremes, clinical and academic anti-psychotropes positions never advocate the pure and simple interdiction of psychotropes. Critics of psychotropes consumption are only asking for more regulation from governments and more transparency from the pharmaceutical industry about the results of the drugs trials. But there seems to be a resistance to such an approach from the pharmaceutical industry, a resistance enhanced by an increase in demand for these drugs in our society. On one hand, psychotropes are among the best sellers, more regulation and more transparency mean less business. On the other hand, the pressures of everyday life in our society are pushing normal people, with no mood or behavioral problems, to seek comfort and performance enhancement with these drugs. In a November 16, 2005 New York Times article, Amy Harmon reports on the trivialization of psychotropes' consumption among college students in the US. Students take these drugs in order to calm their anxiety induced by college life and to enhance their performances before the exams. This more broader demand for psychotropes can backfire on the regulation of their consumption in a clinical setting and in pathological conditions by hindering the efforts to regulate their prescription.

The trend will probably persist and even increase. French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg contends that this is no different from taking prohibited drugs like ecstasy or marijuana and labels the attitude of governments toward prohibited drugs, as compared to psychotropes, as hypocritical. Ehrenberg analyses, in his book La fatigue d'être Soi, the need for psychotropes as enhancement and comfort drugs from a sociological point of view. For Ehrenberg, our entrepreneurial and modern western society (wild wild world) leaves the individual to construct his Self alone with his only internal resources, away from the help of social institutions. In France and in Europe, institutions were historically conceived to provide citizens with help and support to achieve a successful social and individual life, therefore participating actively in the construction of the Self.

Michael Gazzaniga, director of the center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Darthmouth College (NH) and author of The Ethical Brain (Dana Press, 2005) has another perspective on the means to achieve a successful life. He has no problem with the increase of the consumption of psychotropes for comfort and enhancement purposes. His perspective is a counterpoint to Ehrenberg's in the sense that, in the view he defends, drugs might replace institutions. From a social Darwinian perspective, Gazzaniga thinks that for those of us who have a less performing brain, it is only a matter of fairness to be able to compensate for this disadvantage with psychotropes.

Both views can be valid, one defends a social change in order to help the individual achieve a successful and happy life while the other defends a chemical change in the brain for those of us who are ill equipped, indvidually andsocially, to confront the challenges of life. Both views have also limitations. However, we have a real problem with Gazzaniga's view since Gazzaniga does not take his argument to its logical conclusion. One can argue that, according to the current consumption of psychotropes in our society, they seem to be pretty well available for everybody to use, and not only for the people who need them. College students buy them on the black market, like evry other drug. It is impossible then to view these drugs, as Gazzaniga argues, as factors for some kind of social egalitarianism giving everybody the chance to lead a successful and happy life. As our standards for success and happiness lie mainly in the imitation of others in a social context, considering drug intake as an option to compensate for some biological or social disadvantage can only worsen the situation because these drugs can also be taken by those who are not in need of them and who are already successful, in order to maintain their advantage on others in a social darwinian context. Contrary to Gazzaniga’s thinking, the consumption of psychotropes is thus not allowing those of us who have a less performing brain to compensate for a disadvantage. For as long as people who don't need the drugs can take them, the disadvantage will persist.

More than hundred years ago, instruction was not systematic and obligatory everywhere, classes were not crowded, knowledge required to achieve a diploma was not quantitatively loaded as today, women didn't use to work when having to care for their children at home and the standards of politeness and deference in school were tighter. Once these criteria changed, the new ones required different cognitive and behavioural abilities. By having different requirements with regard to the array of potential human abilities, society has progressively changed the human phenotype through socially constructed behavioural modifications. We do have a genetic endowment that can produce a vast range of phenotypes. By a constant exchange between each individual and different social environments, new phenotypes are progressively emerging. As a consequence, we are different from what our parents were and our children will be different from us. These trends in behavioural changes between generations have progressively tapped some cognitive functions that are extremely sensitive to various genetic and environmental influences. A sizeable fraction of the population has more difficulty to meet the expectations of society. On the other hand, today's society, due to current constraints, allows less variations to occur with regard to the social norms. Individuals who deviate from this wide normality become more easily excluded. This is probably the first reason for the increase in psychotrope use. As the risk for exclusion increases, psychotropes are being used either to decrease the feeling of isolation or rejection, or to improve the fitness within the social template.

It falls upon us, as a society, to judge if we are going to allow psychotropes to become an active factor in the construction of the social Self and, consequently, to participate in the elaboration of the social norms of tomorrow’s societies. Advantage in social status is a relative matter. If psychotropes are allowed for those with a disadvantage as a matter of fairness, it would not be fair then to refuse them to someone with a relative advantage compared to others but a relative disadvantage compared to different others, so he can reach a higher functioning stage and benefit from it in the competition. In a social darwinian perspective, competition and selection work throughout the range of behaviors, and not only between those who have an advantage and those who are disadvantaged. It is hypocritical to say that the over–consumption of medication is a kind of compensation for the disadvantaged members of our society. Theoretically and in current real situations, people who are taking psychotropes for enhancement are not disadvantaged per se, they are only relatively disadvantaged as compred to others. Moreover, as always, it is only the more advantaged people who are using better the ressources available to promote themselves socially. An unregulated use of psychotropes will not create social egalitarianism in chances to lead a successful and happy life, but will only render our social standards for success and happiness more out of reach of ordinary people. It will bring the distribution of our capacity closer to our genetic limits on the positive side of the distribution, and because the distribution of these critical capacities will become more and more asymmetrical, more and more people will end up in the negative side of this distribution. The approach is then to allow only those with a real cognitive or behavioral disorder, as assessed by professionals who will detect a real disadvantage, to have access to treatment with the objective of accessing a decent life. Because on the negative side of the distribution, psychotropes may change the life of those who are clearly in need of them and it would be unethical to refuse these people an access to psychotropes.

Following Ehrenberg’s critique of the consumption of psychotropes and conceiving a social solution to our discontent and mal-être is a valuable project but it needs the agreement of the majority on all levels of intranational social entities and international organisations and institutions concerned by the well being of their societies. Our recent twentieth century history shows that this is not an easy matter to achieve. Our cognitive and social realities are complex. They are intertwined in a web of biological factors, personal beliefs, social norms and local and global politics. None of the above positions, taken alone, can reasonably be considered as a solution to the problems of individual uneasiness with life. As social individuals and responsible citizens, we should probably work from both sides to alleviate the lives of the disadvantaged. Social interventions should be considered whenever possible. But everybody knows that social change, even wanted and planned, is slow in normal conditions. It takes sometimes more than one generation to harvest the fruits of a social reform and it requires great commitment from all levels of society. In the meantime, drugs should be considered, but only as a transient solution whose only purpose is to help disadvantaged people, who are below the equilibrium line, cope temporarily while developing new strategies in life and overcoming a difficult situation. During this time, the society and its institutions must do their part in developing a better environment for individuals.

As a society we face the same problem in the domain of physical health. To eradicate rachitism, we allowed the industry to add vitamin D in all kinds of food for everybody’s use. Are we going to follow the same path with some psychotropes for mental health? What kind of humanity are we willing to socially construct ? We are taller, healthier, smarter, etc…than our parents and grand parents. Pharmaceutical companies who are selling psychotropes have clearly interest in opening the market as widely as possible. In doing so, they do not behave differently from any other commercial entity. In a deregulated world, this may be the leading force of the make-up of our future. Therefore, we might be willing to gain some control on the world that we are building collectively by setting rules and ethical limits that will contribute to our cognitive and behavioral evolution. This is being implemented on the evolutionnary level by the way of interactions and transactions between our social norms and our biological heritage and by the way of biological mechanisms mediating behavior.

An inside/outside regulation of cognition and the Self addresses directly the problem of pathological norms in diagnostic and treatment in Psychiatry. Where are we to search for these norms? Inside or outside the individual? In the intimate or in the social domains? And when are we to label a state of mind or a behavior as abnormal? New research in neurocognitive development tells us that the inside/outside regulation takes place actually very early in development where it affects gene expression. The question is then much more complex and so are the answers.

Mood and behavior disorders can then be considered as being at the extremes of a range of self assigned and socially accepted norms and in continuity within this range. Psychotropes can be taken by individuals either because they need to attain an equilibrium point within this range or because they need to achieve a better well being. Because psychotropes have sometimes worrying secondary effects and because as a society and as individuals we need to feel in control of our destiny with our own individual and collective will, strict regulation is needed in this market. This regulation must include complete transparency from the pharmaceutical industry on their drug trials, a strict follow up by physicians, and a collective commitment to develop research for understanding better these disorders as well as creating alternative approaches for helping people to achieve a satisfactory equilibrium in the building of their intimate and social Self.

Dr. Philippe Robaey, child psychiatrist and psychophysiologist, contributed to this post by providing useful information about psychotropes consumption. However, the opinions expressed in this post are entirely mine.

Ethical aspects of cognitive enhancements

The British Medical Association (BMA) published in November 2007 a discussion paper on the use of mind enhancement drugs covering the medical, scientific, social, and ethical aspects of the subject.
In April 2008, the British journal Nature published the resutls of a poll in which they surveyed 1400 persons from a wide range of age categories on the use of mind enhancement drugs.

The use of prespription drugs like psychostimulants as mind enhancers is spreading in college campuses in the US. The US government has been monitoring the problem since 2003.

I have discussed the issue on this blog a while ago but under a different perspective. In a future post, I will revisit this perspective at the light of the BMA discussion paper.

Is Human Evolution Over ?



That's what British geneticist asserts. I have heard Steve Jones arguing his point before and although he has an interesting argument here, I am still puzzled by his assertion.
Jones assumption is based on the fact that evolution is driven by unequalities existing in individuals' genes facing the same environment and competing for resources in this environment. And he rightly argues that technology, mostly health technology, is a great equalizer of our unequal biological predispositions. Take eye glasses for example, to cite a simple case, eye glasses allow those who have sight deficits to occupy social positions tied to a certain privilege that they would have not occupied otherwise.

However, Jones overlooks two main factors in evolution:
Evolution by collaboration and cooperation, a case well argued by Lynn Margulis and termed as symbiogenesis;
Evolution by selection of genes which are detrimental in one way but beneficial in another. For example, a gene known to be the cause of a blood disease protects against Malaria. In countries where the Malaria epidemic is high, individuals with this disease have an evolutionary advantage over others who don't have this blood disease.

The Turing Test Revisited

No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - 'artificial conversational entities' - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognised 'thinking' machine. If any program succeeds, it is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious' - and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off.
...The test will be carried out by human 'interrogators', each sitting at a computer with a split screen: one half will be operated by an unseen human, the other by a program. The interrogators will then begin separate, simultaneous text-based conversations with both of them on any subjects they choose. After five minutes they will be asked to judge which is which. If they get it wrong, or are not sure, the program will have fooled them. According to Warwick, a program needs only to make 30 per cent or more of the interrogators unsure of its identity to be deemed as having passed the test, based on Turing's own criteria.

Three items catch my attention in these passages:
Thinking
Consciousness
Right to switch it off

Although we know a great deal about the first two, I think it is safe to say that we don't know enough about them in order to attribute them to a machine, even when we are fooled by this machine. Thinking and consciousness are things we feel and attribute to other human beings on the basis of their similarity with us, despite the fact that in most communications between human beings we can be fooled about whether the other person thinks or behaves in a conscious way like us. Indeed, thinking and consciousness have so many layers that even communication between humans is sometimes impossible or deceptive.

As for the third item we touch here on the ethics of human machine interaction. Every right for ourselves is accompanied by a duty toward someone else. Morally speaking, a duty emerges when at least two individuated persons, two individuals, or creatures, interact in an asymetrical way in which one is responsible for the other who is vulnerable. Because a computer program still depends on our will to switch it, it is we who are responsible for the computer program. However, we might ask ourselves such questions as; Is an intelligent computer program an individual, a singularity in the world ? Is it vulnerable ? Do we feel indignation when it is not respected or when it does not have the same rights as us ? Do we have duties and rights when it comes to machines as towards animals ? These are some of the questions to answer before answering the question of the 'right to switch it off'.

Brain and Mind: from medecine to society

In these two videos you can listen to a conference given by the great neurologist, scientist, thinker, Antonio Damasio, in Barcelona in 2005, on the revolution of emotions in medecine and society. Damasio played a major part in this revolution. Usually, philosophers and scientists use the term 'revolution' to designate a change of paradigm in Science. The Emotions revolution changed our perception of rationality and rational decision making as well as our perception of the roots of moral deliberation. The Neurobiology of Emotions proved that Emotions play a major role in decision making and moral evaluation.
Part 1

Part 2

Torture and the Psychological Sciences: The perversion of the scientific enterprise

What angers Soldz and hundreds of other professional psychologists and psychoanalysts is that their organization, the American Psychological Association, has taken an official position that the presence of psychologists makes detainees safer at interrogations. That view, Soldz declares every chance he gets, is ludicrous. In fact, the policy enables the torturers.

Read here my first post on the subject.

Read here on learned helplessness, a bacground theory for torture 'experiments' at Guantanamo.

Stem cell research: The Islamic world forges ahead

Is a bundle of cells a feotus? Is the original single zygote, the fertilised egg, a human being ? These are the central questions at the heart of the Ethics of Stem Cell research. Little mention is being made in the western press about the Islamic view on this question. We, of course, know about the opposition of the Catholic church to this kind of research. And we, of course, know very much about all these denounced Islamic cultural memes which are different from ours.

Physicist Jim Al-Khalili compares Catholic and Islamic views on Stem Cell research in this article.

The embryo-is-a-human argument is based on the idea that the fertilised egg contains everything that is needed to replicate and that this is sufficient. But is this "potential" of becoming a human being really enough?
...According to Islamic teaching, I discovered, the foetus becomes a full human being only when it is "ensouled" at 120 days from the moment of conception, and so the research at Royan on human embryonic stem cells is not seen as playing God, as it takes place at a much earlier stage. Thus, while there is much that the west finds unpalatable about life under Islamic rule, when it comes to genetics they are not held back by their religious doctrine.

Reading this article, aside from thinking about the double standards applied in the western world when it comes to Islam as compared to other religions, I find it interesting that we can only rely on religion up to now to define what is a human being. Science, and neuroscience in particular, have part of the answer but the definition cannot come from the natural sciences alone. It should come from all the sciences related to the human being including Ethics. However, Ethics is still very much the playground of religion and law. We absolutely need a new science of Ethics independant but informed by the other sciences and domains of human beliefs including religion, and only this new science of Ethics can account for what is a human being.

Heated hobbit debate takes new turn.

In October 2005, I commented on a scientific dispute pertaining to the discovery of a 'new species' of Hominids in Indonesia known as the Hobbits for their small size, known also as the Flores people, Homo Floresiensis.

At the time, mainstream publications and mainstream science were refuting a dissident voice from an Indonesian researcher contesting the Characterisation of the Flores people as a new species. There were two arguments that rallied me to the dissident researcher voice.

The first one was epistemological and methodological, the Ockham razor hypothesis: he said that research into the new species should first eliminate any doubt about whether the Flores people had a pathological condition.

The second one was more theoretical. If we look at the evolutionary tree below, we realise that for Homo Floresiensis to become a new species, evolution should have taken a bizarre departure from both Gradualism, and Punctuated Equilibrium which states that species change little over time and that evolution occurs in rare rapid events of branching speciation. The H. Floresiensis species not only appears in one giant leap but reaches the phenotypic status of other species situated far away on the evolutionary tree.

This figure, taken from the Prehistoric Cultures web page of the University of Minnesota Duluth, shows the improbable descent of Homo floresiensis.

And then there was this troubling fact that the number of specimen studied was ridiculously low. Good science cannot be made without numbers...

So it was rather an agreable surprise to read today that a new research from an Australian group shows that the Flores people might not be a new species and that they were probably afflicted by a congenital disorder known as Dwarf Cretinism. Of course this doesn't seem enough to close the debate for now but the irony of the finding is that for the refutation to get the approval of the mainstream press, it had to come from an Australian group. The group who are defending the new species hypothesis is also an Australian group and while the early dissident voice of the veteran Indonesian researcher was dismissed by them as Hubris, they might be forced to listen this time to fellow scientists from their country. From what it appears, this case is paradigmatic about how scientific consensus can be race sensitive.

Although I am glad that I was correct in my appreciation of the debate, I am sad for the new species that probably wasn't.

UPDATE: Small bodied humans from Palau.

Researchers in Switzerland have just succeeded in simulating a small Neo-Cortical column in silicon.


Computer model of a single neocortical column from a rat's brain (Photo: IBM)

Beside the fact that such news are impressive, I liked what the scientist had to say to the reporter and what the reporter extracted from this complex information. One can appreciate the accuracy and the honesty of this article when it is compared to another article on Blue Brain I read in Spiegel a while ago (leave the Spiegel article for the end and you will see what I mean, you will be able to read it with a more critical eye thanks to the present Guardian article). There is nothing sensationalist about Clint Witchalls' article, and in addition he asks the right questions. Still, the title is catchy and I bet it is the editor's touch on the article.

Blue Brain is not about Artificial Intelligence taken in its direct sense, it is about adopting a smart approach to a very complex issue, namely modelisation. Experimental scientists who are hard empiricists abhorre modelisation. You can tell from Steven Rose's comment at the end of this article and I think he is quite right, for the moment. But I think we cannot understand everything from scratch, from trial and error. We have to figure out some way to anticipate what we are trying to understand and modelisation does just that. And nothing can stop us from testing our anticipations. Models, artificial models in experimental science, are just practical material hypotheses. We don't have to be afraid of them or suspicious. And as other hypotheses, they may end up wrong. It is not because we were able to construct a model, a material thing, out of a hypothesis, that the hypothesis becomes instantly true, embodied in a certain way in our own material creation. Sailors before Copernicus used to navigate with totally false charts of the sky, and still, some of them I suppose managed to find their way in the sea. That does not mean that theoretical hypotheses about the stars and the sky for these charts were true. Similarly, the modelisation of a Rat Neo-cortical column, even though it may seem small in scale in modeling the brain, and unfaithful to the original biological model, is a major breakthrough in Neuroscience, both at the practical, conceptual and epistemological levels. The model may turn out to be wrong, and nothing like the real brain. However, along the way we would have learned and amassed a tremendous amount of data otherwise unaccessible to scientists.

In a laboratory in Switzerland, a group of neuroscientists is developing a mammalian brain - in silicon. The researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in collaboration with IBM, have just completed the first phase of an ambitious project to reproduce a fully functioning brain on a supercomputer. By strange coincidence, their lab happens to lie on the same shores of Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley dreamt up her creation, Dr Frankenstein.

In June 2005, Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain project, announced his intention to build a human brain using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. "The critics were unbelievable," recalls Markram. "Everybody thought we were crazy. Even the most eminent computational neuroscientists and theoreticians said the project would fail."

Some of Markram's peers said there simply wasn't enough data available to simulate a human brain. "There is no neuroscientist on the planet that has the authority to say we don't understand enough," says Markram. "We all know a tiny slice. Nobody even knows how much we know."

Markram was not dissuaded by the negative reaction to his announcement. Two years on, he has already developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column - the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains - of a two-week-old rat, and it behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. It's something quite beautiful when you watch it pulse on the giant 3D screens the researchers have constructed.

The neocortical column is the most recently evolved part of our brain and is responsible for such things as reasoning and self-awareness. It was a quantum leap in evolution. The human brain contains a thousand times more neocortical columns than a rat's brain, but there is very little difference, biologically speaking, between a rat's brain and our own. Build one column, and you can effectively build the entire neocortex - if you have the computational power.

Although a neocortical column is only 2 millimetres long and half a millimetre in diameter, it contains 10,000 neurons and 30m synapses. The machine that simulates this column is an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer is capable of speeds of 18.7 trillion calculations per second. It has 8,000 processors and is one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Markram believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex, which is the next phase of the Blue Brain project, due to begin next year. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain.

Markram is banking on Moore's law holding steady, as a computer with the power of the human brain, using today's technology, would take up several football pitches and run up an electricity bill of $3bn a year. But by the time Markram gets around to mimicking a full human brain, computing will have moved on.

Modelling the future

Modelling seems to be the way forward for neuroscience. Each year, there are about 35,000 neuroscience papers published - and the number of papers being published is increasing at a rate of between 20% and 30% a year. Most neuroscientists only get to read about 100 of these papers a year, if they're lucky. Pouring all of this knowledge into Blue Brain seems an obvious way to use and preserve it.

Markram, a 44-year-old South African, first became interested in recording the electrophysiology of neurons when he was at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He was recording two neurons and he saw them communicate. "I thought, my God, this is incredible, you can actually capture neurons communicating," he says. "Then I wanted to find out how they all communicated, so I started to map the whole circuit. It took 15 years." Markram describes the data he has collected over the past decade and a half as "too boring to be published".

The model is there to unify the data and test that it works. A neurobiologist who wants to test a certain theory of how a specific brain function, such as memory retention and retrieval, works can use Blue Brain to do so. The model will be open to the entire world's research community.

Simulation-based research becomes possible when you have a critical power of computation. Today, every commercial aircraft that is built started life as a simulation. Even cameras are simulated before they're built. In physics, we don't let off nuclear weapons any more, we just use simulations.

"We don't use simulation in life sciences because biology requires the most powerful computers," says Markram. "We do experiments on animals, but that is going to change in the near future and this project will drive that change."

One thing Markram is keen to stress is that this isn't another artificial intelligence (AI) system. "We're not looking for the brain of a robot," he says. "You can get an engineer to do that. They are much better at it and they can do it really quickly. But in the end, it [Blue Brain] will probably be much better. If we build it right, it should speak."

Decoding dysfunction

However, Markram is not holding his breath, waiting for some emergent consciousness to arise from the silicon brain. What he is after is something more prosaic, but also a lot more useful than a talking machine. By understanding the function of the brain, we can also begin to understand its dysfunction.

Disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and dementia are the price we pay for having complicated brains. "We don't understand what goes wrong inside those circuits," says Markram. "We're still in empirical medicine. If a drug compound works: good. If not, we try another one." Blue Brain could accelerate experimentation tremendously. It will be much more efficient than wet-lab experiments and it will reduce animal experimentation.

However, Steven Rose, emeritus professor of biology at the Open University, is sceptical that a biologically accurate model of the entire human brain can be built, given our current state of knowledge and technology. The integration between the different regions of the brain is just too complex to recreate on a computer simulation. "I'm not against people playing with models," says Rose, "but the idea that you can use it for anything very sophisticated as opposed to looking at real animals with real behaviour at the moment seems to me to be pie in the sky."

Rose warns against underestimating the difficulties that still remain. Then, rather grudgingly, he admits that the Blue Brain project is impressive. "Impressive but modest," he adds. Clearly, Markram still has some doubters to win over.

Philosopher Ernst Tugendhat on unfounded speculations in brain research

This is part of an interview German philosopher Ernst Tugendhat gave to Die Tageszeitung on July 28, 2007. The present translation was published by signandsight.com on August 20th.

"What function does philosophy have now? Is it becoming superfluous – because of the behavioural sciences, brain research and evolutionary biology?

I am very careful about that. As far as the behavioural sciences are concerned, I think that people are too rash in looking for analogies – for example between human morals and animal altruism. That is what Konrad Lorenz, among others, did. As for brain research, I think it's rather crazy what's going on today.

Why?

They can only find out what types of processes are going on in which parts of the brain. But then those professors of brain physiology appear and present theories about the nonexistence of human freedom. And those theories are only based on the fact that they see themselves as scientists and believe in determinism. They are not even aware of the philosophical literature of the last decades, which tries to not see determinism and free will in opposition. I consider that to be completely untenable speculation.

But brain research is still in its infancy.

Brain research may become interesting for philosophy in a hundred years, but it hasn't been until now. I admittedly am a naturalist; I see human beings as part of a biological development. But what the biological sciences do in relation to human beings hardly makes sense.

If brain research has so little to offer – does sure philosophical knowledge exist?

No. And we don't need it. The desire to be on sure ground is the relict of an authoritarian frame of mind. It's a relict of those times when people believed they would receive all that is essential through revelation from the Gods."

Sarkozy and the popular science of Genes

There is popular science as there is popular culture. However, popular science is different from popular culture in many aspects including the fact that it is not, like popular culture, a different perspective on things, and the fact that it has to rely on criteria of real science; test, truth, verification, refutation. It cannot hide itself from real science for a long time. Popular science is defined here as what stays in public awareness and consciousness from scientific knowledge once this knowledge has been made available to the public. Take for example the Nature/Nurture debate. Popular science of Nature/Nurture is actually some 50 years back regarding the advances made in the current scientific inquiry in this field. Popular science is fixated on the big discoveries in Genetics (but not on the current science of Genetics), thanks notably to books like the 'Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins which had a huge impact, not only on the layman, but also on academics outside the field of Biology like Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett, and thanks to the early sociobiology of Edward Wilson.

In the meantime, the field of Epigenetics, which is the current field of Genetics, was taking on slowly in the scientific debate of Nature versus Nature. Epigenetics tell us that Genes for simple or complexe features are expressed (or not expressed) in a Context, the environnement of the gene first, which is the cell, than the larger environments; the body and the outside environment. Epigenetics tell us that our features and complexe behaviour are the results of a long history of transactions between genes and their environments during development, which is a long process in humans, and that these transactions have influence across generations. Today's Epigenetic is reactualising the concept of the transmission of some acquired features across generations. Scientists are studying the medium of this transmission and it seems that modulations of internal states, stress reactions, and emotions, by early family and social interactions, are key factors in this transmission.

Popular science can be harmful when it enters the political sphere and inspires policies. That's exactly what French presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy hints about in an interview he gave to philosopher Michel Onfray when he implies that our complexe behaviour is already fixed at birth, determined by our genes.

« J’inclinerais pour ma part à penser qu’on naît pédophile, et c’est d’ailleurs un problème que nous ne sachions soigner cette pathologie-là. Il y a 1200 ou 1300 jeunes qui se suicident en France chaque année, ce n’est pas parce que leurs parents s’en sont mal occupés ! Mais parce que génétiquement ils avaient une fragilité, une douleur préalable. Prenez les fumeurs : certains développent un cancer, d’autres non. Les premiers ont une faiblesse physiologique héréditaire. Les circonstances ne font pas tout, la part de l’inné est immense ».

''I think pedophiles are as they are already at birth. The absence of treatment for such a pathology is a real problem. There are 1200 to 1300 youths who commit suicide every year in France, that's not the fault of their parents. That's because they have a certain predisposition, a fragility, a precondition for suffering. Take for example smokers. Some will developp cancer and others won't. The first have a precondition, a certain physiological hereditary weakness, the others don't. Circumstances are not everything, there is a huge part for the innate in what we are.''

I recommend reading the whole interview published on Onfray's blog in French because Onfray's rendition of the interview gives a chilling portrait of Sarkozy, the man...

In his statement, Sarkozy seems to oscillate between two points of view, both of them false and both of them extreme. His judgement on pedophiles accredits the idea of the all genes explanation while what follows still accredit the all genes explanation, for smokers for example, while countering the other view which states that environment influences gene expression. Ironically, the all genes explanation, in the classical Nature/Nurture debate, can be turned the other way, where the causes of a pathology are attributed entirely to the environment. However, in the now more than two centuries quarrel between the Nature and Nurture explanations of complexe behaviours, none of the parties has been able to prove entirely the complete causal relationship bridging the multiple levels of organisations and transactions between the organism and its environment(going from the gene to the cell, to the organ and Brain structure, to the Brain network involved in the behaviour, etc..., and the other way, from the environment to the body and the brain and back to the behaviour). This is why the actual science of behaviour has moved from this sterile opposition between Nature and Nurture. If smokers and people who are suicidal come to smoke and commit suicide, it is because they have experienced an adverse environment whixh adds to their innate predispositions for a pathology.

There is no way out from such a debate. The only way out is the one taken actually by modern biological science, which is to recognize that we are the products of both our genes and environment through a non linear history of transactions between both components.

The far right candidate Jean-Marie le Pen was a better analyst and had a more critical view of the Nature/Nurture debate by stating that Sarkozy must have been wrong. How on earth can Sarkozy affirm such a thing while not noticing, at the same time, that biological determinism is antinomic to personal responsibility ? Says Le Pen. In other words, Le Pen is asking what is the use of Politics if everything is predetermined by our genes ?

According to Sarkozy, there might be also a gene for voting for Sarkozy. Indeed, this vision of Genetics and Biology is inflational. There is nothing that could not be explained by Genes and therefore, Genetics, as seen this way, could well be the end of Politics and the end of everything else.

It is interesting however to realise that Sarkozy is articulating naively the main contradiction in the Conservative NeoLiberal Ideology of our time, which relies heavily and exclusively, for its social policies, on the biological sciences, to boost the old idea of the survival of the fittiest, an idea Darwin borrowed from the social sciences of its time, while borrowing from Religion a conservative framework for morality which make all people equal because they are the creation of God. Sarkozy pushes his naiveté even further when he expresses his views on Religion which he considers as the ultimate tool for taming people's discontent with Neoliberalist policies which leave many behind.

Les propos sur la génétique de Nicolas Sarkozy suscitent la polémique
LEMONDE.FR | 04.04.07

©

Loneliness In Old Age Linked To Alzheimer's : When Mind and Society contribute to neurological disorders

This is a nice medical research study and it comes from practitioners in the field of Alzheimer's, not from fundamental research on animal models. However, researchers might be encouraged now to produce a credible laboratory model for loneliness to further investigate the question. We definitely need both fundamental and medical practice induced research.

Some diseases have biological and social manifestations, Parkinson, Tourette, Alzheimer's, Schizophrenia, and so on. They have also biological and social causes. However, the pervasiveness of materialist thinking among some scientists who work on the mind and in some intellectual circles makes it impossible to have a concept of a neurological disorder in sociological terms . I have an example: Ian McEwan's Saturday have two characters with neurological degenerative diseases; Baxter who has his early symptoms of Huntington disease and Perowne's mother who has Alzheimer. The central character is a neurologist and the author gives his neurologist a background theory on human consciousness, emotions, and behaviour which falls into the most reductivist materialist theories of mind. We are told details about the inner workings of the brain and what genes have to do with these diseases but we are not given a single hint about how modern scientific efforts in the field of Neurology and Psychiatry are tracking both the biological and psychosociological aspects, factors, and sometimes causes of the diseases. We are being served a vision of human mental life and behaviour that does not account for the dominant current paradigm in Neurobiological Sciences which considers human behaviour and consciousness as a result of a long history of transactions between Nature, personal history and Society.

The study on Loneliness and Alzheimer does not give a proof that loneliness is actually a cause but it does demonstrate that it is not a symptom of Alzheimer's. That is. It does not appear to be a behavioural result of the biological factors contributing to Alzheimer. On the contrary, it appears to be a contributing factor. And it surely exerts this influence through biological channels for emotions, stress and mood. It is not physical loneliness that matters here but the patient's own perceived loneliness. What matters to my brain is how I feel and what I think, this thing about me that cannot be reduced to few chemicals and some degenerate cells. Our biological Self is not shielded form our body, from our presence to the world - and not in the world, as Merleau-Ponty would put it. Biology does not exert a one way influence and initiate behaviour and thought with the internal biological machinery from the inside to the outside because this same machinery is actually structured by the outside, starting with the interface formed by our bodily and perceptual interactions in nature and society, and reaching deep into our biology, including gene expression (not gene sequence). From birth until death these interactions shape the biology of growth, maturity and old age, as in Loneliness and Alzheimer.

This study is a breakthrough and it will surely be followed by more scientific evidence gathered from other levels of organisation of this complexe entity that is the Human being. It is promising also for theories of consciousness because this kind of investigation occuring at a high level of mind functioning is needed to fill the explanatory gap between internal material causation in the explanation of consciousness, that is, causation that exists between the different parts and levels of the brain producing thoughts, emotions and behaviour, and the external material causation chain, causation linking outside factors, like ways of life and our social psychology, with the internal causative chain in the brain.

I smile when I remember that, in Mc Ewan's Saturday, Perowne takes great care not to eat cheese because he believes that fat helps build the degenerative plaques around brain cells leading to Alzheimer. What this study tells us however is that no matter how much we eat or don't eat cheese, the way we lead our life, give it meaning and directions, both psychologically and morally, is as important as the piece of cheese in the shaping of our old age physical diseases. And Perowne might as well develop Alzheimer, after all. Because in addition to the fact that he might have inherited a risk gene from his mother, his loneliness is obvious. The conscious stream of one day in his life tells the story of a lonely son, a lonely husband, and a lonely father. Although he is able to reach some empathy with the people who surround him, his empathy never reaches a level where he can consider himself through other people's eyes. He is so infatuated with himself and his knowledge that the reader is never presented with the slightest glimpse into what others think of Perowne. His loneliness is so evident when we consider his wife's character. This character is so flat and seen only through the eyes of Perowne as an object of love, pride and happiness that we never get to know who is the real person behind.

Maybe loneliness is, after all, the condition of the modern inner life of men and women in an era where individualism and personal achievement are perceived the number one criteria for happiness. Not the Other, not the Other... "Overall, these data suggest that both the quantity of social interaction and the quality of social attachments affect risk of late-life dementia," concluded the authors of the research.

In the Press: Loneliness linked to Development of Alzheimer's

Source article: "Loneliness and Risk of Alzheimer Disease."Robert S. Wilson, Kristin R. Krueger, Steven E. Arnold, Julie A. Schneider, Jeremiah F. Kelly, Lisa L. Barnes, Yuxiao Tang, David A. Bennett.Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2 February 2007;64:234-240.

Boys Academic Performance: Discipline, Violence and the Gender issue.

In an article I wrote on this blog a while ago in French, 'Les garçons et l'école: que sont nos hommes devenus', I tackled the question of the poor academic performance of boys, compared to girls, in developed countries. I defended the idea that this phenomenon might be linked to an increase in behavioural problems and disorders more endemic or prevalent in boys, among them; Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
I tried to explain boys behavioural disorders from a sociological perspective in which the classical types of authority, the natural and physical, the divine and religious, and the authority derived from personified knowledge, the teacher, have been replaced now by what French philosopher Alain Renaut calls the contractual authority. This latter form might better suit girls, putting boys at some level of disadvantage. I defended the idea that the absence, from today's pedagogy, of the above mentioned classical forms of authority which relied on hierarchy and resorted to a certain degree of violence, have actually created an internal conflict in boys who are invited to play the game of contractual authority while they clearly feel that this game does not acquaint them with what they perceive as the social division of genders that bestows upon them, more than their female counterparts, the authority, leadership and violence existing in the social space devoted to men.
And while most sociologists have a constructivist approach to the question of gender and violence, we cannot dismiss the biological grounds for social perceptions and social divisions of roles based on gender, as the experiments on Monkeys, cited in the above mentioned post, demonstrate. Recognising that there exists a biological ground to the question of violence and gender does not however exclude some form of social constructivism; the two factors, biological and social, collaborate during development in a transactional manner to define the final outcome of a certain behavioural charcteristic.
The question put here therefore is that some social transformations, like the democratisation of previous forms of authority at school relying on violence into a contractual form of authority, are disadvantaging boys for two obvious reasons; one is that the social perception and roles of adult males, despite the egalitarian feminist struggle, didn't change much, the other is that violence seems to be rooted in social structures - like hierarchy in the workplace - devoted classically to males. Women who occupy male territory are not transforming these structures but rather adopting their culture and conforming to it including the culture of violence in hierarchical relations at work.
In this new social scheme, girls seem to be adapted to both forms of authority, contractual and classical, showing their willingness to negociate when necessary and to fight their way agressively when required, while boys seem to be stuck in one scheme. Because women, while pursuing their social struggle toward more equality with men, have not only occupied part of the social space reserved to men but also kept their own, they are becoming versatile, rapidly adapting to different social situations. Men, on the other hand, had no demands like the feminists; they didn't ask forcefully to occupy functions and fill social roles traditionally devoted to women, they have, in their majority, stuck to their traditional role, therefore becoming unable to show the same versatility as women.

One issue not adressed often by the feminist movement is their willingness to let men invade their social space and take on their classical social roles. Sociologists believe that gender equality will be attained when men will become able to cross lines massively into what is perceived as women's territory. Indeed, gender inequality is stratified, touching many social functions, and is also reciprocal and bidirectional. The fact that women's movement was not matched by another movement in the other direction from men might explain the social malaise of boys and their academic and behavioural problems in school. Caught in the internal contradictions of their gender, having to comply to a non violent form of hierarchy at school but to bear the burden of violence in the workplace and in society in general, boys are expressing the malaise of a transitional generation.

Our responsibility as adults is to pursue these social transformations in a more egalitarian way. To expect from women to bring their contractual authority skills, learned and integrated at school, to the workplace, instead of adopting the old cutlure of hierarchical violence merely imitating men. And to expect from men the reverse movement toward conquering teritories traditionally reserved to women. Because once women would have conquered all the social strata defining the male gender, without a reverse movement, we will probably assist to a collapse of the social stratification of gender identity. But with a reverse movement from men and a more active contribution of women, what may come out is not a gender collapse but rather the ubiquity of both genders with less social stratification and real equality. Meanwhile, like in every social transformation, there is no going back. And this transitional malaise of generations must be alleviated by creating more awareness on the violence in the workplace and in the world in general and by actively decreasing this violence. May be then, men, relieved from the burden of violence, will try to conquer other territories and start the reverse movement, the march toward their equality with women.
After all, what counts most is not our gender but what unites us, men and women, our humanity and our capacity to inhabit this different and distant other...

Documents and articles that inspired this post:

Randall Collins; Janet Saltzman Chafetz; Rae Lesser Blumberg; Scott Coltrane; Jonathan H.Turner. 1993. Toward an Integrated Theory of Gender Stratification. Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 36, No. 3., pp. 185-216.
Michael S. Kimmel, Jeff R. Hern and Robert W. Connell. 2004. Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, Sage Publications.

Les garçons et l'école: Que sont nos hommes devenus ?

Les élèves chahuteurs du magnifique 'Zéro de conduite' de Jean Vigo, l'écolier charmeur, menteur et espiègle des '400 coups' de François Truffaut, ceux qu'on imagine étourdis, bagarreurs et volontiers téméraires de Paris et sa région dans l'album de Robert Doisneau 'Les doigts pleins d'encre' constituent, pour la génération qui a connu la démocratisation de l'enseignement, autant de tableaux vivants du quotidien de l'école et de l'écolier des années qui ont précédé les transformations sociales de l'après mai 68. Une caractéristique générale de l'école semble émerger de ces tableaux: le fait que le chahutage et les attitudes espiègles, contraires aux règles et à une discipline totale, étaient socialement acceptées comme marques du comportement des garçons dans le milieu scolaire. Que s'est-il donc passé pour que les garçons, autrefois servant de norme et de référence à ce qui pourrait être défini comme une acceptation sociale du milieu scolaire, en soient devenus aujourd'hui le problème ? Car il semble que les problèmes des garçons à l'école sont intimement liés à des questions d'attitude plutôt qu'à une question de capacité intellectuelle.

Démocration et libéralisation de l'école

La libéralisation de la société après mai 68 ne fut pas un événement uniquement français. Dans le monde francophone, le Québec a connu un mouvement socio-politique similaire, tandis que dans le reste des pays développés, des transformations sociales identiques furent amenées de manières différentes; le mouvement anti-guerre aux États-Unis, le mouvement rock et la contestation croissante de la monarchie en Grande Bretagne peuvent être perçus comme des répliques de mai 68. Tous ces mouvements de la fin des années soixante dans les pays développés ont conduit, entre autres, à la démocratisation de l'école qui est apparue comme une suite logique de la démocratisation de l'enseignement. La démocratisation de l'enseignement est le processus par lequel l'état et la société ont voulu amener plus d'enfants dans le système scolaire et dans le processus de la réussite scolaire tandis que la démocratisation de l'école est un processus psychosocial par lequel l'ouverture de l'école et la libéralisation de la société ont conduit à des rapports maître-élève, parent-élève et parent-maître moins formels (moins teintés de respect affiché et de distance psychologique).

Les deux démocratisations, même si elles nécessitent des réformes au sein de l'institution scolaire, n'ont cependant pas le même impact sur le vécu du processus d'apprentissage de l'enfant et de l'élève. La démocratisation de l'enseignement a eu beaucoup d’impact sur les réformes pédagogiques et très peu sur les rapports des acteurs dans le processus d'apprentissage. A l'inverse, la démocratisation de l'école, phénomène spontané et moins visible, a eu jusqu'à maintenant très peu d'impact sur les réformes scolaires tout en ayant un grand impact sur les rapports réciproques maître-élève-parent, rapports dont l'élève est le centre.

Changement de référentiel

A partir des années 80 émerge une nouvelle préoccupation pour les éducateurs, le phénomène de la moindre performance scolaire des garçons. Les hypothèses abondent pour expliquer ce phénomène. On a accusé l'école d'être devenue intolérante aux comportements des garçons, d’être inadaptée aux garçons et mieux adaptée aux filles. On a dit que les classes surchargées ne permettaient plus aux professeurs de prendre en compte les besoins spéciaux de certains élèves. On a dit que la société de marché mettait une pression indue sur les garçons pour une réussite économique conditionnée par la réussite scolaire par un glissement dans l'orientation de l'éducation vers un processus consacré à former les travailleurs de demain et non à former les esprits. On a dit que les professeurs sont devenus en majorité féminins et que les garçons étaient en mal d'identification dans le milieu scolaire. On a dit que les filles, se percevant comme moins aptes et moins intelligentes que les garçons mettent plus d'ardeur au travail que ces derniers qui s'appuient sur leur intelligence et que la stratégie des filles est mieux payante. On a appelé à réinstaurer la ségrégation des sexes à l'école. On a aussi dénoncé le désinvestissement des pouvoirs publics dans l'éducation.

Il faut cependant constater que seulement des tentatives isolées sont nées de cette prise de conscience. Tout se passe comme si le problème relevait de la fatalité. Et alors que nombre de ces explications reposent sur des caractéristiques avérées du milieu de l'éducation aujourd'hui, ces caractéristiques ne suffisent pas, à elles seules, à expliquer le phénomène du plus grand échec et décrochage scolaire chez les garçons, même si elles peuvent y contribuer. Il y a derrière ce phénomène d’autres facteurs. Parmi eux se trouve, à mon avis, le changement profond que la démocratisation de l'école a opéré dans les perceptions réciproques des relations, autrefois faites de hiérarchie et d'autorité, entre l'élève d'un côté et le maître d'école et le parent de l'autre. Or, il semble que cette nouvelle donne affecte différemment les filles et les garçons mais avant d'expliquer cette différence, je vais en exposer les fondements.

Autrefois, les media de l'autorité, quand elle n'était pas physique, étaient liés à Dieu et au Savoir. Le soldat, le prêtre et le maître d'école représentaient le sommet des échelons hiérarchiques des sociétés traditionnelles. Nos sociétés modernes, anti-militaristes et anti-confessionnelles furent aussi saisies par l'égalitarisme social dès les années 60. A première vue, l'effritement des autorités physique, militaire, et divine, confessionnelle, devait conduire logiquement à l'effritement de ces deux aspects de l'autorité à l'école, à savoir, la criminalisation des châtiments physiques et la déconfessionnalisation, mais ne devait en rien conduire à l'effritement de l'autorité par le savoir ou l'autorité du maître. Or cette dernière forme d'autorité a été érodée, à mon avis, par trois événements majeurs caractéristiques de nos sociétés: les cycles successifs de crises économiques, de chômage et de précarité de l'emploi qui y sont associés et qui ont conduit à un glissement de valeurs associées au savoir vers celles associées à la réussite économique et à l'argent, la multiplication des centres du savoir (media électroniques, parents plus diplômés qu'avant et valorisation du savoir par l'expérience) et l'éclatement du savoir par la diversification et la complexification ainsi que la montée en puissance de l'égalitarisme. Cette dernière donnée, étayée par le philosophe français Alain Renaut, en faisant de l'enfant l'égal de l'adulte en droits, a fini par effacer toute distance psychologique et identitaire entre l'adulte et l'enfant.

Le développement affectif biopsychosocial de l'enfant au centre du problème

Malgré ce qui précède, on ne peut pas dire qu'il y a absence totale de rapports d'autorité dans les écoles. Les formes archaïques de l'autorité ont été remplacées par ce que Alain Renaut appelle l'autorité contractuelle qui relève de l'autorité judiciaire et repose sur les règlements, la faute et les sanctions. La question subsidiaire, et non moins importante, est donc la suivante: est-ce que cette nouvelle forme de l'autorité fonctionne dans les écoles et pourquoi les garçons semblent moins adaptés dans l'école d'aujourd'hui ?

Il faut reconnaître que cette nouvelle forme de l'autorité place les rapports de l'élève au maître dans un carcan réglementaire et juridique, à première vue prédéterminé et moins flexible que les rapports psychologiques qui existaient dans les anciennes formes d'autorité. L'autorité devient ici impersonnelle, elle n'engage pas les émotions. Il en va de même du côté de la famille. Les parents aujourd'hui rechignent à démontrer toute forme d'autorité et ont le plus souvent recours à une autorité contractuelle de type négociée dont les termes sont déterminés conjointement par les parents et les enfants et à laquelle l'enfant participe pleinement. Ces deux nouvelles formes d'autorité contractuelle (à l'école et dans la famille) sont rationnelles et impliquent moins les émotions. Elles restreignent aussi la gamme de comportements jugés acceptables par les adultes de la part des enfants. Ce n'est pas qu'on est devenu intolérant aux comportements cités dans le premier paragraphe et illustrés par des films ou des photos cultes, c'est tout simplement qu'une fois qu'on définit de manière contractuelle les rapports, on limite la gamme des comportements acceptables contractuellement et on ne sait comment réagir à des comportements non prévus initialement par le contrat ou qui ne peuvent être résolus de manière contractuelle.

C'est là qu'intervient une explication d'un autre genre de l'attitude et des problèmes des garçons dans les nouveaux systèmes d'apprentissage. En effet, un aspect fondamental est négligé, à mon avis, dans toutes les explications fournies jusqu'à maintenant du problème des garçons dans le système scolaire; le développement affectif et biopsychosocial. Par développement affectif biopsychosocial j'entends tout processus qui implique des facteurs sociaux et biologiques contribuant conjointement à former la personnalité et l'esprit de l'enfant. Dans le domaine de la performance scolaire des garçons, aucune explication actuelle ne veut s'avancer sur le terrain biologique, même si des facteurs biologiques semblent exister.La raison est qu'on oppose dans nos explications processus biologiques et processus culturels, processus biologiques et processus sociaux, alors que les deux types de processus sont interactifs et contribuent, surtout chez l'enfant, à la structuration du comportement et du phénotype psychologique. Or, dans les sociétés animales, les rapports d’ «autorité », qui sont en fait des rapports de domination, contribuent, à travers les interactions entre adultes et enfants et entre enfants par le jeu, à structurer à la fois le groupe social et la place de l'individu dans le groupe. Ils impliquent les émotions.

Dans les sociétés animales dirigées par des mâles comme les sociétés de primates, les rapports d'autorité entre mâles adultes et jeunes et entre jeunes mâles établissent, à travers les émotions impliquées par le jeu et les rapports de domination, des modifications hormonales et chimiques dans le cerveau qui influencent la détermination de la position sociale du mâle dans le groupe. Le groupe ne pouvant accueillir qu'un nombre limité de mâles pour assurer la reproduction, la sécurité et la pérennité du groupe, un certain nombre de mâles doivent quitter le groupe à l'adolescence pour en intégrer un autre. Les travaux de Steven Suomi montrent que cette transition difficile se prépare dès l'enfance par le jeu et par les interactions entre jeunes et adultes. Les rapports d'autorité et de domination qui sont mis à l'oeuvre lors de l'éducation et le jeu influencent de manière permanente, lors du développement postnatal, les indicateurs biologiques contribuant à fixer la position sociale du mâle dans un groupe, comme par exemple, les taux de sérotonine (neuromédiateur impliqué dans les comportements d'agression et dans l'humeur). Les femelles, quant à elles, ayant un rôle déterminé à l'avance auprès des jeunes, ne participent pas aux rapports formateurs de domination pour achever un statut social car elles ne doivent pas quitter le groupe à l'âge adulte.

L'univers de l'éducation d'aujourd'hui s'est éloigné des relations de domination et d'autorité physique pratiquées par les sociétés animales et par les sociétés humaines dans l'âge classique. Il s'est aussi éloigné de leurs substituts, l'autorité divine et l'autorité du savoir. Il faut comprendre l'autorité ici dans son sens neutre, un processus par lequel l'adulte d'un groupe, exerçant sa responsabilité vis-à-vis de l'enfant, accompagne, par ses rapports inégaux avec l'enfant, le développement normal de celui-ci. Dans ce sens, il n'y a aucune connotation négative ou abusive à l'autorité.

L'absence de rapports physiques d'autorité, ou de substitut d'autorité, à l'école et dans la famille, dans une société dont la survie économique reste dominée et dirigée par des mâles, est de nature à perturber le processus de développement de la personnalité chez le garçon quand elle conduit à une carence dans les liens affectifs nécessaires au développement psychosocial de l'enfant. Ce n'est donc pas tant l'absence d'autorité en elle-même qui crée cette situation mais plutôt notre incapacité en tant que société à vivre les transformations sociales provoquées par la démocratisation de l'école et à imaginer des substituts adéquats de liens entre adultes et enfants pour pallier à ce vide. La contractualisation de l'autorité, même si elle représente un substitut satisfaisant sur le plan social, ne semble pas initier les liens affectifs nécessaires pour créer le contexte psychologique formateur adéquat au développement de la personnalité de l'enfant. Peut-être tout simplement parce que les garçons en particulier ne semblent pas comprendre le contrat par lequel ils se trouvent liés à leurs éducateurs ou que ce lien reste non motivant sur le plan affectif. Si les filles ne semblent pas souffrir de cela c'est parce que malgré le gain en droit que les filles et les femmes ont enregistré ces dernières années, notre société reste tout de même une société dominée par des mâles et que les filles savent qu'elles ne portent pas encore en elles le fardeau de l'organisation du groupe et de la société dans laquelle elles vivent et que cette tâche reste quand même dévolue aux mâles alors que les garçons savent bien que cette tâche leur revient et n'arrivent pas à trouver dans leur entourage familial et scolaire les rapports adéquats et les références qui les préparent à cette tâche.

Dans ce contexte d'absence, il n'est pas anormal que les garçons, sachant ce qui les attend dans le milieu du travail (il leur suffit de regarder leurs parents porter le poids du travail et ses insécurités à la maison car l'enfant n'a jamais été auparavant autant mêlé à la problématique du travail que de nos jours) où les rapports classiques d'autorité sont restés intacts et ont parfois évolué dans le sens contraire, soient désemparés. Ils ne font par cela que nous montrer les contradictions de nos sociétés, contradictions propres à des transitions sociales désorganisées que les enfants sont amenés à en payer le prix et qui sont relayées majoritairement par ce qui reste à l'enfant, dans ce cas-ci, son organisation biologique dans l'intuition qu'il a du rôle positif de ses émotions.

A suivre...

Lectures et sites web qui ont inspiré cet essai:

La fin de l'autorité par Alain Renaut, 2004, Flammarion, Paris.

The minds of boys: saving our sons from falling behind in school and life by Michael Gurian and Kathy stevens, 2005, Jossey-Bass, CA.

Site du gouvernement britannique sur les difficultés scolaires des garçons.

Un autre site du gouvernement britannique

Site du gouvernement australien sur les difficultés scolaires des garçons.

Une fenêtre sur les travaux de Steven Suomi